This Museum Belongs on Your Must-See List
The past Tuesday, with the Red Sox-A’s game at night, I took Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor service up to Sacramento for a second visit to the California State Railroad Museum. It’s a pleasant two-hour ride, so I had time to catch a 7:45 train, spend a couple of hours wandering around the museum and through Old Sacramento, and get back to Oakland in time to relax for a few hours before catching BART and heading out to the game.
There are beautifully restored locomotives – this huge cab-forward model was used to haul trains over the Sierras for years – and a fascinating selection of old rail cars, with well-informed docents there to explain things as you tour the facility.
In addition to the locomotives and cars, you can get a lot of history about train travel in California and, in particular, about the building of the trans-continental railroad … entirely understandable since work started in Sacramento.
The museum is an absolute must, even if you are just casually interested in train travel
I really didn’t have time … a bit less than two hours … so I ate lunch on the way back to Oakland in the lounge car. Very nice design, by the way. I’ll post some photos after I get home.
I did walk around Old Sacramento for about 20 minutes waiting for the museum to open. Quite shocking how many shops were closed with the spaces up for lease. Signs of the continuing recession, I guess.
Hey, Jim, you didn’t perchance eat at Fulton’s Prime Rib across from the train museum, did you? The wife and I celebrated our first anniversary there and the bill was a shocking $20! Of course our first anniversary was in 1974.d