Holiday Lights Train
Started: 2023-12-15 21:31:55
Submitted: 2023-12-15 23:32:12
Visibility: World-readable
A train covered in lights to celebrate the holiday season that is now upon us
To kick off the Christmas season this year we took a ride on the holiday lights train operated by Roaring Camp Railroad on the first Saturday in December, after spending the day decorating the house for Christmas.
We drove to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the evening in time to catch the 18:30 train. We arrived early enough to give us a chance to walk into the beach boardwalk, looking at the darkened amusement park, devoid of people with all of the rides shut down and fenced off, but with all the lights on. The boardwalk occupied a thin strip of beach-front real estate with steps leading down to the wide Main Beach. In the summer the beach is packed with people; by night in the winter it was empty, with only the waves crashing into the beach at the other end of the wide expanse of sand. (Despite living in Santa Cruz for two-and-a-half years we've never actually been to the Beach Boardwalk. This was the first time I've even walked through it, though I've walked past and around the boardwalk.)
I heard the train whistle in the distance and headed back to the onshore side of the boardwalk where a single standard-gauge track ran along the street between the boardwalk and the parking lot. This is the Santa Cruz Branch Line, which once served as one of Santa Cruz's primary rail connections to the rest of the world, via the Southern Pacific mainline past Watsonville in Pajaro. The branch line was featured in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History an is now in the middle of a decades-long political battle between locals who want to rip up the tracks and install a trail and locals who want to restore the tracks and set up regular scheduled passenger service between Santa Cruz and wherever we can get to from the junction with the Union Pacific mainline in Pajaro. The only regular rail service the branch line currently serves is an excursion train between the beach boardwalk and the Roaring Camp depot in Felton in the summer (where Roaring Camp operates its narrow-gauge steam trains), and the holiday light trains I was about to embark on.
We bought tickets for the "Victorian Christmas" carriage, which was supposed to be enclosed so we hoped it would be somewhat warmer than the open-air carriages with bench seats running down either side. (It turned out to be a warm night, so it didn't really matter that we were enclosed. There was a stove in the corner of the carriage, though it wasn't clear if it was in operating condition, and it was adorned with Christmas decorations so it wasn't going to be used that night anyway.)
The carriage had red velvet bench seats with two seats on either side of the aisle, set up so that the back of the seat could be moved backwards or forwards to reorient the seat. We configured the seats so we had four seats facing each other on our side of the carriage.
The train departed, pulled by a diesel locomotive on the north side of the train. We rolled down Beach Street, in front of the boardwalk, crossed under a road trestle and past a wye past Depot Park, the site of the old train depot in Santa Cruz. I've observed the path of the train tracks and I've seen excursion trains on the tracks, so I had a good idea where we were going, but this was the first time I'd ridden in a train on these tracks.
Past Depot Park we rolled onto Chestnut Street, where the train tracks run right down the middle of the street. The entire outside of the train was covered in lights, which were hard to see from inside the train, but as we rolled down the street we could catch a glimpse of the reflection in the windows of the houses and cars. People waved as we passed; it might have been more exciting for them to see the train from the outside than it was inside the train.
The environment inside the train was not quite as peaceful or festive as I had hoped. The carriage was decorated with garlands and lights, and we received cups of hot spiced apple cider to drink, which contributed to the ambiance, but there was a guy talking on the PA who kept up a constant stream of chatter as we rode and then tried to lead a sing-along of Christmas music, which everyone mostly ignored. There were a group of grade-school-aged children near us who were loud and obnoxious; I did my best to try to ignore them, as their parents were clearly also doing.
Past Chestnut Street the train entered a tunnel under Mission Hill (dug through the hill when the City of Santa Cruz kicked the trains off Pacific Ave. The lights of the train illuminated the walls of the tunnel from the inside so I could get a good view of the beams and sprayed concrete holding up the tunnel walls, and the graffiti covering the walls.
On the north side of the tunnel we passed behind San Lorenzo hardware (which I presume must have set up its lumber yard next to the train tracks to receive deliveries), then crossed Highway 1 on a level crossing, protected by crossing guards. (I cross these tracks every day after picking Julian up after school, but only once have I seen a train crossing on the tracks. It was a novel experience to be riding in a train carriage on a level crossing across highway 1, with cars waiting in both directions to cross once we had passed.)
North of highway 1 were more industries that had set up next to the rail freight corridor: two concrete mixing yards (with concrete trucks parked to be filled and deployed next time anyone needed a yard of mixed concrete) and an aggregate yard. I rarely visit this industrial part of Santa Cruz; it's surprisingly hard to get to and there's not much I want to visit there. (It's where our local Costco is located, but Kiesa visits it far more often than I do.)
The last thing I saw out the window of the train was the bus depot, with dozens of buses parked overnight before they'd be needed the next day. Then we reached the edge of Santa Cruz, and there were no more lights to see. The train reversed and headed down the hill backwards, with the locomotive pushing from the end of the train. I watched everything play back in the opposite order as we headed back towards the beach boardwalk.
We arrived at the beach boardwalk a half-hour later and disembarked the train, transitioning from the stuffy interior of the carriage to the crowded boarding area in front of the train, where disembarking passengers from our train had to walk past all of the passengers waiting for the next departure in half an hour. I took one last look at the train, covered in lights for the holiday, with a long line of people waiting to take their pictures in front of the locomotive, then we headed back to our car parked across the street to head home.
