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Speeder Trip on the Big Trees & Pacific Railway and Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railway 4/25/2015 Part 5



by Chris Guenzler

We will now head back to Felton to finish up the motor car trip.





After we crossed CA Highway 1, we went east on the Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railway.







Three coastal views. After that we came to the sand dunes and found the rails covered by sand.





I stepped off for a quick picture of the sand removal which had to take place before we could pass through it.







We made our way through the sand dune one motor car at a time. We all made it through!







Three more coastal views.





We went by the Milepost 27 signpost.





We took that curve to head east and would now have that cold wind at our back.





Rolling east down the welded rail.





A coastal view.





The plants are encroaching on the tracks.





We went by the Milepost 25 signpost.





Later we came to the yard limit sign.





Our route took a slight turn to the left.





We went by the Milepost 24 signpost.







Rolling east back to Santa Cruz.





We crossed Moore Creek.





Antonelle Pond was off to the south. It was time for our flaggers to do their magic and get us through all the flagged crossing as we headed east into Santa Cruz.





We went by the Milepost 22 signpost.





We went by the Milepost 21 signpost.





Motor cars bunched up after going through one of those flagged crossings we had to do. A special thank you to our five car group flaggers.





Chris Parker had one more new piece of rail mileage on this trip, the west leg of the Santa Cruz wye. Before we started the Chestnut Street street-running, we stopped to let all the cars behind us catch up beforehand.





We then started our street running up Chestnut Street.





Entering Mission Hill tunnel.





Exiting the tunnel. I put away the camera as it was now getting too dark to take pictures. We flagged across CA Highway 1 then stopped and went across the next three crossings and I enjoyed the ride back through the redwoods on the Big Trees & Pacific Railway under the cover of darkness to Felton. We arrived at Felton finding a Prom occurring and those kids all looked very good. We thanked Rick for the great trip he gave us today and would also like to thank the Big Trees & Pacific Railway and the Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railway plus Iowa Pacific for having us on their rails today. A special thank you to the North American Railcar Association, Motorcar Operations and Pacific Railcar Operators for running the trip. It had been a fantastic day of motor car riding on some very unique rails in California.

Chris Parker and I then headed back down to CA Highway 1 which we took south to CA Highway 129 to US 101 to Gilroy and Motel 6 which we checked in for the night.



Click here for the final part of this story