To Shiny Rails

The 2011 Central Coast Railroad Festival is “in the can!” What a wild and crazy weekend of railroading activity all over the central coast! I took lots of photos, many of which are indexed at this page: http://CCRRF.com/photo-index-2011.html

Andrew Merriam’s HO layout: http://CCRRF.com/111009-Merriam.html

Plenty of Bitter Creek Western folks were on hand to run Pacific Coast Railroad trains at “Savor the Central Coast” held at the Santa Margarita Ranch. Here are the train photos: http://BCWRR.org/111002.html

Remember last April at Bitter Creek when there was a bit of a modeling shoot of a teddy bear next to a locomotive. Johnny Louis was doing a teddy bear series of paintings, and he wanted to do a Teddy Bear Engineer. Well, here’s how it turned out… http://bcwrr.org/stories-teddy-bear-art.html

There were lots of great photo opps at Goleta Railroad Days! http://www.friends-smvrr.org/110917.html

This was quite a trip. Went to KC to visit family a little and get caught up on Dad’s backyard railroad. Then on to Omaha for the “main event”, Union Pacific’s Short Line Workshop. The first day (Sunday) was all fun stuff, a train ride on eight of UP’s heritage fleet cars followed by a reception at the Joslyn Art Museum. Monday and Tuesday morning were the workshop itself. And did I mention that I took the Pacific Surfliner SLO-Burbank in order to catch Southwest flights?… Lots of photos: http://jf2.com/110826/110828.html

Seven Friends of the SMVRR spent some time roaming about south and east of Santa Maria looking for evidence of the Pacific Coast Railway and the Santa Maria Valley Railroad right-of-ways in this area now void of tracks. It’s been many decades, but the right-of-way can be spotted here and there if you know what to look for… Photos: http://www.friends-smvrr.org/110813.html