Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Our Tuesday drive was a mix of small Delta roads and big interstates. Small was more fun. From Oakley to Interstate 5, we crossed a couple bridges and bounced along the top of a Sacramento River levee. I let RedY do much of this herself with "full self driving", but eventually took over because RedY wanted to go faster than we did. Besides, perched on top of a relatively narrow roadway, we were less than completely comfortable.
After topping up with electrons, we drove into Sacramento Old Town for our first tourist stop: The California State Railroad Museum. These history/technology visits are more my thing than Marianne's, but she brought it up, so there we went. When we bought our tickets, the attendant recommended a walking tour that started in just a few minutes, so that's how we ended up following docent Craig for the next half-hour.
He taught his audience about the building of the transcontinental railroad, particularly the Central Pacific's western half. Speaking in front of the Governor Stanford locomotive, he explained the struggles climbing the Sierras, a task done primarily by Chinese labor. Craig explained that the CP started with Irish workers, only to discover that they left after the first payday to explore gold fields and bars. The Chinese, on the other hand, built stable working crews, willing to take on the dangerous business of manual drilling, blasting, grading, and track laying.
Once free of the mountains, the Central Pacific workers built at record-breaking speeds. Without benefit of heavy graders and track-laying machines, these workers set the still-standing record for track building.
Within three years of starting, the transcontinental railroad was completed, with driving the golden spike in Promontory, Utah.
We could compare this with the decades it is taking for the latest California rail project!
Most of the rest of our visit was all self-guided, exhaustive wandering among dozens of displays - mostly full-size, real train engines and cars. There was a Pullman Sleeper, a stainless steel dining car, an ice car of the type that opened up California as an agricultural powerhouse, and engines small, old, fancy, or imposingly huge and imposing. Each had a story, but such detail is way beyond the scale allowed by this diary. If you want more than pictures, come visit yourself.
Over 250 massive "cab-forward" steam engines used to be the mainstay
of the Central Pacific climbs over the Sierra Nevadas
Comfy sleeper car, with attendant.
A dinning car with fine china. The old days.
A fancy, old engine from the Virginia and Truckee Railroad.
Reportedly, rides are still offered by the V&TRR.
Thoroughly saturated with train history, we headed over to Il Fornaio for our mid-afternoon meal. The towering dining room was almost empty, a benefit of our not-lunch, not-dinner schedule. And the food was good, bringing smiles on both sides of the table.
From eating, it was time to find our hotel. We had chosen the Marriott Residence Inn on the recommendation of neighbor Joan and it turned out to be just what we prefer. The rooms are large, the location convenient, and the staff friendly. We even got a room with a bit of a "capital view".
On Wednesday, we will do whatever is convenient, consider the rainy forecast.
Stay tuned.
John and Marianne