Re-envisioning Santa Cruz Trains

Santa Cruz Trains did not begin as a brand, but as a single book: Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. When I first started my research on the topic in 2012, I had no idea that it would become a book until around mid-2013, and I didn’t actually begin working on it until April 2014. In many ways, I viewed the book as a natural expansion of Bruce MacGregor and Rick Hamman’s works on the subject, including a fairly narrow focus on the South Pacific Coast Railroad and its branches and successors in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Yet even as I began writing that first book, I also began researching other local railroads, including the Santa Cruz Railroad, the Ocean Shore Railroad, the Monterey & Salinas Valley Railroad, and others around the Monterey Bay and beyond. It became increasingly clear to me that my first book would be just that, a first book. Ten years later and there are now five books in the brand, but that first one still stands alone in many ways.

However, things are going to be changing in the coming years. I am returning my focus to the main Santa Cruz Trains books for the foreseeable future. My hope is to publish the second main book, Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast, before Christmas 2026, followed by the second edition of Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Autumn 2027. The other two main titles, Companies & Customers of the Santa Cruz Lines and The Road to San Francisco, will be released in 2028 and 2029. Those are optimistic goals and I can’t guarantee that I’ll meet them—quality of research is my most important goal and it is more important than any planned publication date. Between these books will be two more Santa Cruz Trains Sourcebook titles and a new Reflections book, all of which are already in the works. I also have ideas for four more SIDETRACKED books, though those will take a back seat for now. As I said, the focus for the next four years is on the main Santa Cruz Trains series.

The changes mentioned above relate primarily to the relationship between Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast to Companies & Customers of the Santa Cruz Lines. There is going to be a major shift in the “Railroads” books, which are now going to focus entirely on only two things: official registered train stations and railroad tunnels. Unique railroad structures like bridges will be discussed in the section introductions when notable, while scenic spots (Cats Canyon), tourist and miniature railroads (Roaring Camp, Swanton Pacific, Billy Jones), and informal stations (Bunker Hill Park, Sunset Park)  will be removed but may appear in future SIDETRACKED books.

The biggest change will be the removal of non-station freight stops from the books. The first Railroads book included articles on the Santa Cruz Union Depot yard, the Eblis yard, the Holmes Lime Company, Los Gatos freight yard, and 9 dedicated articles concerning the Dougherty Extension Railroad. The second book as originally envisioned would have similarly included articles on the sprawling Watsonville Junction and Watsonville freight yards, the West Side freight yard, the private mill lines along Valencia and Aptos Creeks, the San Vicente Lumber Company line along Little Creek, and various articles on freight stops across the lines. Unfortunately, my attempt at including all of the relevant freight companies in my first Railroads book failed, with several stations and freight customers appearing after publication in 2015 and several revisions required to address omissions and additional information. The obvious solution was Companies & Customers to help wrangle all of these separate companies, some of which had several freight stops across the region. This has already been considered when writing Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast, but the second edition of Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains will be changed considerably as a result of this change in focus.

Comparing the two books shows that the changes are not so striking, with only the final chapter entirely replaced. The rest of the book will be more focused by omitting material that is better served in another, dedicated book. The comparison below demonstrates the revised article breakdown of the second edition compared to the first. The order of the chapters remain geographical, not chronological, but some of those orders may be flipped to better reflect the direction of construction.

This comparison reveals a net gain of 6 additional articles in the second edition, but closer scrutiny reveals that some of the previous edition’s articles had two subjects in one article—these are now split to allow for more photographs and more specific focus on each subject. The total page count for the book should be about the same, especially since several of the new stations will result in relatively small (1- to 2-page) articles. Notably, there were no freight yards and very few freight companies that operated along the Los Altos Branch, so much of its history will be straightforward, similar to the Davenport Branch with its many barely remarkable stations.

This author’s diary has gone on long enough, but I will follow up soon with the final breakdown of the chapters in Railroads of the Santa Cruz Coast and my progress thus far with that book. Rest assured, though, Santa Cruz Trains is going in a good direction that will mean more train stations, more historical photographs, and more complete research than ever before.