Steam & Excursion > Knotts Berry Farm, CA in December

Last month on December 4th, I was able to visit Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, CA for the first time in at least 10 years. The entire park was open for a food tasting event which was very good, but none of the rides were operating. It was decorated nicely for the holidays. This was the only Friday, Sat, Sunday that it was open in December as CA implemented another "no outside dining" order so the park closed again.
A nice surprise was finding Rio Grande Southern 340 on "static display" at Ghost Town. I did a double take at first as thought it was under steam, but they just had some sort of a fog machine set up under the front of the locomotive, but looked somewhat effective.
Next photo is of the station which I've heard is an ex Pacific Electric Ry station from Orange County.
Third photo of the Edna, I believe it was a buisness car.

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Next photo is of the borax engine which has been sitting there in Ghost Town forever. I wonder if it finished it's working life at one of the borax railroads near Calico and Daggett, CA. The real Calico ghost town near Barstow is where Walter Knott got a lot of the old mining equipment that's all over the place inside the park.
Fifth photo of info posted with the borax engine.
Next picture of the engine house.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/21 15:13 by GreenFlag.

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Last photo here of the train ride in Camp Snoopy where the engine was on display.

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GreenFlag Wrote:

> Next photo is of the station which I've heard is
> an ex Pacific Electric Ry station from Orange
> County.

Supposedly it's the much remodeled depot from Stanton on the Santa Ana line:

https://sopacincg.com/finally-see-what-it-used-to-look-like/

I thought it was "Hansen"-- which was near Stanton.
Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> GreenFlag Wrote:
>
> > Next photo is of the station which I've heard
> is
> > an ex Pacific Electric Ry station from Orange
> > County.
>
> Supposedly it's the much remodeled depot from
> Stanton on the Santa Ana line:
>
> https://sopacincg.com/finally-see-what-it-used-to-
> look-like/

Espee2019 Wrote:

> I thought it was "Hansen"-- which was near Stanton.

Dave Coscia's site says it's from Stanton:

http://coscia-espee.info/pe_equipment.html

The Southern California Railway Museum (Orange Empire) archives site on SmugMug says it's from Stanton:

https://scrm.smugmug.com/Pacific-Electric/Lines-of-the-Pacific-Electric/Southern-District/Santa-Ana-Line/i-ZX4pvMr

The SCRM SmugMug site also has a photo of the waiting shelter at Hansen, which sure doesn't look like the depot that's now at Knotts:

https://scrm.smugmug.com/Pacific-Electric/Lines-of-the-Pacific-Electric/Southern-District/Santa-Ana-Line/i-Vm5GxtT

The Edna is indeed Otto Mears' business car from the Rio Grande Southern.
A miracle that it exists today, you can imagine it riding over Dallas Divide, around the curves and trestles at Oipher, through the Lizard Head Pass snowsheds, etc.
In Narrow Gauge In The Rockies authors Lucis Beebe and Charles Clegg doocumented a trip on it with the RGS Reciever over the line before abandonment.
I was invited in for a brief walk through a decade plus ago.  
A real time machine.

At one time there was a model railroad shop at Knotts, [you have to be old Southern Calif to remember this].   

The model railroad hobby shop at Knott's was run by the late Evan Middleton.
When Evan retired and when Knott's ended outside vendors,
Evan bought two Rio Grande baggage cars -- 743 and 745 and brought them to Perris.
Today it is still staffed with many of Evan's treasures. 

Watts local

The Edna was actually previously located nearby the model railroad hobby shop and painted in orange.  I worked there in the late 70's/early 80's for the Entertainment department.  One time when we were scouting locations to put attractions for the famous Halloween Haunt we asked if we could put some scary displays inside the Edna.   There was a firm "no" to that idea.   IIRC what the Ghost Town ops team said "....letting you guys in there would only completely mess it up!".   Glad they were strict about it to preserve this nice bit of history.  

Of interesting context re the entertainment dept and railroad ops.  The Good Time Theatre has probably the worst loading facilities of any kind of theatre of its size, the loading area was not big enough for large trucks and  as well the tracks ran right through the loading space.  This meant often we had to push heavy scenery across two sets of tracks (one being a spur to the maintenace facility).  More than once  something got stuck there and someone had to run down the track to warn the engine crew to stop!  They weren't exactly thrilled...

wattslocal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The model railroad hobby shop at Knott's was run
> by the late Evan Middleton.
> When Evan retired and when Knott's ended outside
> vendors,
> Evan bought two Rio Grande baggage cars -- 743 and
> 745 and brought them to Perris.
> Today it is still staffed with many of Evan's
> treasures. 
>
> Watts local

Great pics!!  I like Pic 1!!