Dear Editor:
I continue to read with some amount of fascination about Rod
Diridon’s Antique Railroad Museum. Let us clear the air with
respects to whom the museum belongs.
Dear Editor:
I continue to read with some amount of fascination about Rod Diridon’s Antique Railroad Museum. Let us clear the air with respects to whom the museum belongs. The California Trolley & Railroad Museum (CTRC) has been around for many years, not just the late 1990s.
In fact, CTRC came into existence in 1994 as a merge between the Santa Clara Valley Railroad Association, Inc., (SCVRRA) and the San Jose Trolley Museum. The SCVRRA was incorporated in 1982 for the purpose of restoring the Southern Pacific steam locomotive that has been on display at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds since 1962. The locomotive, number 2479, was in bad shape after having languished for 20 years in the open. Vandals had taken their toll by stealing and breaking much of the engines fittings, glass and wood. Also the engines boiler jacket was rusting through and asbestos was leaking onto the ground.
The SCVRRA asked the Board of Supervisors for permission to refurbish the locomotive the only remnant of its class of engines from the steam days on the SP. The 2479 was built in 1923 and was retired from service in 1957. For some reason it was not cut up for scrap metal unlike the rest of the P-10 Pacific Class engines, but instead donated to Santa Clara County. From 1982 to 1994 association volunteers scraped off the rust and rebuilt much of the engines chassis while the engines boiler was being rebuilt by a professional firm – an expensive requirement for this type of restoration. The locomotive portion of the project is in the last half of its restoration process while its fuel tender is complete. The entire assembly weighs over 150 tons when finished and ready to steam up!
The cost of restoring a large steam locomotive can run as high $1 million dollars, and about half that much has been raised through private donations and public fund raising efforts. Much of that funding has come as a result of Rod Diridon’s affiliations and contacts from the Trolley museum – an effort that he chaired from its inception in 1983. We have had the benefit of a great deal of grant writing through those contacts – something that the SCVRRA did not have access to prior to the merger in 1994. Diridon was elected corporate chair by the board and we have been moving along as rapidly as possible given the political circumstances that have interfered with this restoration effort. However, it IS NOT DIRIDON’s personal museum nor is it his pet project. CTRC is about all of us who work on it and with it!
The museum plan developed out of the need to house the steam locomotive after its restoration and to build a train that could be used for fundraising efforts. CTRC received a federal ISTEA Grant for $1 million some years ago to secure property on which to build the planned museum. Rod Diridon’s efforts got us that grant. All of this was based on the Board of Supervisors letter of intent giving CTRC three acres of land at the fairgrounds a number of years ago to develop a new railroad museum dedicated to the Santa Clara Valley railroad commuter service, the second oldest in America which was started back in 1864!
The new museum would also include all of the rail passenger service history in the county as well as its connections to San Benito County (Hollister-Tres Pinos), Monterey County (Salinas-Monterey) and Santa Cruz County. The Del Monte and The Suntan Express are well remembered as are some of the lesser daily trains that originated in many of these communities.
Unfortunately that grant was suspended when the Fair Board petitioned the Board of Supervisors to remove the museum so that a new hotel could be built on the site. Currently there is no money to build anything other than what was planned and approved for those three acres and that was CTRC. Sadly the Fair Board has, through its mismanagement, created one financial disaster after another. It eliminated the custom car shows and other activities that brought in much needed operating capital. Giving CTRC its walking papers has done nothing to help either of our organizations other than create a major headache for CTRC and drive more nails into the fair’s coffin.
With regard to downtown Gilroy’s development problems, no museum is not going to put the city in the black, but it would definitely put it back on the map so to speak. Unlike the garlic growers finding that the imported product in less expensive than the homegrown version, a first class American West Coast Railroad Museum is just that – all American. Our 3000 tons of rusting artifacts were not made in Japan or anyplace outside of this country! We are just wanting a place where the hands of our many volunteers can continue to work the miracle of bring the dead back to life. We just need a few acres – simple as that! It would be nice if The Dispatch would get the facts straight and try to find something right about this issue instead of what’s wrong with it. Your city needs help. We may not be the iron gift horse that was editorialized by you in the past, but we are certainly better than a sack of rusty coffin nails that you are going to be looking at sooner or later.
Michael F. Kotowski, San Jose
Board Member, CTRC
Former Vice-president Marketing SCVRRA
Submitted Wednesday, Dec. 3 to ed****@****ic.com
