Friends of the Santa Maria Valley Railroad

Guided Photoshoot
June 19, 2015

On Friday afternoon of the Open House and BBQ for the Friends of the SMVRR Railroad, six Friends ventured out into the field to chase a 32-car SMVRR train inbound from Guadalupe.

NOTE: This was a sanctioned event which included railroad personnel accompanying the photographers. The group was granted access to areas not otherwise available to public photographers.

The group met up at the Amtrak station in Guadalupe where we held a safety briefing for the afternoon's activities. Each participant was given a confidential copy of the train orders for the day.

The first order of the day was to deliver about 17 hopper cars to sidings and spurs in Betteravia. In order to accomplish this placement, the locomotive had to "run around" the cars and shove them into Betteravia. This was accomplished in a rather unique way by going into a siding where more of these hopper cars were already placed. The train shoved the existing cars on into Betteravia while pulling in today's 17 cars into the siding being cleared at the same time. The new cars were left in the siding and the remaining cars already there were shoved on into new locations on spurs deeper in the Betteravia area.

Next the train delivered three tank cars to a siding just east of Betteravia Junction.

The remaining cars went on into town where two loads were dropped off, about 10 cars were taken on into town where the wye was used to "run around" them, and then on the way back out of town two of these cars were placed at a customer dock and the rest were shoved into a spur.

Following the photoshoot, most of the group and a few others joined up for a delightful no-host dinner at the Santa Maria Inn.

Saturday BBQ and Tour.

Photos by Jamie Foster Photography.

Open House Weekend and BBQ, June 19-20, 2015

Above, the two locomotive cross over the diamond in downtown Santa Maria. This is where the Pacific Coast Railway (PCRy) crossed the Santa Maria Valley Railroad (SMVRR) at one time. The horizontal track in the photo is the path of the PCRy running north-south, the other is the SMVRR running east-west (on which the train is running). Today, both directions are standard gauge and both belong to the SMVRR.