Carquinez Model Railroad Society

On Sunday, February 26th Frank, Alex and I visited an open house at the Carquinez Model Railroad Society in Crockett CA. Crockett is northeast of San Francisco, about one hour northwest of Livermore. We'd been to see the model trains and tracks several years before and I shared a lot of the details of the multilevel layout in my 5/9/2016 blog post.

A new addition to the layout was a mini-camera mounted onto one of the traveling trains filming a track-level view that was projected on a screen on the highest floor. One complete circuit takes about one hour so, if you are willing to wait or happen to be in the right place at the right time, you can see yourself on the screen. Frank and Alex were captured in their film star moments on the big screen. Just in time for an Oscar nomination!

Walking along the layout Alex seemed very interested in the small cars parked throughout. He kept wanting to pick them up and move them to other locations. He was particularly intrigued by the pink cadillac and kept reaching for it.

 

Rather than being remembered for pilfering Cadillacs, I thought he'd be better remembered as another candidate for Mount Rushmore.

Alex loves to put money in slots, so he was engaged slipping dollars bills into a donation box. I guess we better not take him to Las Vegas! Spending all that money is exhausting so, after walking around for about an hour, Alex took time to chill in a cushy leather chair on one of the stair landings.

The building that houses the layout sits across from the C&H Pure Cane Sugar processing plant. North of it lies the Carquinez Strait which leads west to San Pablo Bay. The model railroad location is not far from downtown Crockett, so after our touring, we went off to get something to eat at Wanda's, a restaurant in downtown Crockett. It was a dreary, drizzly day so instead of strolling about, we popped into the first dining place we found. Wanda's had a limited menu but we were amazed at how delicious their pizza was. We ordered one Margherita Pizza and one Fennel Sausage Pizza and shared them among the three of us. Good and plenty!

One entire wall of the dining room was a huge mural of historic Crockett that we found interesting. Our impression was that the town has not changed much since its inception – yes, the streets are now paved, but only crudely. Crockett was first laid out as a town in 1881 along the south shore of the Carquinez Strait. The town of Valona was laid out in 1883 just to the west of Crockett, and the two towns eventually merged into the Crockett of today. In 1906, the California and Hawaiian Sugar Refining Company, today known as C&H® Sugar, began refining in Crockett, California.

We probably spent about the same amount of time roundtrip driving as we did at the open house and the restaurant combined, but it was an enjoyable Sunday afternoon outing.