Greetings family, friends, neighbors and train buddies. Today's little Snippet is about the Western Railway Museum and it's collection of "time-traveling" trolleys.........Bill 

Railroad Snippets 

THE TROLLEY TO NOWHERE 

Motorists traveling through the rolling hills and open fields near Rio 

Vista and Suisun in California’s Sacramento Valley often think that 

they have inadvertently been dropped into an episode of the 

popular British science fiction television program Dr.Who when 

they come across a hundred year old time-traveling Indiana trolley 

car. 

The Bay Area Electric Railway Association (BAERA) selected the 

former Sacramento Northern Railway station stop at Rio Vista 

Junction near Suisun, CA in 1960 as a permanent location to 

store, display and operate their ever expanding collection of 

interurban transit equipment. The group was founded in 1946 by 

avid Bay Area rail fans who held informative meetings and 

conducted excursions on local street car lines and interurban 

railroads leading to the purchase of Key System wooden street car 

271. Association members began purchasing and donating other 

trolleys to a growing list of historical passenger and work cars 

including a 1920’s Birney nickle street car that ran local service in 

Chico. 

In order to avoid confusion with the California State Railroad 

Museum in nearby Sacramento, BAERA renamed their facility the 

Western Railway Museum in 1985. The Museum owns a diverse 

collection of trolleys including equipment from Key System and the 

largest collection of Sacramento Northern Railway equipment in 

existence. They also own twenty two miles of the historic former 

Sacramento Northern mainline and an informative visitor center. 

Western Railway Museum volunteers operate a Heritage Railroad 

with vintage equipment for rail fans on a five mile portion of 

restored overhead electrification and track in the open fields and 

rolling hills….that heads nowhere particular. 

Circa 1970’s California Railroad Museum postcard from my collection pictures. Indiana Railroad No. 202 built by the Kuhlman Car Company in 1926 that also operated in Oregon until 1959. 

-Bill 12/24