Road Trippin': Citroens Invade the Musée du Chemin de Fer in Paris...uh...Perris!

Monday, June 12, 2023

Citroens Invade the Musée du Chemin de Fer in Paris...uh...Perris!

That's Railroad Museum to most of you. Specifically, the Southern California Railroad Museum (used to be the Orange Empire RR Museum).

Some of us met at Claro's Italian Deli in Arcadia (ok, ok, Italian, I know, I know) to grab stuff for lunch and set off on the hour's trek to Perris. Not satisfied with the normal route, I led our trio:

East 210

South 57

South 71

East 91

South 15

East on Cajalco Road

Then to the museum.

My buddy Bill and I "discovered" Cajalco Road back in the '70s when we'd use it to get back from Riverside Int'l Raceway after big events like the Can-Am races. Beat the crawl through Riverside as was a hell of a lot more fun. It's STILL a fun bit of road. Bill hates to admit it, but I was faster across Cajalco Road in my TR3 then he was in his Spitfire.

Others in the club were coming from a diverse bunch of locales that made it impractical to meet in Arcadia (Cabazon? Palm Springs? Newport?) so the met up with us there.

After lunch, I gave a tour of the place and some background on the museum, the Big Red Cars. No, GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil did NOT conspire to kill the Pacific Electric. Roger Rabbit was a funny movie, but BAD history.

I highly recommed the museum, but bring your walking shoes. The place is HUGE!!! The collecton began with several old, retired PE and LARailway cars, but has grown over the past 70 or so years to include mainline railroad equiptment and the narrow guage steam collection of Ward Kimble.

Kimble was one of Disney's original animators and (like Walt) loved trains. He put together a collection of narrow gauge steam engines and cars on his property in San Gabriel, CA and used to run his trains up and down his own tracks, much to the delight of local kids (including me!).

As he and his wife aged and the city/neighbors got grumpy (come on WHO wouldn't love to see and hear old steam choo-choos chuffing and whistling from their own backyards? Damn NYMBYs!!) he decided to donate the entire collection to the museum and included a block of Disney stock to pay to build an engine house for the equipment, restore the stuff, and eventually run some of it again. Back in the '80s, I was a member of the museum and we got to go to the ground breaking and met Ward (again).

I have more "history" with the place as well. Back when I was teaching US History, I'd take the entire junior class there for a day-long field trip. One of the neatest parts was meeting Louise Taylor. She, at the time, was in charge of group tours. She put on a great show, arranging rides on a variety of equipment from little street cars to Big Red Cars, to some mainline steam. Imagine the girls' amazment (and some consternation) as I would climb up into the cab of a giant Union Pacific E9 locomotive to be the fireman! (OHHH, MY GOD, MR. MCCARTHY IS GONNA DRIVE THE TRAIN???).

The best part of all was the Louise was a former Harvey Girl. Yes, one of the women who worked in Fred Harvey's chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe Railroad's lines. One of the "Women Who Civilized the West." Go to the museum as they have a whole building dedicated to the Harvey Girls. It's a part of women's history often overlooked in the history books (as most of women's history is...sigh.) It made a huge impression on the girls.

And on the members of the Citroen Club. Here's a bunch of photos Marianne took during the day. Enjoy!

At Claro's

Cajalco Rd.

Yes, of course we got there safely!

So did Chuck and Tina

And a few others.

Then, Marianne got Artsy with her pix!

Inside the little "Birney" Street car.

Marianne's Dad used to ride one into Pasadena from Sierra Madre when he was a kid. He and his buddies would get in the back and jump up and down, tying to knock it off the rails!