| How the Harriman got here In 1964, Charles Welch & Associates found the car at Purdy scrap metal in Mojave and had the railroad transport it by rail to Sunland in the SF Valley for $46.96 (I have the freight bill!). In the old Polaroid at left, the car sits at Purdy , with part of the roof cut away for unknown reasons. The new owners later hid this with thin aluminum bent over redwood lath. |
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| Here it is on the siding in Sunland, before the sandblasting. Note the color test patch. The steel coverings over the upper sash are partway off and some of the windows removed. It had been in crane tender MW service. |
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| They were going to move the car to Felton, near Santa Cruz, but the railroad couldn't get it there. The SP wouldn't even take it back to the Mojave area so they got a house mover to drag it to the mountain. This is my favorite old shot becuase it answers everyones' question--how the heck did they get it way up here? |
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| These shots show the clever way they put the trucks and tracks back under the car, first jacking up the car and supporting it, then dragging the trucks under it and jacking them up. When they too were supported and off the ground, they laid the track underneath! Note the big wooden beams supporting the truck frames in the left of the photo. Seems backwards but no cranes were required. |
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| They made the little train station from this old shed they found at a house wrecking yard, L.Z. Housemovers, in Rosamond. Louis Zeravica was also the guy that moved the train car. The shed was supposedly moved from Hollywood to make way for the new freeway. In the shot below, the pieces are coming together. That's the decking stacked by the shed, from a miltiary base. |
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| Thanks to Chuck Welch for saving all this documentation! |