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Gaze at the faces of families riding the steam trains at Berkeley’s Tilden Park, and it’s difficult to tell who’s more excited – the youngsters boarding the Redwood Valley Railway cars or the gleeful parents toting the tots. There’s something about trains that takes us all back to childhood, to the days of Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt, wooden Brio cars and the HO-scale models we longed to touch.
For Ellen Thomsen, who has run the Berkeley steam train company with her sister Kathe James for the last 25 years, the railroad is a lifelong passion. Their father, Erich Thomsen, started the diminutive, scale-model, live-steam railway in 1952.
“It’s kind of a family business,” Thomsen says.
Q How did the Redwood Valley Railway start?
A Well, it was kind of a hobby that went crazy and didn’t fit in the backyard anymore. (Our father) was a mechanical engineer for full-size railroads at a time when steam was disappearing. Specifically, he was interested in narrow gauge railroads, the ones used up in the mountains for lumber and mining. He wanted to do something to preserve them, not only the equipment but also the atmosphere. He knew he could never do it full size, so he did it in miniature.
Q What are the specs of the Redwood Valley Railway?
A It’s 15-inch gauge – that’s the distance between the rails – and it’s five-inch scale. Most narrow gauge is three feet between the rails. So we’re almost half the size of narrow gauge. (For comparison,) Amtrak is 4 foot 8½ between the rails. The mainline is about a mile and a quarter, and we have almost that much in backtrack for servicing and storage.
Q What’s your background?
A I’m a designer. I spent many years designing (for) opera and had a publishing company designing and publishing sewing patterns for vintage clothes and designing pretty much anything that needed it – architecture, interiors, costuming. It’s pretty much all been about reproducing the 19th century.
Railroad design, especially around 1900, is very specific, because different railroads had different design philosophies. And when railroads moved across the country, all the jobs were divided by nationalities. The Italians did one thing, the Chinese did another thing, the Germans did another thing. A lot of the carpenters were German. So railroad architecture wound up looking very German.
Q Is there a target era you’re trying to reproduce at the railway?
A Between the 1870s and the 1930s, which was the heyday of narrow gauge steam engines. After the 1930s, everything was logged out or mined out, and it became impractical to have so many separate lines and gauges.
Q What sets the Redwood Valley Railway apart from other Bay Area attractions?
A The regional parks. The regional park system has been there since 1934, when they started Tilden. Tilden was conceived not only to preserve the land, but also to have some very nice, low-key activities for families to do besides hiking – like the railroad, the antique merry-go-round and the farm.
We have a good way to show people the beautiful scenery without having to hike through it. You’re five minutes from a humongous urban area, (and) people get a taste of something that’s very historical, because we’re very fussy about scale and accuracy. It’s kind of like period performance art.
Q Redwood Valley Railway is so popular with kids. What can adults enjoy about it?
A It’s for all ages. We target adults, really, because we don’t want it to be thought of as a kiddie ride. The way we arrived at 5-inch scale is we put two adults on a board and measured how much space they would need to sit side by side comfortably on our railway cars. But kids like it, too.
Ride a train
Redwood Valley Railway: The Tilden Steam Trains run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. Find the train station at the corner of Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas, Orinda. Tickets are $3 per person or $12 for a pack of five tickets. www.facebook.com/RedwoodValleyRailway/.
Niles Canyon Railway: During February and March, trains depart from the Fremont and Sunol stations two Sundays a month. From April through August, the trains run every Sunday. Tickets are $9-$20. www.ncry.org.
Roaring Camp Railroads: This rail line offers rides from the Felton station through the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains ($23-$32). Special events include Thomas the Tank Engine Days, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk jaunts and holiday trains; roaringcamp.com.
