Ocean Shore R.R.

Donate to the Pacifica Historical Society and Coastside Museum

PRESERVING AND CELEBRATING PACIFICA'S PAST

Help Us Restore the only existing OSRR Passenger Car to its former glory. Over 100 years ago, the motto was: "It reaches the Beaches!"

Years ago, the Pacifica Historical Society saved the historic Little Brown Church. Built in 1910, the building serves today as the home of the Pacifica Coastside Museum.

Our current project is the restoration of the Ocean Shore Railway Car #1409.

For the indefinite future, we are soliciting donations to be specifically targeted for the restoration of the Ocean Shore Railway Car #1409. This is a BIG project, but we are determined to get it finished during the next couple of years.

In December 2019, we moved the car next to Guerrero's Taqueria, and behind the

Vallemar Station Restaurant, near the intersection of Reina del Mar and RT #1. On March 30, 2023, we moved the car to its permanent location in Sharp Park at 1966 Francosco Blvd. (across the street from the Coastside Museum).

Here is a video slideshow of that move:

https://youtu.be/nnNs6JBMvyc

For the history of the Ocean Shore RR, and the

current progress on restoring car 1409, go to www.oceanshorerailroad.org

For more info on the history of the Ocean shore Railroad, courtesy of Coastside Buzz and Michelle Dragony, please go here:

Ocean Shore Railroad History by the Pacifica Historical and Ocean Shore Railroad Societies - Coastside Buzz

Help us restore Pacifica's Ocean Shore Railroad Car:

https://gofund.me/e15801a6

Ocean Shore Railroad Booklet

Download a pdf of The Western Railroader booklet: " Ocean Shore: It Reaches the Beaches", by Rudolph Brandt. The booklet was published in 1965, special edition (Vol. 15 #7, issue 151) on the Ocean Shore Railroad. The 37-page booklet has maps, photos and roster information about the line. It's a good capsule history of the Ocean Shore Railroad. The author's father was an investor (stockholder) in the Ocean Shore Railroad. Brandt told historian June Morrall about it in 1980: “He, like a number of other people in the days when the stock was being offered to the public market, thought it was a good thing, and it apparently was.“ There are a number of banks and prominent people-quite a number of people, well-heeled financially, that invested money in it. In those days, a million was not considered pennies .“When they got this thing started - it was just before the earthquake - 190 railroads were springing up all over the place, up and down the state—from one end to the other they were starting to build…so, why not a line down the coast to Santa Cruz? “One of the reasons was that they figured if they built the line through to Santa Cruz, they could take a lot of the business away from the SP [Southern Pacific], which had the monopoly up ‘til then by going the other way. Look like a good proposition. No one else was in there. They started work from both ends with one crew working from San Francisco south, another crew starting from Santa Cruz, working north. Got along fine until a certain day in April 1906 when they had an earthquake. One of the things they didn’t’ anticipate was a good deal of construction equipment, particularly in the area around Mussel Rock, which tumbled off the right-of-way and down into the ocean. It was a considerable financial loss. And part of the right-of-way, likewise, followed the equipment into the ocean—more financial loss—and additional expenditures the promoters hadn’t figured on. They recovered from that somehow, and they pared down the project a bit as a result of that. One of the shortcomings of the original promoters was that they were a little too grandiose in their ideas. They started out—it was planned as a double-track electric, actually, to run from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, via Half Moon Bay. Better off if they’d started out with a single-track steam line. Then as business justified it, extending to double-track, and they might have succeeded. When you grade for a double-track along the line it actually costs you more than if you grade for a single track, so it means more money out. Since they never used the double track, well, it was just money wasted…”

(We want to thank Debra Etienne for her generous donation of this booklet).

PRESERVING AND CELEBRATING PACIFICA'S PAST

Ocean Shore Railroad Car Restoration Project

Help Us Restore the only existing OSRR Passenger Car to its former glory. Over 100 years ago, the motto was: "It reaches the Beaches!"

Ocean Shore Railroad Booklet