I gotta tell ya, I love me some trains. So here’s my two top railway-related tips of the day:
The South Bay Historical Railroad Society is an amazing place for railroad buffs. They have a collection filled with North American railroad memorabilia, working model train sets, and railway outbuildings.
And
Don’t call it a “model railroad museum” to anyone’s face there—the older, craggier, and beardier faces least of all. Not if you don’t want to feel like a hobo who’s just been caught sleeping in First Class wearing the station manager’s pajamas. It’s a railroad museum, got it? I know I do now.
You can find the South Bay Historical Railroad Society in the old Santa Clara train depot. The building is located on Railroad Avenue (what are the odds?) by the Santa Clara Caltrain stop, just off El Camino and across from Santa Clara University.
Inside the depot
Enter the depot and you get the impression of being inside a gutted barn. The walls are hung with railway crossing signs, signals, and other train memorabilia. Counters, display cabinets, and the like are scattered around for easy viewing. You can tell this is a place designed by guys for guys. One case contains dozens of locks, another lanterns, and another tools.
Model railroad heaven
If you’re a kid, or me, you’re going to spend just enough time admiring the first room to seem polite in front of the grownups, and then head straight through to the model railroads set up in the next room. For anyone who grew up with a set of Lionel trains, you probably had dreams that were set in a place like this. HO on one side and N Scale on the other.
Here you’ll encounter mountainsides with cars making their way past buildings, lakes, and houses. Follow the tracks into a train yard housing a miniature railway shed that sparks with the light of teeny arc welders repairing the trucks inside.
It may look like a model railroad, but it’s really a personal time machine. Walk in there as an adult and feel yourself turn into a kid again.
Outside and around back
Walk out the back door past the switching signs and you’ll see a work in progress, a 1912 Pullman carriage. The exterior has been renovated, while the interior is still being worked on.
Don’t forget the outbuildings. The nearest is the station tool house from 1894. Each time it was to repainted over the years, workers first covered the outside to smooth out any dings and whatnot. When the society restored the shed, they removed all the layers of spackle and filler. That’s when they found generations of graffiti carved into the walls, which you can now see, including some dating back to when the station was new. Personally, I suspect the nearby Santa Clara University students.
Others buildings include the two-story tower from 1926, which controlled the signals and switches for the yard.
Man and boy, if you like trains, this is the place to be.
If you go
Edward Peterman Museum of Railroad History
1005 Railroad Avenue, Santa Clara
(408) 243-3969
Open Tuesday 6 pm to 9 pm and Saturdays 10 am to 3 pm. Admission is free
