Firetruck, Boat, Iron Monster ~ Saturday, March 09, 2013

Nate and I made another transit-oriented trip to the City, starting at Millbrae. Next to the Millbrae BART/CalTrain/SamTrans station is the original Millbrae SP depot, now a museum where you can see railway artifacts, like these diesel control stands:

Notch 8!

And a preserved sleeper from the UP's City of San Francisco:

Kids are always amused by the, uh, fixtures on this car.

Having a phone on a train was pretty spiffy for 1941, too.

There's also a nicely-restored Railway Express truck:

And today there was a fire truck on display, too:

Which visitors were invited to ride today:

The volunteer driver was kind enough to drop us off at the end of the parking lot closest to the CalTrain station, since our train was imminent. Next we headed to the City, and specifically the Cable Car museum via train, bus, and plenty of walking, and then walked downhill through Chinatown to Ferry Plaza. It's warmed up enough that the walk-through fountain was on.

We visited The Market St Ry's little museum nearby, which has a reconstructed front end of a streetcar--another chance for Nate to try out a full-sized controller:

On the way over we noticed the Blackpool Boat parked around the corner, waiting for its run down the Embarcadero. The museum has a screen with a customized NextBus.com map, but a volunteer advised me that the boat is not GPS enabled. So we patiently waited at the car stop in front of the Ferry Building, and eventually got to ride on what is now Nathan's favorite trolley.

The conductor was pretty into into his job, occasionally even saying "arrr". He hassled some passengers for not looking enough like they were having enough fun; he was satisfied with Nate's enthusiasm to the extent that he high-fived him.

We rode back on another old favorite, "Iron Monster" #162:

Hey, that's just like the mock-up at the museum.