(The following story by Jerry Soifer appeared on The Press-Enterprise website on May 10, 2009.)
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Hundreds turned out in San Bernardino for the second annual National Train Day, which commemorates “the golden spike” being pounded into the final tie at Promontory, Utah, that joined 1,776 miles of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways on May 10, 1869.
Model railroad enthusiasts from around Southern California set up displays throughout the old Santa Fe Depot, which serves as the San Bernardino Historical Railroad Museum. A display signified the depot’s use in Clint Eastwood’s shooting of the 2008 movie “Changeling” because it appeared more authentic to the times of the 1920s than Union Station in Los Angeles.
Outside the San Bernardino depot sat a 28-day old, $2 million, 200-plus ton blue and yellow locomotive with a 4,400 horsepower engine on display along with Metrolink trains.
Highland resident Robert Drenk, 80, showed off the blue uniform and hat he donned in railroad station service in his career with Santa Fe from 1946 to 1985.
“National train day brought people together to understand more about the trains place in history,” Drenk said.
San Bernardino Mayor Patrick Morris who grew up in a railroad family in Needles said he would not have been able to pay for his undergraduate and graduate studies without his work as a brakeman on the railroad during the summers of his college years. “I’m deeply indebted to the railroad,” he said.
Morris wore a train engineer’s cap as he made his opening remarks. He displayed hand and light signals used to communicate between train employees. He spoke of the glory days of the San Bernardino depot when 26 trains a day would pass east and westbound and how 60 percent of San Bernardino residents were employed by Santa Fe.
He said the importance of trains are returning with 14,000 people a day riding Metrolink from San Bernardino to Los Angeles. “We’re back to the future,” Morris said. “The world is changing. The auto is no longer the dominant force in our society.”
Fred Chavez, 49, a San Bernardino resident who serves as a volunteer at the depot, hopped on trains as a boy growing up in Fresno. His love of trains endured through 20 years of service in the Marine Corps.
“We used to have a wheat mill down the street,” Chavez said. “We used to jump on the train. We had to be careful about not being caught. I was in awe of this humongous piece of machinery going by.”
Mike Croy, 61, of Grand Terrace, fulfilled his childhood dream of working for a railroad as a terminal manager.
“My life was trains from a toddler to a senior citizen,” said Croy who travels with his wife, Jenny, 61, to railroad museums across the country. “I had Lionel trains when I was little. I jumped to big trains.”
Jenny said, “Every vacation is a train.”
Cecilia Rhodes, 65, said she was infected by her husband Manuel’s zeal for trains during their 30 years of marriage. They gave their son, Manuel III, a train hat the day he was born She said she especially loves cabooses.
“I look at their (husband’s and son’s) faces,” Cecilia. “They’re always smiling when they see trains.”
Richard Skeate, of Crestline, has never forgotten the steam engines he saw as a child, in Colfax, Wash. “They were like living, breathing machines,” he said. “You thought they were live they had so many moving parts. I’m sure there as many (in a diesel). You just don’t see them.”