Greetings family, friends, neighbors and train buddies. Today's Snippet is about an ambitious plan to construct Tahoe Valley Lines, an electric powered railroad using retired streetcars from San Francisco.......Bill
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STREETCARS IN THE FOREST
Gunnar Henrioulle wasn’t the first to envision a rail line connecting the airport at South Lake Tahoe with the Nevada Stateline casinos. As early as 1968 a joint venture group consisting of equipment
owners and railroad enthusiasts proposed a public transportation system for the resort city consisting of vintage narrow gauge steam equipment and themed “gingerbread” stations and structures. The
group, known as the Central Pacific Coast Railroad, went as far as restoring two Hawaiian plantation locomotives and three Mexican open vestibule passenger cars in anticipation of the approval of
their ambitious plan. The group hastily constructed a 2-1/2 mile long point-to-point 3 foot gauge tourist railroad dubbed the Trout Creek & Pacific Railroad, however a lack of funding and necessary permits, the proposed regional steam rail transportation system never came to fruition and the Tahoe, Trout Creek & Pacific Railroad ceased operations after just two short summer seasons.
Gunnar Henrioulle purchased twenty or so aging PPC (President’s Conference Committee) streetcars from the San Francisco’ Public Transit Agency in 1982 when it was decided to retire the forty year old fleet. He trucked the cars to South Lake Tahoe and stored them on his property in the forest along highway 50 near the airport. Henrioulle’s vision was to create Tahoe Valley Lines, a solar and hydro powered electric public transit system along the American River corridor from Sacramento/Placerville to a junction near Strawberry Lodge. A five mile tunnel would lead to the valley floor near the Tahoe airport and travel along the lake shore to Stateline with his stored collection of streetcars. A main passenger and freight route would reach the Carson Valley near Genoa by way of a fifteen mile bore from Strawberry Lodge through the Sierra Nevada range. Tahoe Valley Lines never received the approvals or funding that Hennrioulle had lobbied so many years for, but he did get the attention of local planning officials who were not pleased with the outdoor streetcar storage eyesore and forced him to downsize the collection. If you traveled along highway 50 near the Tahoe Airport in the early 2000’s you may have seen the remnants of Hennrioulle’s ambitious dream and streetcars in the forest.
-Bill
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