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! 

Boarding the PE Interurban Car

Mike, Candace, and Bob enjoy the ride. 

Ward Kimble's Narrow Guage stuff. 

Seems Chuck Forward's Dad used to play in a Dixieland band with Ward! 

The little Model A track truck was built on site by Ian Rousell, of the show "Full Custom Garage." He does SUCH neat stuff! 

I check out the progress on boiler repair.

Tina and others learn about the Harvey Girls.

Candace get's photos of some of the weird old stuff

Marianne and Steve relax on the Blimp. A good time was had by all. 

What A Weekend!

 Busy, busy busy! Memorial Day Weekend was a BLAST! 

Last year, we'd planned to go up to Paso Robles for their big car show, but it conflicted with our granddaugther's birthday. THIS year, the timing worked perfectly, so on Friday, we set off in the Yellow Submarine for the Central Coast. 

We left much later than the usual O'Dark-Thirty, as we wanted to pick up sandwiches at Claro's Italian Deli in Arcadia for lunch at the show on Saturday. That meant hitting the freeway about 9:30AM. Happily, traffic through Pasadena on the 210 wasn't it's usual crawl, and we were headed up to CA126 and the lovely cruise through Fillmore and Santa Paula. SO much nicer than the mess the 101 is in The Valley. 

The weather was the usual May Gray (soon to be replaced by the June Gloom), the temperature a touch chilly, and the Citroen's heater working just fine. 

The original plan was to stop for lunch in Morro Bay for those wonderful grilled oysters in garlic butter at Giovanni's Fish Market, but as we neared the seemingly always closed Gaviota Rest Stop (Hey, CalTrans, get with the program!) it was about noon, so we started thinking about alternatives in Buellton. In years past, we might have opted for Pea Soup Anderson's, but the last time we were there, we were underwhelmed. The place is on its last legs, the motel has been sold, and who knows what its future will be. Sad. 

Then I thought "The Hitching Post 2"! Normally, this place is only open for dinner, but their winery (doesn't EVERYONE in SB and SLO counties have a winery these days?) was open for lunch. Plate of four tri-tip street tacos and a Coke/Dr. Pepper (in real glass bottles no less) and we were set. Great place to stop. The tables are outside and overlook the ostritch farm. Still green (mostly) and yellow with mustard, over hung with oak trees, it was a lovely spot! St. Serendipity, our Patron Saint of Road Trippin' hasn't forgotten us. 

Gassed up (the car, not us) and enjoying the cruise, we continued up the 101, over the Cuesta Grade and got to our digs for the night in Paso Robles. Nice enough little motel, the Economy Inn. The place is adequet and not as expensive as most. It's a Box-With-A-Bed-And-Potty. The place was clean, no bugs and the owners nice. What more do you want for a one-nighter? 

After a nap (yes, we're getting old--sigh) we headed out for the Car Show's Dinner. We'd bought (on the recommendation of our friend Tom who'd gone to the show the previous year) tickets for the dinner. It was held at the Estrella War Birds Museum at the Paso Robles airport. We've been to the museum before, and it's a great place. Lots of really cool stuff, and there's a car museum as well. We recommend it highly!. 

We met Tom and his entourage at the dinner, ate REALLY good, proper fried chicken (almost as good as the old Bill's in Altadena), baked beans with lots of bacon, and a couple of beers. There was a band playing all the music you'd expect--Beach Boys to Beatles, Stones to Jan & Dean--and the crowd was loving it. One strange thing came to mind as I watched the crowd of gray-haired folks singing along with most of the songs--"This looks more like a bunch of my PARENTS' friends rockin' Big Band Music than MY contemoraries." Sheesh, what a jolt. I KNOW I'm not THAT old!

The car show on Saturday was pleasant. The cars were jammed into the big park in the center of Paso Robles, lots of shady trees, and a big variety of cars. The usual Tri-5 Chevies, Muscle Cars, Hot Rods and Low-Riders made up most of the crowd, but Tom's Lotus 7 and our Citroen garnered a LOT of attention. As usual. The Citroen, especially, stands out in a crowd. All the usual questions, all the usual shaking of heads at the engineering, all the usual marveling at the weirdness. We love it! 

One guy had a neat little 1930's Morris Woody delivery truck, and there we entered the Twilight Zone of Improbable Coincidence and Small World. As we chatted about his great little car, he asked if I was local. Told him we were from Monrovia, and he said he grew up in Temple City and had an MGTD back then. I had to ask him if he ever bought parts from the TC BAP/Geon store where I'd worked. Of course he had! But then it got REALLY weird. I told him about my TR3 and he said, he knew a guy in TC who had a "root beer brown TR3." He went to high school with none other than my old buddy, Phil "Rags" Deushane! AND of course he knew Martha (aka Froggo), Phil's wife at the time!!!! Incredible. Let me pause here because someone's cutting up onions and my eyes are all misty...

...OK, WHEW! 

When the show was over (about 2PM) we headed for home. Nora's B-Day party was on Sunday, so we couldn't hang about. We said good-bye to Tom and his wife and hit the road.

And let me tell you, WHAT a drive home! Saturday of Memorial Day is an IDEAL day to drive. There was NOBODY on the road! Everyone who was out driving for the long weekend had already gotten to where they were headed and weren't coming home yet. The Triple A w/Guns outnumbered the cars on the road (and, oh, yeah, they were out in FORCE!). We SAILED through the Eternal Santa Barbara Construction Zones. When's the last time ANYONE could say THAT? We stopped at the In-N-Out north of Santa Barbara and were home by 7:30. Even the Dreaded 210 was flowing smoothly. 

All in all, it was a great time, an easy drive, and a good time was had by all. Next up will be a June drive with the Citroen Club to the Southern California Railway Museum (constant reader will remember it as the Orange Empire Railway Museum) and a day of choo-choos, trolleys, good food and weird French Cars. 

Now for some photos!