This is an update about a little-known restoration in the Bay Area.

The Ocean Shore Railroad was a short-lived attempt to connect San Francisco and Santa Cruz via the Pacific coast. Never completed, it quit in 1920 and the passenger cars were sold to other railroads or dismantled, but one lone car was found decaying on a property in Sebastopol. It was identified as car 1409, one of five built in 1909 just for the OSRR by the W.L. Holman Company. When notified of its discovery, members of the Pacifica Historical Society drove up to verify its origins and convinced the property owned to donate it to the Society. Thus began a twenty-year effort to restore the car and return it to its original look so that its role in history will be remembered.

The car was placed on a farm, then moved next to Pacifica’s sewage treatment plant, then beside a taqueria, and finally next to the Coastside Museum and its permanent home. All during these years, the Society volunteers and paid craftsmen would work on the car when time and money allowed. The money came from monthly raffle sales and donations. So far, the outside of the car and its roof has been restored, and carpenters are now working on the floors and interior woodwork. Currently the Society is in the process of soliciting funds for the trucks, rails, and ties so the car has a permanent foundation on which to rest.

Eventually the Society hopes to put in lights, seats, and panels inside so that visitors can see what it was like to travel by rail along the coast in the 1910s. There will be informational panels about the fares, time schedules, and maps of the route. And ultimately a shelter in the form of a station stop to protect the car from the elements. This would be the only small railroad museum on the San Mateo County coast.

See https://pacificahistory.org/ocean-shore-r-r