From The Archives of Rails West - Roaming the Grounds of the Southern California Railway Museum

For the past couple of weeks I have been sifting through my collection of railroad photographs that I have posted over at my Rails West page on Facebook. I collected numerous images to share here at the Traveler's Guide, but I was puzzled on how I should feature them. Ultimately I decided to organize them by location instead of by date, which was my original intention. I figured that the photos would make more sense if the viewer knew where the images where taken. It would also be much easier on me to group them by location instead of simply featuring a random collection of photos that I would have to write a comment on each one so that they would have context.

For my fist post, I opted to go with some photos that I took when my wife and I spent the day visiting the Southern California Railway Museum (known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum at the time) in Perris, California. This location has always been one of my favorite places to visit and I used to make it a habit to travel down there several times a year. Walking around all the vintage railroad equipment in their collection never grew old. It was like taking a trip back in time and on those peaceful days I honestly could have believed that I was walking a railroad facility back in the 40s or 50s. 

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The museum grounds consist of acres of operational rail and trolly tracks, several preserved (and operational) steam and diesel locomotives, various rolling stock and period buildings. The history of the museum dates back to the late 1950s when a group of trolley car enthusiasts known as the Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California moved their collection from Griffith Park to an abandoned railroad facility in Perris where over the decades they acquired more and more items that the local railroad companies no longer had any use for. Today the museum hosts one of the largest collections in the Southwestern US.   

Of the photos that I took on that Saturday afternoon, many of them have been 'reworked' by Terri adjusting the colors or simply rendered in black and white. If you look closely at some of the photos you may notice a watermark for View Obscura that was added because those images were once for sale in our Etsy store under that name.

I hope that all of you railroad buffs enjoy these images as much as I did taking them. Let me know which ones are your favorites in the comments below.  

 

Here is where to find the Southern California Railway Museum: