Well , I went to Napa to visit an old friend .Napa is happening ,with great restaurants that rival big cities .We dined on Mexican gourmet fare (!). It was an all -"tapas" menu-Mexican hors d'oevres . Needless to say , excellent . The next day we went up "Winery Row" to St.Helena . Wine tasting was done at the magnificent Beringer winery .It was established in 1874 ,and managed the miracle of surviving Prohibition and the philoxera epidemic in the early 1930s . Wine tasting was in the incomperable Baroque-Victorian mansion there ,drinking merlot and admiring the stained glass and parquet floors . The old NWP depot in Rutherford had lots of open space - perhaps to store grapes or wine barrels in the shade . On the way back the Wine Train made its way north . The next day I went up to P-B-L above Ukiah , to pick up some Sn3 goodies for the log winter nights . The road was steep ,and the car barely made it . Sad to say ,the old NWP main line was closed ,but rails still in place . That night I went back to Felton ,to stay with John and Veronica Bush .The transmission was cooked in my minivan . Stranded , Bush put me to work at Roaring Camp ,getting the "Dixiana" Shay ready in the morning ,and various jobs in the afternoon with the train crew , like steam cleaning and track work . This railfan-friendly crew took me in quickly nad made the time go fast . At the nearby transmission place ,the wrong tranny was sent - I was never getting home ! The last day we worked on ex-Westside #7 .Like other Westside engines it was a beat-up tired old 'hammer' .We removed the engine bed (lower part) . I was amazed at how fast that went . The goal was to remove the cylinders . #1 cylinder (back cylinder) had a nasty crack . John found an outfit in Turlock that would "knit" the crack and sleeve all three cylinders . Tom Shreve , longtime engineer and mechanic at Roaring Camp told me that the "Dixiana" was the favored engine The Heisler ,ex-Westside #3 , was not well-liked .Its "ergonomics' made it a hard engine for the either the engineer or fireman to comfortably operate , with banged-up shins being one obvious problem . As John Bush has done other places ,the Heisler was rehabiltated with lots of repair ,but still unpopular . Like all Heislers I have rode ,it has lots of vibration in operation . Tye "Dixiana" rode smoothly and has a remarkably good throttle . Incidentally . the RC&BT has a popular "engineer for a day" program for would-be geared locomotive engineers . Another day John and I went down the standard gauge Santa Cruz and Big Trees line ,to pick up some lumber for a huge yard across from the Felton facilities .The scenery in the San Lorenzo River Gorge was breath-taking ,and there was some unique street-running in Santa Cruz .Once part of the old South Pacific Coast line ,the railroad still had a narrow-gauge alignment . In steam days the SP kept small power like 4-6-0s holding down assignments over the Santa Cruz Mountains till most of the line was abandoned in 1940 .
Finally the car was fixed Friday afternoon .Alas ,a radiator hose was leaking . Again John Bush scrambled to help ,and I was going home Saturday morning . I decided to take a lonely two-laner from Hollister to Coalinga ,and saw something of what California might have looked like . It was so beautiful I thought of shooting photos as I drove past rolling hills ,live oaks , ranches ,abandoned school houses and old vehicles . If you see a sign for California #25 ,take it ! Finally home Sunday ,it was good to see my property and my girlfriend , but it was also good to enjoy my native state as I rarely did in my misspent youth .
