EDITORS COMMENT. Your editor had planned to produce a larger edition of Report. However, he's had ditto trouble - that's what happens when one purchases second hand equipment. He's also busy producing the Dispatcher. It will be mailed in two weeks. On top of that the Sanders family took time off to go to Arizona. So here we are rushing out an edition of Report. Officers and committee chairmen! We'll send you a memo about one week ahead of publication deadline. Send us the latest news and we'll! include it in Report. Seems to us that PSRMA can do a more effective job if members are informed. We also think absentee and less active members ought to be informed about what is going on.....Look for the "latest" news on the Santa Fe and the SD&AE in the Dispatcher available in two weeks. By the way, have you subscribed? PSRMA sort of expects PSRMA members to subscribe. Doesn't cost much as it isn't published very often!
SANTA FE ITEM. Your editor observed the Phoenix train the other day. It connects Phoenix with the main line. Consist was the usual - two locomotive units, a diner-lounge, a coach, a Pullman and five rearend-headend cars. Phoenix Union Station is served by the one Santa Fe train, the Sunset-Golden State and the 39-40 Mail.
THE SILVER STRAND RAILROAD. Previously, Report said that Jack Stodelle had been told the Silver Strand operation people had negotiated a contract for trackage rights on the SD&AE strand track and had acquired two locomotives. More recently two stories have appeared which sort of confuse the situation. Railroad Magazine quotes Sierra Railroad Club's "Steam Echoes" as follows: "A new scenic railroad may be in operation by this spring between the Yacht Club at Coronado, Calif., and the Silver Strand State Park. The firm sponsoring it has permission to use SP's San Diego & Arizona Eastern right-of-way. Trains will be operated by union crews of four men each under regulations of the I.C.C. and the California Public Utilities Commission. The firm is Parr Industrial Corporation, consisting of Fred Parr Cox, a San Francisco industrialist, and Bill Nietfeld of San Diego. They bought Sierra engines 34 and 36 and they own three passenger cars and a combo.".....But Pacific News, Issue 42, states: "A steam powered railroad running the seven miles from the Yacht Club at Coronado, California, to the Silver Strand Beach State Park has been announced for intended operation early this summer. Such information, however, is at best premature. The Southern Pacific will not allow the operation to run over the rails of its subsidiary San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railroad, and they apparently have no intention of reversing their decision although some negotiations are still underway. The two steam locomotives intended, by the line's backers, for the operation were to be the ex-Sierra Railroad 2-8-0's #34 and #36 which are still stored in the Sierra's roundhouse by their current owners the non-operating White Mountain Scenic Railroad in Arizona. Attempts by the backers of the Coronado operation to purchase the two locomotives have not, to date, been successful. The Coronado steam operation was proposed and backed by a San Francisco industrial firm which said in late February that although the operation most certainly has appeared to have fallen through, negotiations are not yet complete." Looks as though another dream will fail to materialize!
IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES RECENTLY you will not know that street car rail remains on Seventh Street except where pavement covers the rail at pedestrian crosswalks. You will not know that many bus loading areas are in the middle of the block, or that buses still carry the LAMTA colors and identification except for a SCRTD line in back of each bus, or that an uninformed person would not realise that the Main Street station was once an interurban station, or that the Los Angeles Union Station is so drab, dark and deserted.
REPORT is the official publication of the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association of San Diego County, California. Officers are: Stanton Kerr, president; Terry Durkin, vice president; George Geyer, secretary; Charles Gerdes, treasurer; William Wootton, past president; and Walter Hayward, museum committee chairman. PSRMA address is 10830 Fuerte Drive, La Mesa, California. Editor of Report is Eric Sanders, 7861 Normal Avenue, La Mesa, California.
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