We are up at reasonable hour as we heading up to Dunsmuir this morning, time for breakfast, no we are a little on the late side, as a party of Japanese tourists have beaten us, so its a considerable wait while more food supplies are restocked. Unfortunately this puts us behind with our plans, as we had hoped to spend an hour at Pinole, getting the morning Amtrak trains.

Never mind we depart, and hit the peak traffic on the motorway, we cross the San Mateo bridge and head through Haywood, up through Castro Valley, turn onto 680 at Dublin, up to Martinez, over the Martinez Toll Bridge, and take 505 north of Vacaville.

We plan to head straight through to Reading, and see what rail traffic is around, we were to be disappointed. After a lengthy wait we head up towards Dunsmuir, heading for a couple a scenic spots where we spent time at on previous trips, again nothing around.

This part of Northern California is very senic, after leaving Reading one passes through the Trinity Mts in the confines of Shasta - Trinity National Forest, with the Shasta Lake and Sacramento River further adding to the visual delights of this part of California.


We arrive in Dunsmuir around 1430 and head for the Railroad Park, where we are staying for the night, this is a first for a couple of the party. Overnight accomadation in a Caboose. This place I would recommend to anyone, the caboose's having all the amenities.







This park has a complete Shay locomotive on site, and many other items of rolling stock, situated in a very scenic spot below one of the area's well known geological spots "Castle Crags" a resturaunt on site in old passenger car, and many other items of railroad interest.



We head down to the depot at Dunsmuir, and one is somewhat taken back by the decline that has taken place in the buisness district, since my last visit, with at least it seemed a third of the shops had ceased trading.

It was the same down at the tracks, the depot was closed, and everybody seemed to have moved over the tracks to what looked like the Maintenance of Way buildings. This is a bit of a problem as there was no one around to ask what was around.
The place seemed dead, one solitary UP AC45CCTE sat in the yard shut down. We sat around in the heat for a couple of hours and we hear a whistle coming in from the north, into the car and head down to the bottom yard to see what we can get.



A manifest pulls to a stop short of the crossing, make a crew change, and climbs aboard, we set up gear ready for action. Wrong! they sit for an hour, then uncouple, and head back north, so its back to kicking ballast, and watching the ants at work, at least we had something to watch.

We hear a whistle from the south and rush back to our camera's in time to catch a northbound stack train pass through. things are looking up we hear the loco's returning from the depot, they now have the dead unit from Dunsmuir yard ticking over in the consist, after they couple to the train we wait, we hope the train leaves before the sun sets. What seemed to be an eternity the crossing bells start and the train departs.



We decide to have a meal, and settle down for a feed, our accent's have a number of people asking, the usual Q " where are you from,  Australia!". "No we are not bloody Australians" after numerous guesses we tell them where we are from. At that stage a chap who I assumed was the owner, came over and sat down to talk to us, he heard that New Zealand had some of the best fishing in the world, to which we started a conversation on all and sundry, he turned out to be the Mayor of Dunsmuir, and we were introduced to the future Mayor (well I presume that would be after local elections) and a very enjoyable evening was had.