Last Sunday, the Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources move the remains of Pajaro Valley Railroad boxcar 215 to our museum at Ardenwood Farm in Fremont California.

This 1894 San Francisco built boxcar spent its entire life on the Pajaro Valley railroad, a sugar beet hauling 3' narrow gauge line serving the Spreckels Sugar mill near Salinas.

According to the family that donated the car, it had been moved to their dairy farm in Gonzalas CA by placing it on two wagon axles and towing it with horses. This may have occurred as early as 1906, or as late as 1928.

The carbody is in surprisingly good condition. We have 90% of the patterns on hand to produce the needed parts to restore the car, including new, 15 ton capacity swing motion trucks.

We have established a temporary project page for this car at:

http://home.netcom.com/~hees/index.html

Of course like all other railroad groups, money is tight, and this car will need substantial funds to pay for its restoration and preservation.

Thanks
Randy Hees


http://www.spcrr.org
Hees@ix.netcom.com

Randy,

Could not find mention of the car on the Carter Brothers web site. Shouldn't the car be listed on the Roster pages? Was it built by the Carters?

Ted Miles

ted_miles@nps.gov

> Randy,

> Could not find mention of the car on the
> Carter Brothers web site. Shouldn't the car
> be listed on the Roster pages? Was it built
> by the Carters?

> Ted Miles

Ted,

Reread Randy's posting. He directed us to look at a special site that he had set up about the car. This site then says the infomration will be transfered over to the SPCRR site.

To me, the SPCRR site needs a bit of an update. Maybe the new box car information will move when the SPCRR site gets its next update.

By the way, the box car's web page says that it was built by Hammond, another California car builder.

First of all, the car was built by John Hammond, not the Carters Brothers.

John Hammond products appear to be derivative if not copies of the Carter designs, and he is clearly using the same sources for his castings (none of the California builders had in house foundries.) While our group is named for the Carter Brothers, our charter and mission statements describe our interest as Northern California narrow gauge railroads and car builders. This is our second Hammond built car (the other is a 1887 horse drawn streetcar)

As Brian noted there is a special web site for this car. This is an experiment in having a quick and dirty page for members and others to get immediate information, while we do the research, and make decisions about this car.

Our regular web site is maintained by a very skilled, but very busy member, and at times it takes more time than I would like to get things posted there. This web page is controlled by the project managers. (but not without board supervision)

We are in the process of defining our interpretive materials, particularlly signage, but also other written material, including setting levels of interpretation which each item is meant to speak to. The draft defines the first level as very general sign saying this is a railroad museum, the second level is still meant for the parent with child. The third level is more detailed, mostly within our museum car(s)and is for geust who have indicated an intersts in some level of detail, and the final level is defined for the railfan and railroad preservation community. Within that mix the temporary web site is for the 4th or final community.

We believe that if you give someone with 2nd level interest 4th level information you will drive them away. On the other hand the 4th level people need that information...

Randy Hees


http://www.spcrr.org
hees@ix.netcom.com

Randy,

thanks for the additional information. I have definately got a fourth level kind of insterest.

by the way, When and where a car was built is of interest to most people I think.

Ted Miles


ted_miles@nps.gov

We have spend quite a bit of time talking to and trying to identify the visitors to our site.

We find that our typical visitor is much more likely to be a parent or grandparent with small children, rather than a railfan, or even an adult with historic interest.

Granted, we are a historic farm including a Victorian house museum, barns, a black smith shop and many, many activities, with a railroad museum included as only one of those activities, but I suspect that our visitor profile may be more common than most of us believe.

Most of our organizations were founded by railfans, and the focus of our founders is the rail equipment, with the museum functions only following as an afterthought. In our groups case we collect Northern California narrow gauge railroad cars built before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. We work had to restore those cars as accurately as possible, including recreating lost styles of swing motion truck, and quite a significant collection of patterns. We try to use castings where castings were use (rather than weldment) We have siding custom milled to original specifications, rather than take off the shelf patterns, and in our groups case, we even try to use the same hand tools the cars builders did some 100+ years ago.

But, we try not to deceive ourselves, and think that any of our visitors would know the difference between a Carter brother 15 ton swing motion truck and a set of rubber wheels. Much of what we do is for ourselves, although it does bring us respect from the historian and museum communities.

For most of our visitors these are at best just “neat old trains” We continue to try to give them, in at best 15 minutes a bit of railroad history, in an accurate and entertaining way. In our opinion this means that we leave out many of the details which are so close to our hearts.

Randy Hees

> Randy,

> thanks for the additional information. I
> have definately got a fourth level kind of
> insterest.

> by the way, When and where a car was built
> is of interest to most people I think.

> Ted Miles


http://www.spcrr.org
hees@ix.netcom.com