This month's program will be presented by Elrond Lawrence. Elrond will take us to some overlooked railroading in California, primarily the former Southern Pacific Coast Line between Gilroy and Paso Robles. Amtrak’s Coast Starlights are the only daily through trains on the line, but it endures as a time machine, with 1940s-era searchlight signals, spring switches, pole lines, and old-school operations in beautiful central coast scenery. We’ll see rerouted freights, work & storage trains, locals, and new Charger locomotives. Then we’ll take a detour to re-formed Tulare Lake in the San Joaquin Valley beside BNSF’s valley line, and to Union Pacific’s ex-Western Pacific main line from Keddie to Portola and points east.

Elrond is the acquisitions and marketing coordinator for the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, and he’ll include a brief overview about the Center and its collections, with a look at newly processed images by Stan Kistler and Richard Steinheimer. Elrond has lived in Monterey County for 22 years after moving north from Southern California. His photography and writing appear in Trains, Railfan & Railroad, the NRHS Bulletin and other publications. He also wrote the book Route 66 Railway.

Going forward, regular monthly membership meetings are both in person and on Zoom, while Board meetings are now online-only.

To join a Zoom meeting, go to:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86214899971.
The meeting ID: 862 1489 9971.

Please keep your microphone muted unless you have a question or comment during the meeting. Try to call in by 7:30pm and please be patient for the host to admit you.

Central Coast received a donation of many railroad-related books from longtime member Conrad Gleason. The collection includes about 1000 hardcover books, and another 1000 in soft bindings. We will offer these for sale at the next several Chapter meetings. Since it is not practical to transport all of the books to the meetings, we will bring a small, random subset about 100 to each meeting.

Many of the books are listed online with prices at http://members.trainorders.com/clem.  We will update the list as time permits. If you wish to purchase any of these titles please send an email expressing the title or titles you wish to buy and the date you will be attending a meeting to: central_coast_chapter@yahoo.com.

Meeting Place and Time

(Santa Clara Depot 2/28/2008)

We meet each month at the historic Santa Clara CalTrain depot, 1005 Railroad Avenue, on the 3rd Friday of each month. Doors open at 7:00 and the meeting starts promptly at 7:30pm. Our monthly program starts after a short business meeting. Members and non-members are welcome! Want to do some railfanning prior to your visit? Checkout the Youtube video An An Afternoon In Santa Clara. filmed by member Ken Rattenne in June of 2016.