By Barry Eberling | DAILY REPUBLIC | April 07, 2008
From left to right, Marco Rodriguez,3, smiles while sitting on his dad Omar's lap, and J.D. Langley plays with his son Josiah, 3, on the Scenic Wildflower Train Tour at the Western Railway Museum on Hwy 12. The wildflower tour, which sends people on an old electric train through picturesque ranch land, runs every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday through the end of April. Photo by Chris Jordan
FAIRFIELD - Electric trains such as the Comet some 80 years ago raced across the farmland of eastern Solano County at 70 mph, taking people between the Central Valley and San Francisco.
'The Sacramento Northern was the Interstate 80 of its day,' said Bill Kluver of the Western Railway Museum, which is located along Highway 12 between Rio Vista and Suisun City.
Trains owned by the museum still travel a 5-mile section of that track, but at about a third of the speed. Today's trips are leisurely jaunts to see the golden poppies, purple filarees and other wildflowers in the rural Montezuma Hills.
To celebrate the wildflower season, the museum has one-hour train trips at 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays during April.
Museum volunteer Andy Alkema ran the train Wednesday. The 50-year veteran of public education climbed into the yellow 1924 Central California Traction Co. engine that the museum rescued from a Stockton junkyard in 1967.
Like the other volunteers on the train, he looked the part. He wore a black vest, black jacket and a black cap with the word 'motorman' in gold letters. Alkema as a first-grader took the street car to school in Portland, Ore., and thought driving one would be fun. Now he's driving a classic, restored electric train.
See the complete story at the Daily Republic Online.
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