Take the Electric Trains to the Broad Gauge Depot!

I had a visit this weekend from YouTuber Interurban Era, a Bay Area custom model and layout builder. I've been a big fan of Miles's work for years. His 1960's Mexico-themed "Alta California" railroad has modeled interesting locations with diesels I recognize from my teenage Athearn years. His Oakland-tinted street running scene on the former layout matched a lot of memories of wandering around Oakland's vintage neighborhoods. Interurban Era also inspired my Google bus project when he showed off one of the Iconic Replicas HO buses in AC Transit livery, and introduced me to the high-quality modern bus models. He's also done virtual model railroading, helping build a San Francisco-themed world in the city-building game "Cities Skyline" called "Presidio Bay". I'd been up to see his workshop and layout a couple months ago, and finally got to repay the favor by inviting him and his other half to visit and operate on the Vasona Branch.

Interurban Era got lucky last year; when Caltrain decided to give away an HO model of one of the Stadler KISS trainsets that are now running on the electrified San Jose - San Francisco line, Interrban era managed to score that rare model. If that model needed a place to run, it would certainly be the San Jose Market Street depot on that portable layout I did a few years back. I set up part of the layout in the garage just for this visit, and that's why we've got an electric trainset sitting under the trainshed at Market Street.

The Market Street station was the Southern Pacific's primary station up until 1935 when Diridon station opened. Market Street often got referred to as the "broad gauge station" because the other major station, West San Jose, was the former South Pacific Coast narrow gauge station. Even after the former SPC line from Alameda to Santa Cruz was widened to standard gauge, the stations still seemed to keep the "narrow gauge depot" and "broad gauge depot" identifiers.

As the trainset was already visiting, we also took it out on the Los Gatos branch, leading to this photo at the Campbell station. Here's hoping Caltrain gets encouraged to string catenary down to Campbell and Los Gatos!

I keep wondering whether the HO Stadler model was a one-off promotional model; Interurban Era mentioned that it's based on a Lilliput model, but the manufacturer did cut some new molds for parts of the Caltrain version of the car. Because Lilliput is one of the brands owned by Bachman, I think we've got a reasonable chance that HO models of these trainsets will show up in stores one of these years. If that happens, plan to take the electric trains to San Jose's broad gauge depot!