California State Railroad Museum

When the train arrived in the Sacramento area, we first picked up a rental car in downtown Sacramento and then drove to Roseville about an hour away.  After checking into our hotel, we spent time with Adam and Joi...  we visited Adam and Joi's apartment in Roseville...  went out to dinner...  then we made plans for the following day which included visiting the California State Railroad Museum in downtown Sacramento. 

Picking up the rental car in Sacramento was a bit of a time-consuming fiasco that is worth mentioning here.  

There was only one person working the front desk and the customer in front of us was having a very time consuming customer service problem and subsequently wanted his car for free.  I briefly contemplated just heading down the road to the next rental car place but, for some reason, decided to stay put and wait it out.  Part of me was figuring that we might not be able to get a car at the next place but something was nagging at me to be patient and stay put.  

After about a half hour wait, another guy came to the front counter and called us to his computer.  It was pretty obvious to me that this guy was either in the military himself or a veteran by the way he was dressed, the way he carried himself and his haircut.  He actually looked like he could be the son of a close friend of mine in the Air Force back in the 1980s!  He pulled our reservation up on the computer and saw that we needed a larger vehicle for six people...  then broke the news to us that they did not have any of those vehicles.  In my head, I was hearing the Jerry Seinfeld episode about "reserving" a car but I kept quiet... "Do you know how to reserve a car?"....   "no, I don't think you do".  

The guy looked at me and said something about taking care of military family.  He noticed my haircut and my shirt... a polo shirt that had 'Air Force Retired' embroidered on the left side of my chest...  and he made a quick comment about having the sharp eyes of a Marine Sniper implying he noticed I am retired Air Force and he commented about taking care of those in our family.  He asked us to wait a minute and excused himself as he went out to the parking lot.  

When he came back he told us he took someone else's vehicle and he'll probably get in trouble because it was reserved for a regular customer which was set up by his boss.  He cleaned up the vehicle, filled it with gas and gave it to us instead.  Naturally, we were thankful and I thanked him for all his help.  This is one reason why I always wear my military polo shirts...  because of this extended family and how we all take care of each other.  This was a short story worth mentioning and, without that favor, we would have been screwed because I highly doubt we would have been able to find another car on such short notice.  

When we made the plans to visit the railroad museum the following morning, we didn't realize that this railroad museum was located next door to the Sacramento Amtrak station where we had just arrived.  The museum was hidden by a highway ramp and overpass.  So, we would be heading back to Sacramento the following day after our arrival so we could spend some time in the State Railroad Museum.  I had been hearing for years that the California State Railroad Museum is among the best railroad museums in the country so this was definitely on my sightseeing list.

Here is a short almost pointless video of us setting up all the electronics in the vehicle before heading to Sacramento.  At the end of the video, I added a couple of short clips from the train museum.  I admit that this is a rather boring video but I didn't shoot much video so I'm including whatever little bit I did shoot...

After piling into the vehicle and setting everything up for our time in the Roseville/Sacramento area, we then made our way toward Sacramento so we could spend a few hours at the railroad museum.  Much of the museum is geared toward the westward expansion of the railroads which, actually, is the same route we traveled on our California Zephyr to Sacramento.  This was, indeed, an impressive museum!

Why aren't trains in the US similar to this anymore?  Amtrak, are you listening?  (Of course, I am well aware that, today, most travelers are pigs who are personal hygiene nightmares, have absolutely no manners and have no understanding of what it means to be polite, presentable and respectful.  They enter a room, are loud and obnoxious, and somehow leave the room looking like it was hit by a full trash can in a cyclone in only a matter of minutes.  More on this in a different blog entry in the future.  These people would need to be banned from fine furnishings such as we see here in this photo or it all would be destroyed within a month.  But, I would like to see select routes with select trains in this period style while also sporting some present-day creature comforts.)   

This is the engineer's cockpit of the bullet train pictured above.  I don't think a lot of thought went into the design of this train because this cockpit appears rather bland and boring with not nearly enough instrumentation to monitor all the mechanical systems of the train and locomotive.  Also, in my opinion, visibility is terrible from this position yet common sense dictates that visibility for the engineer should be unobstructed, wide and clear.  Who designed this nonsense?  It would be nice for the US to join the rest of the world with some streamlined bullet trains though...  

The next three photos are from the inside of a Railway Post Office which we visited specifically for our Post Office Carrier, Christine...  

Back to my question...  Why don't any trains in the US look similar to this?

This is the famed "last golden spike" laid in the trackwork for the First Transcontinental Railroad, originally known as the Pacific Railroad...

I am not a big fan of posed photographs (even though I seem to capture far too many of them) so I am always looking for interesting compositions instead.  This composition, below, caught my eye.  

This is a beautiful and impressive painting of the last spike being laid in the track to complete the first transcontinental railroad.  I like how Sheila, Joi and Adam are bunched together reading about the painting while Sue is off to the side on her own studying the details in the painting itself.

Basic electronics lab in the museum...

In the museum gift shop...  Joi and Adam are scoping Sheila...

In front of the museum...

The back side of the museum is shaped like a small roundhouse with a turntable.  This is connected to a small train yard and is where they move trains and locomotives in and out of the museum.  

I think we spent about three hours in this impressive museum but I could have easily spent the entire day here.  What I had heard for years about this museum was definitely true...  it is among the best in the country.  Unfortunately, due to being short on time and having a lot of things we wanted to see in California, we sort of rushed through the museum and focused more on the obvious highlights.  

Maybe we'll somehow get to this museum again sometime in the future...