Betteravia Branch Tour, February 22, 2014
      Iremel.  Green Canyon Trestle, from below.     Barsug.   |
  The Betteravia town site brochure is available here.    Bragur.  SMVRR Caboose No. 210 (info sheet PDF).  |
In keeping with our theme of heading out to see things that aren't there anymore... Today we toured the Betteravia Branch of the Santa Maria Valley Railroad. We started at the site of the old sugar mill which is about 4.4 miles southeast of MP0.0 at the interchange yard in Guadalaupe. The tour began with a little "map talk" at the office to orient ourselves. Then Kevin gave us a quick version of the Betteravia town site tour. Afterall, it was the presence of the sugar mill at Betteravia in the late 1800s that caused the Southern Pacific to originally build the track from Guadalupe to Betteravia. Then we were off to follow the mainline all the way up to Guadalupe. There were three beet dump locations along the way at Iremel, Bragur, and Barsug. Virtually nothing remains of these as they were primarily earth and wood structures, with one exception. The dump at Barsug (located at today's interchange yard) was substantial enough to have a concrete base, some of which remains to be seen today.
A system map of the SMVRR is available here.
We stopped for a while at the Green Canyon Trestle, the only bridge on the SMVRR system. This bridge was rebuilt in 2004.
The toured culminated with a walkthrough of the SMVRR Caboose No. 210 located at the Guadalupe Amtrak station. The Friends were instrumental in restoring this caboose to a presentable state several years ago. The Caboose brochure is available here.
Photos by Jamie Foster Photography.