Fullerton Railroad Days

We took a short foray up to Fullerton for the Fullerton Railroad Days celebration. Since the event took place at the Fullerton train station, we hopped aboard a Metrolink train at the Laguna Niguel station and enjoyed a 39 minute ride up to Fullerton (with stops in Irvine, Tustin, Santa Ana, Orange and Anaheim Stadium along the way). Taking the train was certainly the best idea because the parking lots at Fullerton were jammed with lots of people trying to find a place to park.

After lunch at Knowlwood's (the world's slowest hamburger joint) we headed into the train show. They had a number of locomotives on display, including the Fred Gurley from Disneyland, a BNSF diesel freight locomotive, and a giant Union Pacific steam locomotive - all three pictured below.

There were a lot of booths featuring everything from various rail clubs to luxury rail vacations. We picked up a lot of paperwork for various outfits. We're kind of looking at the Grand Canyon Railroad for a future vacation, and one of these days I want to take the Amtrak Coast Starlight up to Northern California.

For model railroad buffs they had displays from a number of clubs in all the various scale sizes, from the tiny 'N' scale all the way up to the LGB garden railroad stuff. I have a lot of HO scale trains and equipment from many years ago when I had a set-up in our bonus room, and here an HO passenger train passes a freight train under the watchful eye of a young fan.

The also had some of the local Fulleton services represented, including a couple of vehicles that I particularly enjoyed. The police department had this PT Cruiser that had been outfitted to look like a 1950's era patrol car, complete with the old grinder siren and the "Adam 12" roof lights:
And then there was this Crown fire engine with the open cab from earlier days. If I ever have more money than I need, I'm going to buy one of these old Crown engines (although I want one with the old bubble light instead of the more modern lightbar). It was a good trip, and the whole thing start to finish took only about 4 hours. Not a bad way to spend a Spring morning.