This month's museum pick...

Pacific Southwest Railway Museum
You can even ride up front with the engineer!

The Cultured Traveler has been kind of sweet on San Diego lately (Cabrillo Festival July 2003; Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, Oct. 2003), and why not? As winter approaches, San Diego, with its very mild year-round climate becomes is one of those places that Canadians and Americans from cold-weather climes dream of spending some time in.

If you’re a railroad buff, a San Diego-area visit becomes an even more pleasant prospect, thanks to the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum (PSRM) in Campo. Campo, a little farm town of just over 1,000 people, lies 50 miles east of downtown San Diego. You can cover most of the distance to it on an Interstate 8, but two-lane Highway 94 is ever so much more pleasant: The road dawdles through the city’s fertile semi-desert hinterland before dipping south to Campo, almost to within shouting distance of the Mexican border.

The museum, founded in 1961, takes advantage of the area’s warm, dry climate by offering two daily excursions every Saturday and Sunday, and on major holidays. The most popular excursion is a 16-mile round-trip from Campo to Miller Creek on the Golden State Limited, featuring restored passenger cars pulled behind a diesel engine. Unless you’re bringing a big group (15+), reservations aren’t necessary.

One major treat the museum offers is an opportunity to ride upfront in the engine cab alongside the engineer. To do so requires a reservation and costs extra, and space is limited to a maximum of four riders (two going and two coming). But for the extra cost, engine riders have a bird’s-eye view of the track, and get to banter with the engineer and blow the train’s horn at various intervals.

Groups can also charter one of two restored passenger cars, Santa Fe #1509 or the Pullman Robert Peary, for a trip to Miller Creek. The cars, which feature carpeting linen napery, woodwork and refurbished furniture, are typically used for private parties and meals.

While the museum’s rolling stock covers a gamut, from cabooses, freight cars and diesel engines to passenger cars and steam locomotives, it’s the steam engines that hold pride of place. The PSRM has six of them, ranging in size from 59 to 124 tons and in age from 66 to 99 years. The king of the heap is California Western #46, an articulated (it has two chassis that move independently of each other – great for taking tight curves) “Mallet” engine (named after its French designer) used to haul logging trains in California’s northern redwood forests. Its final job was pulling the famous Skunk passenger excursion train between Willits and Ft. Bragg in Mendocino County.

The cars and engines saved by PSRM are in various states and stages of repair. As is typical with railroad museums, the PSRM depends on the immense patience, endurance and resourcefulness of its supporters, who may put in years of volunteer labor to restore old rolling stock. Those efforts consist of finding hours here or weekends there to come onsite to work, or scouring the country for parts that may no longer exist, or even creating new parts from scratch, based on old drawings or best guesses.

Those efforts seem even more impressive when you consider that the museum has put a lot on its plate, officially dedicating itself to recording and preserving the history of regional railroading in six areas: the San Diego & Arizona Railway; the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad’ the Southern Pacific Railroad; military railroading in the West; international/border railroading (with Mexico); urban electric railroads; and general railroading and early era railroading.

Although the PSRM is serious about its mission, it’s obvious that members and supporters bring a light and sometimes playful touch to their enterprise. The museum’s web site is a railroad fancier’s delight, offering concise histories of railroading in general and local railroading in particular, as well as manufacturing and performance profiles of all its rolling stock, links to regional travelers’ web sites and some humorous takes on diesel engine maintenance.

— Patrick Totty