Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)'s photos with the keyword: SF1017

A not very good picture of a very tall tree that I've always found interesting because of their distinctive columnar shape and the fact that the branches are not very dense with growth. Unfortunately, I can never remember the name of the tree.

In the Railroad Square area of Santa Rosa, what looked to be an interesting area of shops in re-purposed older buildings.

Historic Santa Rosa depot of the Northwestern Pacific -- the SMART platform is just to the left of the picture. I didn't find a reference as to when the station was built other than "1900's".

SMART train at the Santa Rosa station.

Nearing the San Rafael station

Very nice interiors, complete with bathrooms.

Even a snack bar! And, if my memory is correct, they served beer.

The SMART rail cars are built by Nippon Sharyo, a Japanese company, for the North American market. The company assembes the cars in Illinois, this particular design is used by SMART and by a service in Toronto. Each 2-car set costs $6.67 million. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma%E2%80%93Marin_Area_Rail_Transit

SMART train coming southbound into San Rafael. The tracks/roadbed here are of the former Northwestern Pacific Railroad. Like many railroads, the NWP was an amalgamation of many short lines that developed and then were absorbed or died in the area. At one time there was rail service from Sausalito all the way to Eureka with branches running to other parts of the coast and inland. The demise of much of the NWP (and its permutations) was due in part to the usual villain of increased car and truck use, but also due to significant problems with maintaining a rail line in the coastal range north of about Willits where washouts and flash floods repeatedly caused disruptions and sometimes major reconstruction efforts. Fortunately the portion in Sonoma and Marin county was less vulnerable and in the 1970’s the state of California had the foresight to preserve the right-of-way for potential future use such as the SMART system. Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia plus interesting videos from the past: www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Northwestern%20Pacific%20Railroad

Historic Northwestern Pacific rail depot in San Rafael, CA. I could not find much history on the depot itself, but someone on Flickr posted that is was built in 1928-29 and later enlarged. I found it difficult to figure out the early history of rail service in Marin county – there’s actually quite a bit of documentation, but it was difficult to figure out specifics. As far as I can tell, passenger rail service using the older station ended in the 1960’s or 1970’s, though rail service has just recently (in 2017) restarted by SMART rail using the platforms next to the old station.

Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) train at San Rafael depot. The SMART system is a new development that returns commuter rail service in Marin and Sonoma Counties. Regular service on the SMART system began in August of 2017. The trains operate over renovated tracks previously owned by the Northwestern and Pacific Railroad (see adjacent # 0005); the system currently runs from San Rafael to the Sonoma County Airport, which is just north of Santa Rosa. Future plans are for SMART trains to run south to Larkspur to provide direct connection to the ferry service into SF, and to run north to Cloverdale. The Saturday that I rode it the cars were full, partly because the weekend service is more limited but largely because there were very many riders just exploring the line, similar to what I was doing. For a long section of the trip I had a seatmate who lived in the area and rode it for his work – he said that trains were running with heavy loads during the week. The traffic on the parallel US 101 is always very heavy, so hopefully this is taking quite a few cars off the road. Resources: Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma%E2%80%93Marin_Area_Rail_Transit SMART system: www.sonomamarintrain.org

Sonoma-Marin rail train coming south from Sonoma Airport station into Santa Rosa station. This picture was taken on Saturday, 10/7, and just 2 days later there was the horrendous fire in the Santa Rosa area that leveled entire neighborhoods, some surrounding the SMART line tracks. The link at the end of this description is to a news article with a picture of the SMART train passing still smoking remains of houses. In response to the emergency transportation needs of the area, the SMART system offered free rides for more than 10 days. www.marinij.com/article/NO/20171012/NEWS/171019927