I'm confused by this, doe this mean that the CSRM isn't going to use this area to expand the museum to include shop tours? http://www.up.com/aboutup/community/com ... acyard.htm

Yeah, but I've read for years that CSRM owns the area and was going to make a side museum out of the area and restoration facility. What happened to that?

they have a lot of equipment stored in the old shops, does this mean all that's going to be moved somewhere?
They're going to lose their restoration area from this?

As I recall, the CSRM leases the buildings along with the area immediately around them from the UP. The rest of the yard is available for development.

http://www.csrmf.org/component/content/ ... ento-shops

A little background re the site from a environmental cleanup legal perspective. The site is regulated under by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control v. the US EPA. http://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/publi ... nvolvement
Brownfield is a ubiquitous phrase sadly used interchangeably with Superfund, waste site, abandoned property, RCRA site, and so on. Basically a brownfield is real property that is potentially contaminated by hazardous substances, and because of this, the sale, transfer, or redevelopment of said property presents unknown liability exposure. The EPA Brownfields Program is a combination of Federal assistance ($), and statutes aimed at limiting liability risk to "redevelopment' interests. Navigating the myriad of federal and state environmental statutes to the comfortable place of low liability is exceedingly difficult. The problem is that what is clean enough today may be different tomorrow. Hanging over the head of all of these things is the EPA and its broad authority under CERCLA (Superfund - EPA pretty much reserves the right "regulate" a site under CERCLA).
It looks like from what I've found that SP and its successor UP have conducted various cleanup activities at the site going back into the 1980's. These steps have satisfied the various regulatory agencies so far but there remains risk, and from what I can tell the proposed developments have yet to demonstrate a return worth the risk. Something not discussed very deeply is the ancient history of filling in the wetland to make this site usable as a rail yard and shop facility. High water table presents big challenges to clean up actions involving groundwater contamination plumes. In short no wonder this has been a difficult site to redevelop.
Good news is that it can be done. Here in Atlanta we have Atlantic Station, a highly successful commercial and high rise development on the former site of the Atlantic Steel Company.

Over the last several years there have been a number of proposals for the development of the yard site and most have included the CSRM use of the old shop buildings. And there have been several developers. As I recall, there was one developer that ran afoul of the city, the museum, etc. when he tried to change a signed letter agreement.

The City of Sacramento has a page on its website about the Railyards project.

I hope that some of the historic building will be preserved and that the CSRRM will have a useful facility. It is great that the station is being extensively restored, but why did they put the platforms so far from the depot?

Historically there was a dog-leg, two sharp turns in the east station approach, which freight trains were forced to use as well, and it slowed them down. They straightlined the dog-leg, insofar as that could be done without demolishing the historic Sacramento Shops, and this pushed the platforms far from the depot. All this is readily visible on Google Earth, especially with the "show historical imagery" feature.

The depot is far too large to move. The light-rail ties up at the depot (not the new platforms) and they didn't want to relocate station functions to an "Amshack" at the platforms and slap a restaurant in the old depot.

There was never a through route on the current alignment, that went though buildings. There's a strong commitment to preserve the core buildings of the Sacramento Shops. Pushing the mainline up against them, means they have direct rail access and a significant frontage against the railroad proper, so they won't be "islanded" by NIMBY condos on all sides. Given the proximity of I-5, probably not on the west side either. This should help, given the fact that the Sacramento Shops are not doing adaptive reuse (which means putting a mall in there) but will continue their original purpose of banging on railroad cars (and the occasional electrical work).


Yup. We spent $25,000 for the environmental work to clear a property worth $125,000, which amounted to affirming that the only thing the property was used for was pallet manufacturing, which didn't use any chemicals weirder than hydraulic fluid for the machines. This cleared the property of liability for us under state law, and increased the resale value of the property considerably.

Between the SP Sacramento Shops and the depot there were two routes, a freight line and a passenger line. At some point SP took the freight route out and routed all the trains on the passenger line. With the shop site to be redeveloped as part of downtown Sacramento, access across the main tracks is a problem. Two streets east of the depot are to get overpasses/ underpasses, so the tracks were moved back to the freight alignment to provide room for approaches to these grade separations without having to knock down several blocks of downtown Sacramento.

At one time the Depot was to be moved north so it would be along side the tracks. There is also a large express building next door that would also have to be moved. Last I herd the buildings were not going to be moved due to the cost. Moving the buildings would have opened up more parking in front of the depot, which would have been welcome as Sacramento train service is primarily commutator service.

The Union Pacific bought an insurance policy to cover the environmental clean up of the site. I do not know which buildings are to saved, if any. CSRM wanted a much larger site than than they currently occupy. The first developer did not want CSRM on the site. I was told this was because they wanted a site with night life and they saw the museum as a 9 to 5 operation and a big black hole at night. But as I understand it, this developer went under in the 2008 recession.

Last I was in them, the CSRM buildings were suffering from a lack of maintenance as the state was unwilling to spend any money on them until they belonged to the state. Also the environmental clean up was causing some settlement of the ground, which is hard on brick buildings. The title to the buildings had not been transferred to the state since they could not be sold out of the polluted property and/or the state would not take the buildings until they were certified as hazardous material free. I do not know what the current status of the shop buildings, but this has been a long project.

To the best of my knowledge this is a shop site. There was no yard here other than what trackage was required to support the shops.

The CSRM has been cursed as much as blessed by being located in a central urban location. It is unusually fortunate in that so much railroad architecture and resources have been gathered for a museum, but it is also victim in being the sidecar to so many urban developer plans.

The Amtrak depot is another beast that is somewhere in the middle between historic and a functional part of the city fabric. Bob Yarger brought to light the crazy thoughts of jacking up the structure and moving it 400 feet. We live in different times today.
http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8889
"Sacramento Depot Stupidity"

Despite it all, the museum perseveres and generally thrives. Hopefully that will remain to be true through the undoubted upcoming urban political shenanigans.