Western Railroad Discussion > Fullerton Railroad Days is no more.

Fullerton Railroad Days is no more. May be moved to another city (just a threat?), but Fullerton Station was the perfect place for it!
mapboy

from The Orange County Register Thursday, January 15, 2009
Fullerton Railroad Days, which drew 30,000, is no more
Sponsoring organization says council's denial of railway museum had an impact on the decision.
By BARBARA GIASONE
FULLERTON – Railroad Days, which has drawn more than 30,000 train enthusiasts each May to the Fullerton Transportation Center, has been canceled.
In letters mailed Tuesday to the City Council, the sponsoring Fullerton Railway Plaza Association indicated that the council's denial of a railway museum last month caused a lot of disappointment.
The Plaza Association held the three-day railroad event, in part, to gain support for a rail venue.
"We can't get enough people together to work on this year's Railroad Days," said Fred Canfield, who chaired the venue for the past six years.
He has notified vendors that the decade-old event will not be held this May.
In a 2-2 vote, the council at its Dec. 9 meeting defeated a proposal to include a $35-million rail attraction in the Transportation Center Master Plan. Councilmen Don Bankhead and Richard Jones were willing to give the railroad association six months to raise $10 million to prove there was in interest in the interactive project.
Canfield said a committee will meet in February to discuss taking Railroad Days to another city.

On the same topic, any word on the 2009 Dunsmuir Railroad weekend plans? Will there be a repeat of last years Brewhaha?

Well that sure is a bummer. I only went once, but I thought it was really good.

Guess Ill only have National Train Day @ LAUPT to look forward to.

Tony

The real problem here was the the Fullerton RR days was, in part,
supposed to be a fund raising event for a fullerton RR museum.
Once the city said they didn't want to build a RR museum, well
then what was the point of having the RR days. A lot of the volunteers
were putting in time, based on raising money for the proposed RR museum.
No museum, no volunteers.

Was the railroad museum ever advertised or mentioned at Railroad Days? I don't recall seeing a booth set up, a poster, a pamphlet, or anything (maybe I missed it). I always thought it was a thing that the merchants in the area put on for the benefit of making money and bringing people to their stores.

smitty195 Wrote:
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> Well that sure is a bummer. I only went once, but
> I thought it was really good.


Ditto. I was laying over in LA between legs of an Amtrak expeditions and went down for the Sunday afternoon a few years back.

smitty195 Wrote:
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> Was the railroad museum ever advertised or
> mentioned at Railroad Days? I don't recall seeing
> a booth set up, a poster, a pamphlet, or anything
> (maybe I missed it). I always thought it was a
> thing that the merchants in the area put on for
> the benefit of making money and bringing people to
> their stores.


Yes,
One of the years I attended, there was a small model of what they wanted the museum to look like. They also had someone there to answer questions about the proposed museum.

BJR

pdt Wrote:
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The real problem here was the the Fullerton RR days was, in part,
supposed to be a fund raising event for a fullerton RR museum.

Not in part, in whole.


smitty195 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Was the railroad museum ever advertised or
> mentioned at Railroad Days? I don't recall seeing
> a booth set up, a poster, a pamphlet, or anything
> (maybe I missed it). I always thought it was a
> thing that the merchants in the area put on for
> the benefit of making money and bringing people to
> their stores.

Yes. Every single year. There was a booth, pamplets, posters, docents, etc. Even an N scale model of the proposed museum.

Does anyone have some hard numbers regarding where they are at and where the need to be funding wise? Dreaming and raising some money is great, but the city probably doesn't want to wait around forever as the group tries to scrape together donations. Is this a vacant parcel in an otherwise developed area, or are they working on a master plan for new development?

Too bad that the FRPA and RL&HS didn't get together and
merge to form a formidable railroad museum at Fullerton.
Seem the Pomona place his quite a hideaway..

The plan was to use the east parking lot as the museum site but with a couple downtown bar oops, "business" owners on the council now things have headed south rapidly in the last few months. There is a site a couple blocks east on Balcom that has plenty of space but it's privately owned (but it's big, my boss used to keep heavy equipment there - you could see it from the train until "the posse' " went belly-up).
Sad little city politics as usual.


TCS - we'd rather have puking drunks than resectable citizens in foolertoon

So what other Southern California City would have a depot with enough land and some spurs/sidings for the rail equipment to move to?

smitty195 Wrote:
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> Well that sure is a bummer. I only went once, but
> I thought it was really good.

I went in 2007, and had a blast. I got there by Amtrak, and went home by Amtrak, thereby having an all-rail travel weekend.

I was aware of the museum plans, as there was a table with information and I struck a conversation with one of the ladies there. Technically, they got 6 months from December 9 to raise $10 million to "prove interest" but not sure how feasible that is in current economic climate. BNSF, the white knight to the rescue?

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Was this the same organization that Travel Town parted ways with a few years back?

No, and yes. The Fullerton Railroad Plaza Association is the organization that officially sponsored Railroad Days, and they are NOT the group that were asked to leave Travel Town. That was the SCSRA. The SCSRA is now affiliated with the FRPA and they have helped with the last several Railroad Days and also produce a joint newsletter, share some dinners and other events. I understand them to still be two distinct groups, though there are several people on both boards, so the line gets blurry now.

zuco74 Wrote:
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> Guess Ill only have National Train Day @ LAUPT to
> look forward to.
>
> Tony


What makes you think that NTC @ LAUPT was more than a one-off deal?

I haven't seen or heard of any plans by Amtrak for a repeat performance
in 2009.

chakk Wrote:
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> What makes you think that NTC @ LAUPT was more
> than a one-off deal?
>
> I haven't seen or heard of any plans by Amtrak for
> a repeat performance
> in 2009.

National Train Day is intended to be an annual thing and will float on that particular Saturday. This year, it will be on May 9th, 2009. I can't find the source I read this from, though.