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Steinbeck Country Narrow Gauge By Horace W Fabing & Rick Hamman Soft Cover
Steinbeck Country Narrow Gauge By Horace W Fabing & Rick Hamman
Soft Cover
236 pages
Copyright 1985
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
I STEINBECK COUNTRY 1
Before There Were Railroads1
When the Railroads Came6
The Monterey & Salinas Valley Railroad10
The Prophecy (The Pajaro Valley Consolidated)19
II SUGAR AND THE PAJARO VALLEY 25
Claus Spreckels and the Sugar Industry25
Western Beet Sugar Company 26
Pajaro Valley Railroad 29
III A LONG FUTURE FOR SOME, A SHORT PAST FOR OTHERS 49
A New Factory 50
A New Town 57
A New Railroad 67
The Salinas Railway71
The End of the Beginning 74
The Watsonville Transportation Company74
The Watsonville Railway & Navigation Company86
IV THE PAJARO VALLEY CONSOLIDATED GLORY YEARS 93
The Branch Lines94
Alisal 94
Salinas100
Buena Vista 107
The Seaport-Moss Landing122
Disasters, Tragedies and Comedies134
The Earthquake134
The Premonitions142
From the Files of the PVC145
There Were Excursions146
Change, Growth and Success151
V WHERE ONCE THERE WAS A FLEETING WISP OF GLORY 179
Decline and Abandonment184
After the Pajaro Valley Consolidated192
APPENDIX A
Locomotive and Equipment Rosters, Steinbeck Country Narrow and Standard Gauge Railroads 213
APPENDIX B
Pajaro Valley Consolidated Official Drawings 222
BIBLIOGRAPHY 233 INDEX 235
PREFACE
HIS BOOK IS PRIMARILY ABOUT a quality little California narrow gauge
railroad that quietly operated for thirty-five very successful years in the
lush agricultural regions of the Pajaro and Salinas valleys and along
the shoreline of Monterey Bay. Not much has been written about this pristine little slim line, because it operated over fifty years ago in an area that had a population base of less than 5,000 people. It was a privately held concern, essentially serving the needs of its parent owner, the Spreckels Sugar Company, and it didn't get much day to day attention. It had no great mountains to scale, it crossed no major trestles or bridges of any height, it traversed no tunnel bores of any length,
it saw no serious fluctuations in weather patterns, and it served no metropolises of any stature.
The name of this relatively unknown narrow gauge was the Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad. It started out in 1890 as the brainchild of Claus Spreckels, the well-known California and Hawaiian Sugar King, who wanted to ship raw sugar and finished product from his Watsonville factory to his San Francisco plant for final refinement and distribution without having to pay the steep freight rates of the local Southern Pacific operations. To accomplish this goal he simply built a little narrow gauge road, then the Pajaro Valley Railroad, from his Watsonville factory to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company port at Moss Landing on Monterey Bay.
In short order he was able to competitively ship sugar via a rail-ship connection to his San Francisco facility without the services of the Southern Pacific.
In time this Claus Spreckels narrow gauge was extended farther and farther into the Salinas Valley until finally it reached the outskirts of Salinas itself. This caused an increase in freight unrelated to the sugar factory and passenger traffic from the local farming areas to the cities of Salinas and Watsonville and to the seaport connection provided by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company at Moss
Landing. By 1897, Claus Spreckels's enterprises had expanded so much that he built the largest sugar refinery in the world near Salinas, at a location to be known as Spreckels. With the opening of the factory in 1900, the ever-burgeoning railroad became the Pajaro Valley Consolidated. Soon after, the road was extended even farther, with fifteen miles of additional branch lines being built to Salinas, Alisal, and Buena Vista. Altogether, by 1908 the perky little "P-Vine" was operating daily passenger and freight service over forty-three miles of mainline and branch line tracks.
This day-to-day reputable operation continued, basically unchanged, until well into the late 1920s, when the arrival of the automobile, bus, and truck on the scene and the coming depression spelled the end of the Pajaro Valley Consolidated.
This then is the story of the gallant little PVC and of the other local standard and narrow gauge railroads that came before, during, and after its lifespan. Also, this is the intertwining story of the Spreckels Sugar Company and of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company and how they, in conjunction with the railroads, came together to help mold and shape the turnof-the-century history of Steinbeck Country.
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