Sunday, March 30, 2014

The Napa Valley Wine Train

My wife and I were in northern California recently. I was there for a conference in San Francisco and we decided to have a little vacation and see the redwoods. We went north to Eureka and spent a few days touring. The redwoods are amazing and so are the coastlines. Eureka is the northern end of the defunct North Coast Railroad and there are several Geeps rusting away in Eureka. I think the closest engine was a GP7 and the rest are GP9s.
Ex Southern Pacific 70 in Eureka California

We spent a few days in and around Eureka and then headed down to Napa. I wanted to see the ex CN FPA4s on the Napa Valley Wine Train. As it happens, we caught up to the Wine Train as it was heading back to Napa. It does not go very fast so we were able to leapfrog it a few times.
NVRR 71 in Napa

I tried to include the surrounding scenery with the Wine Train.
NVRR and the Wine Train

Fortunately there were quite a few vineyards. NVRR 71 and 70 were the power.
NVRR and the Wine Train

I took one video of the train going by.

We left off the chase after that, as I didn't want to subject my wife to any more railfanning while on vacation. :)

I did go visit the shops later that evening to see the other engines. I stored the photos here in a gallery and recorded some information about the Wine Train on my web site.


2 comments:

Eric said...

Nice post, Steve. The NVWT always looks like a classy operation. One of the first points of departure for VIA's FPA4's.

Old joke: We decided to travel to wine country with my mother-in-law. Turns out everywhere we travel with her it's 'whine' country.

Eric

Michael said...

It never ceases to amaze me how durable these old diesels are. The Napa train is likely an easy assignment for these old locomotives. I love the shot of the rusting geeps.