- [Announcer 2] And now "Rob on the Road" exploring Northern California.

- The sign says it all, and today you get to see exactly what it means and go inside Sacramento Locomotive Works.

And we're here with Ty Smith.

Ty, good to see you again.

How are you?

- Well, I'm well.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having us.

Ty is with the California State Railroad Museum and he is the museum director.

And what a treasure trove today.

We're not inside the beautiful polished museum, but a lot of this makes that happen.

- That's exactly right.

This is all the stuff on the campus that people don't see.

Think of the California State Railroad Museum you think of this big brick building at the end of Old Sacramento, but it's so much more than that.

We have an excursion train.

We have a locomotive works.

This is part of an old historical Southern Pacific Railroad complex, but today, every day, preservation, restoration, maintenance of locomotives, both for display inside the museum as part of our excursion rail goes on right here.

- All right, well you have a lot to show us, so we're gonna go inside for a fantastic show and tell.

Let's go.

- Yep, let's go.

(upbeat piano music) We are in the boiler shop, which was just one building that beginning in the 1870s was part of the largest industrial site west of the Mississippi.

The Southern Pacific Locomotive Works.

- Holy cow, Ty.

- It would eventually be the case that every facet of building a locomotive could happen at this site between all of the different buildings and the buildings were arranged by function.

So the boiler shop, what do you think happened in the boiler shop?

- [Rob] Steam?

Boil?

- [Ty] Steam boilers.

Yeah, exactly.

And then the erecting shop, which is also a site that we have out here that's part of California State Parks.

- [Rob] And as I look up, I see the sky.

- [Ty] A little bit of sky, just a tad.

- [Rob] A little sky peeking through.

Is there a story there?

- [Ty] Well, these are very old buildings.

And in fact these are remnants, these are survivors of many, many other buildings that were once part of that very large Southern Pacific Railroad shops.

And as amazing as they are, when you see them today, you have to kind of imagine what the rest of it was because there were many more of these buildings all around this complex.

- Let's walk.

There's so much to see.

Everything I see is an amazing artifact.

And in so many cases they're being refurbished and made to be used right now.

Look at this.

That's that's an open rail car.

- Open air gondola.

It was designed specifically to bring passengers on our excursion train.

It's built on the chassis of a flat car.

But the idea of getting people up and riding history, as we always say.

- Yeah.

What a beauty.

This locomotive.

We can cross this, right?

- We can cross it.

(Rob laughing) - Sorry for that late ask.

Tell me what we have here as we marvel at this beauty.

- Well, this is the 1942 Granite Rock 10.

It's part of our fleet, but anything that's on the fleet, you know, has a mechanical life expectancy.

You can put it into service for only so long before then it has to be taken out of service and maintenance and rehabilitation.

So people see the trains going up and down the Sacramento Southern Railroad, but what they don't see is all of the behind the scenes effort of craft, of skill, of resources that go into making sure that these historic locomotives continue to run.

(train chuffing) So here you have it stripped down.

People don't see it like this when it's on out on the line, the jacket is off of it because we're doing some restoration to to the piece just so that it runs well into the future.

- [Rob] I see the USAF, United States Air Force.

- [Ty] That's the 1655.

That was the locomotive that was in service just after World War II, the Korean War.

It's a switcher that we put into service here.

When we have special occasions such as Memorial Day or Veterans Day, sometimes we'll pull out the USAF 1655 and we'll tow the consist with it.

- Wow.

Amazing.

It is incredibly powerful to stand next to such a structure, such a powerful piece of equipment.

And then to look over here and you see it being worked on, this 6819.

Tell me what this piece is.

- [Ty] That's this one's big brother.

This is a big diesel locomotive.

And you could see, unlike having to hunch and get under the hood of a car, you have all this, all these diesel engines that are exposed through these cabinet doors.

- [Rob] I don't think I've ever seen one this big.

- [Ty] You probably have, but you probably just have never been in such proximity to it.

We see these things usually from afar.

We see them out on a track, you know, off on the horizon.

But we normally don't get the chance to stand in front and behold just how big and powerful these things were.

We have locomotives inside the museum that are twice as big.

- Are they really?

We're gonna walk into the off limit zone.

For many reasons this area is off limits, but not for you to today.

And I love that.

Thank you for taking us here.

Why is this the off limits zone?

- [Ty] Well, just structurally it's a little less sound than the main part of the building.

You could see that we have some scaffolding and some temporary shoring up of this end of the building.

- [Rob] Oh yeah, yeah.

Wow.

That is fascinating to me.

- What's exciting about my job is to get to see projects come to fruition.

And one of the things that we have long desired to do is to make this building not only into a place that's safe for the work of our employees out here who are everyday working on locomotives, but there is a lot of interest in people coming to see this.

- Yeah.

Can you imagine?

Yes, you can imagine.

- People go, "Oh, can I get out there?

I want to go out there."

And we wanna make that happen.

In so many ways what happened in terms of the design of the railroad museum is they were trying to emulate the magic of places like this.

They were trying to capture a little bit of that spirit.

- [Rob] You don't see like, garage tarps much in here like this one.

And I'm curious what's behind it, and- - [Ty] Well, there's all these moments of discovery.

- Look!

(laughing) Oh my gosh, get in here.

Wow, this is amazing.

How beautiful.

Tell me what this is.

It's an old bus.

- [Ty] The Union Pacific Railroad and other railroads like it then had this additional benefit.

They had this network of buses that would get people further out from just the train stations to tourist locations.

- [Rob] This is a beauty.

"Road of the Streamliner.

Union Pacific."

And it's beautiful.

Completely...

This looks completely restored.

- It has been restored and in fact it's drivable, and if you look on the front of it, it has a modern license plate because- - [Rob] Oh, it does!

(laughing) GM, General Motors coach.

And look at these awesome lights - [Ty] And the form of it, the design of it followed those very iconic mid-century streamliners, you know, and if you look at the advertisements of those times, you had streamliners that were named after the destinations.

So the city of San Francisco, people in Chicago in a blustery Chicago winter are imagining going off into sunny California.

The city of Los Angeles.

- [Rob] Ah.

- [Ty] The city of New Orleans.

That famous train song is named after that route that went to and from New Orleans.

And so in every way in form and function, this is a complete reflection of American history.

- Wow.

But we have a lot more to see in this phenomenal span of multiple buildings.

There's another building next door.

Thank you for popping in there.

Who knew what was behind that curtain?

Wow.

Well let's go to the next door.

- [Ty] We got surprises like that.

- [Rob] I know.

Full of surprises.

All of these have numbers.

Are these portals or hubs or- - Yeah, bays.

- Bays.

I gotta keep track of stuff.

- [Rob] And we're going to go in here?

- [Ty] Right through that door.

- [Rob] Awesome.

I love how beautiful this is.

And you mentioned art earlier.

I think this building's a piece of art.

- It is.

- Oh my gosh!

Look at this!

Wow.

- Even a peek in there, you know, is a portal.

- [Rob] You cannot describe this.

You have to see it.

(gentle piano music) Wow!

I'm telling you, in 15 years on this show, this is a show stopper for me.

I just have to soak this in.

This is amazing.

All of these trains.

And I think about all of the people and all of the years.

It's powerful.

- [Ty] It really is.

It's at the heart of who we are as a people.

And especially if you take a regional approach and look at it from just a Sacramento context.

If you're from Sacramento, it's likely that you have not even a distant relative who reported to work right here at the Southern Pacific shops every day.

- Wow.

- If you look at old pictures of Sacramento you see streetcars, destination Southern Pacific Shops.

It was at the heart of what it meant to be a Sacramentan.

It was at the heart of what it meant to be a Californian.

And it's a thoroughly expressive of the American experience, this place.

- It's amazing.

- And I want to walk over here.

Oh, look how beautiful.

This is quite touching.

- Yeah.

And if you look at it from a longer historical context in terms of why all this stuff remains, they truly are survivors.

Yeah, they're a little beat up.

Yeah- - They are survivors.

- Every one of these pieces needs some level of care, and yet they wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for people who said, "Who's gonna do something about this?

Who is gonna be the keeper of not just the stuff of our railroad paths, but the stories?"

So it is parked potential.

Every one of these things needs some level of care.

And yet, unlike other pieces, just like this, who met the scrap heap, you know, a fleet of 80 locomotives, for example, we have one of them inside the museum, 79 of them were scrapped.

- Oh my goodness.

- These are the survivors.

- Wow, these are the survivors all around us.

I have to tell you, I felt something when I walked in here, and it was just powerful.

Do you?

- I do, you know, as a historian, but also more intently than that, as a museum person.

I think museums and places like this are places where the divide between us, the living, and those people of the past, who are so intimately responsible for all that we are, good and bad, that that time and distance collapses in a certain kind of way.

There doesn't seem to be as much distance between the spirit of the living and the spirits of the past at places like this.

I came to history connected to ideas and thoughts and people and objects.

And it absolutely is the reason I do what I do, because I can stand in front of a locomotive or I can stand in front of a golden spike, I can stand in front of some object of the past and it does collapse the time and distance between now and then.

(train horn sounds) - That is so powerful.

So the train just went, "That's right!"

(laughing) - It's a amen.

- It's an amen.

That's what I thought.

(laughing)