A student-produced interview at Lyman Gilmore Junior School, introduced by Bernard Zimmerman, features John Christensen, director of the Nevada County Railroad Museum, and promotes local history. Christensen outlines his background (born 1948 in Richmond; trained as a nurse; public health studies; Army nurse officer; moved to Nevada County in 1981) and his lifelong rail interest sparked by growing up near two railroads. He recounts the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad’s mining-driven origins, key figures (the Kidder and Coleman families; Sarah Kidder as an early female railroad president), and the 1943 WWII shutdown that ended the line. The discussion covers the preservation movement that formed in the 1980s, the museum’s 2000 opening with about $600,000 in funding, and its expansion to a larger complex with a rail-bus center and extensive track. The museum’s collection includes Nevada County No. 5 (Tahoe), Antelope & Western No. 1, two rail buses (Don Jean and Sarah Kitter), a hand car, speeders, Plymouth switch engines, and an 1897 St. Charles Colorado coach slated for a full rebuild. The video will be posted on the Nevada County Historical Landmarks Commission’s YouTube channel and archived with the Searls Historical Library.

Full Transcript of the Video:

Good morning and welcome to you all who have joined us for this interview.

I'm Bernard Zimmerman, I chair of the Nevada County Historical Landmarks Commission, which
was created by the Board of Supervisors in 1968, and one of our missions is to promote
Nevada County history.

And one of the ways we do that is we interview people who have
been involved in making our history.

And we do this at the Lyman Gilmore Junior School,
which has their own sort of internal, it was a G-Net, I believe, video operation under
the direction of Scott Mills, the teacher.

And today's production is all done entirely
by students.

The producer is Jesus.

Jordan is on the audio.

Hayden will be editing this.

And on the cameras are Michael and Boas.

So thank you all very much for doing this.

The
video will be publicly available on our YouTube channel, which can be accessed from our website,
the NevadaCountyLandmarks.

com.

It can also be accessed, it will eventually be deposited with
the Searle Historical Library, and it can be accessed from their website.

And this morning,
I'm going to be interviewing John Christensen, who is the Director of the Nevada County Railroad
Museum.

So welcome, John, and thank you for agreeing to do this.

So maybe you can start off by
just giving us some background on yourself.

Where were you born? I was born in Richmond,
California in 1948.

And where'd you go to school? Well, elementary school, St.

Paul's,
which was a Catholic school in San Pablo, and then Richmond Union High School.

And then also
Contra Costa College, and graduated as a registered nurse there, and then went to Sonoma State
University for the upper division, public health, community health.

And I'm just curious, you came
to Nevada County, I think you said in 1981? Yes, physically moved here.

Physically moved.

But
emotionally, you were here much earlier than that.

Yes, I was.

What brought you up here? Well, I
started coming up here in 1962 with my family.

We would camp just below Downeyville in Indian
Valley, and would spend two weeks.

And it became a tradition to come up every year.

And of course,
we'd sometimes come to Nevada City on Sundays to go to church.

And I just grew to love the area,
so I always wanted to come up here.

What did your parents do? My dad was a carpenter.

He was
actually a foreman for overall construction company.

So after schooling, what did you do?
When I graduated, I took a reserve commission as an Army nurse officer.

And I had previous experience
during the Vietnam War.

I was in the Army for three years, not in Vietnam.

I ended up in Turkey
for a year and a half, you know, the Cold War.

Turkey's a nice place to be.

Yeah, it was okay,
yeah, particularly that time.

But yes, so and then worked as a reserve officer and then worked
mainly in emergency rooms.

Do you ever work for a railroad? No.

Wow.

So what got you interested
in railroading? Well, being born and raised in Richmond, I was actually, as a young child,
was in what they call the iron triangle of Richmond, which meant that there were two
railroads running on either side of us.

One was the Santa Fe and the other the Southern Pacific
railroad.

And so one of the lines was just a half block behind our house.

So as a child,
I'd hear the trains coming and I'd take off.

Now, some people watching this video may not
know much about the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad.

So perhaps you can give us some background
about that before we get into the Railroad Museum.

Well, Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad
was established in 1874.

I mean, that's when they started construction and it was construction
completed in 1876.

It was a 22 mile long, I call short line railroad running from Colfax
to Grass Valley to Nevada City, which was the terminus.

The reason they built a railroad here
was because of the mines, you know, when it started out up here is mostly plaster mining,
you know, and then next thing you know, they're borrowing deep into the earth and then they need
heavy equipment like water pumps and air pumps and all the other equipment goes along with
deep rock mining.

And so they needed a railroad to haul these items up here.

And before that,
you know, the road between Auburn and Grass Valley could take you several days during inclement
weather.

So, you know, the roads were not that great.

I imagine they also used it to haul the
gold out.

Oh, they did.

Yeah.

And probably never had a, do you ever have a railroad robbery, did
you know of? Railroad was never robbed, the best of my knowledge.

And the Narrow Gauge also got
very important for the agricultural industry.

Of course.

Yeah, Chicago Park was a big agricultural
area, particularly apples and pears.

And so we have that display at the Railroad Museum,
the Transportation Museum.

The packing shed, at least the last version of it in Chicago Park
still standing.

And of course, the train used to pull up right next to it.

And then they would
bring everything over to Colfax and put it on the Transcontinental.

I sit down and next thing
you know, you were in New York selling Chicago Park pears and apples.

That's one of the few
structures that have survived along the railroad.

Now, the Kidder family was very involved with
the railroad.

Can you tell us something about them? Well, John Kidder, he actually surveyed the
railroad for the Coleman, the Coleman brothers who were actually instrumental in getting the railroad
organized.

And they were two of the principal investors.

Yes.

Yes.

And but it was a joint effort
between business people from both Grass Valley and Nevada City.

So it was a joint effort.

And then Kidder ran the railroad for a while.

Then later, Kidder was able to obtain
control the railroad, you know, by having a majority stock and buying majority stock in the
railroad.

And then he passed around, it passed away around 1901, you know, suffered from diabetes.

And his wife, Sarah Kidder, who is very of course well known, you know, they were up here,
they were at the center of a social network, I would say.

Civic Improvement Club of Grass
Valley.

Exactly.

So she ended up being, I can't say she was the first woman president on the planet,
but she was certainly that we know of in the United States.

And she ran the railroad
from 1901 until I believe in 1913 and ran it very successfully and even paid dividends.

More successfully than John did, as I understand it.

Yeah, there was a lot of, you know,
cloudy issues.

When was the narrow gate shut down? Well, the railroad actually shut down in March,
1943.

And that was because of World War II.

And there was a presidential decree shutting down
non-essential businesses and re-aligning the industry throughout the United States
to help with the war effort.

And so the mines were temporarily shut down up here.

And that was
sort of the death knell for the railroad.

The railroad did quite well during the depression.

Didn't really have a depression up here because everybody was working.

In the mines.

In the mines,
so they were busy.

But the war, that did shut it down.

And what physically happened to the railroad
then after 1943? Well, the railroad was sold to Doolin Steel.

But pieces of the railroad had sent
all over.

Particularly, engine number nine went to Pearl Harbor along with probably a dozen cars,
mainly box cars.

And then engine eight went down to Plaster City.

Yeah, and it worked down there
throughout the war.

And so those two engines continued working, whereas all the other engines,
the railroad had previously been scrapped, except Nevada County engine number five.

Number five
left before the war was excess at the time in 1940.

And it was purchased by Review Studios,
which later became Universal Studios.

And it was purchased for a John Wayne movie called Spoilers.

And I think we've seen engine number nine in a number of movies.

Yes.

All right.

So what happened
to the tract? Well, the track was pulled up and recycled and used for the war effort.

Probably
got scrapped to the game of tankers.

I don't know.

So let's forward about 40 years or so.

And let's talk about the, well, the railroad museum and the transportation museum.

Why don't you explain the kind of the relationship between those two names?
Well, our group actually started the first meeting was August 25th,
1983.

And at that point, just to jumpstart, you know, to get a group together, it was called the
Friends of the Narrow Gauge.

So, and as we had formed a committee and whatnot, we decided that
we needed, wanted to rename the group.

And we didn't want to just focus on railroad equipment,
but it means the transportation in Nevada County.

So therefore, we decided to call it the Transportation
Museum.

We refer to it as the TMD or Transportation Museum Division of the Nevada County Historical Society.

And, and then the, is it the TMD that operates the railroad museum, so to speak?
Yes, but legally, we're the TMD.

Nice.

Okay.

So, but we, everybody refers to us as the railroad museum.

Now, so you came up in 1981, settled here.

So what was your role in the founding of the
railroad museum or the Friends of, as you called yourself then?
Well, how the idea came from two members of the historic society to form a group to help
look at collecting and preserving anything related to the railroad.

That would have,
Madeleine Heling was the president at the time, and then Cliff Summersstrom was the director,
you know, for Nevada City.

And so it was basically Cliff who did all the organizational work,
getting, setting up the meetings and so on.

How did you get involved?
So, I could blame it on my wife, Donna.

I guess she'd be interviewing her then.

Yeah, probably.

Well, she, there was an article in the union and she pointed it out to me.

She said, hey, there's something about, you know, a railroad here and she was into railroads and
collected lionels and things like that.

So I had a lot of trains.

Okay.

So she pointed that out and so I said, oh, well, maybe I better go.

So that's, so I attended that first meeting and it was basically an organizational meeting
and kind of going, well, what do we want to do? Or do we want to focus on railroad
artifacts from the railroad? Or do we want to establish like a model railroad, you know,
most of the people in the building, 90 people showed up on that first meeting at the Nevada
Veterans Hall.

That place was full.

Very interesting.

All the railroad maps came out.

We all came out of the woodwork, so to speak.

There are a lot of them up here.

So we did, it was basically an organizational meeting, but we finally decided to
focus on trying to collect, you know, materials related to the railroad and other transportation.

Now, at that point, were any of the engines and other major pieces of equipment still up here
up in Nevada County?
No.

And I'm going to quote Cal Palmer, who was a grass valley resident who was on our first,
he was a restoration manager.

And he'd always say, when we started this project,
we didn't have a wheel to turn.

And it was quite true.

We didn't.

Well, you've got a nice setup at the Five Kidder Court behind Hooper and Weaver and next to the
in town campground and the Chinese cemetery.

How did that happen? How did you acquire that?
Well, it's a long story, but we started out
actually being able to put some track in on Pinewoods Avenue behind Blackbarks.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

And there was about eight, he had about probably 600 feet of right away in there.

So
we actually put track in there.

And we're trying, I was trying to extend the railroad
to Railroad Avenue.

And so we were working with the city not trying to do that.

But we ran ran
in problems with some of the local neighbors and basically they were trying to, we were trying to
the city was trying to annex that property to the city.

So that you get control of
this whole thing went to what the Lafica.

Oh, yeah, local area, local something,
formation, formation, recognition.

Yeah.

So and we lost by a vote.

They couldn't make us take
the track out.

They said you couldn't store any railroad.

So by this time, the Northern Queen
and the Ramey family, Mr. Roy, Ramey senior was supporting us.

And I was looking for a place
to move the equipment.

So he leaves us a spot behind this back meadow where we were able to
temporarily relocate our cars.

So and then he became he was became interested in the railroad
project.

And we already had the rail and hardware and equipment available to us.

So
he decided to start laying track on the Northern Queen and setting up a little operation there.

So that started around 1991.

And then it slowly evolved to a point where he wanted to
extend the railroad up to where the in town campground now is located behind the museum.

And we were looking to acquire that property for a museum.

And he said, well, if you support us
getting this property and having the bad city an exit to the city, then we'll donate two or three
acres to you, you know, so you can build your museum.

I said, well, that sounds good to me.

And so that's, and with the help of Borough Robinson, as his progress, he was the city manager
of that city.

We worked together on this.

We were able to
actually get a physical
building.

It's there now.

We got the property and then there was
federal funds, T funds, transportation, enhancement act funds available to the county.

They had had
like a million dollars available to them.

And so we got the lion's share out of 10 organizations.

We got 392,000.

And then the rest of it came from parks and recreation and money.

And also
historical, that kind of historic study came out to me about 600 at the time, $600,000 project.

And when did the museum actually open? Opened for business was, I would say, May
2000 and 2003.

What are some of the things that the railroad museum is, well, first of all,
so you've got the museum building and then what, why don't you tell us a little bit about what's
behind the museum and, you know, some of the other things that are on the property? Well,
at the same time that the display building, the main museum building was built, the shop building
was also built.

And that's where we currently do our restoration work.

And since then, you know,
in the early, like probably 2004, 2005, we did, actually later than that, we did an extension on
that building and push it out about 30 feet long, so to have more room to work.

And then later we,
I was able to get, pick up a rail bus, purchase a rail bus and then restored it at the museum.

Rail bus, the Donagene is named after my wife.

We purchased the rail bus for the museum.

And so
I, she had all the things she had to go through with me on this adventure.

You know, I said,
well, we're better named it rail bus center.

Well, you've got a lot of, quite a bit of track now
behind the museum.

I've been to a couple of the Sunday steam ups.

What, what, what all do you
have planned back there? Well, what's going on right now? I mean, that's what we call, you know,
the Northern Queens back meadow loop.

And that was put in around 91-92.

And then the track,
then was extended, two-foot gauge track was extended up onto where the in-town campground is.

But that,
later, they sold off that property.

But we're, so we operate, like during the summer, we call it
second Sunday steam up and we're operating two steam locomotives down there and running loops,
giving people rides.

And so we're operating Nevada County, engine number five, which is also known,
its original name is Tahoe, because it came from South Lake Tahoe.

And then also the Antelope and
Western engine number one, which is a smaller port alone.

And you've also got, you've got two rail
buses now, as I remember.

We have two rail buses.

So the Don Jean and the Sarah Kitter.

All right.

And then there's a hand car.

I know I've been on that one.

We have hand cars.

We have a motorized
speeders.

And we have a lot of, we have two switch engines.

One's a five tonne Plymouth and the other
one's an eight tonne Plymouth.

And so that we use those to move the equipment around the yards and
move the engines when they're not running.

What are you restoring right now? Well, we're restoring an
1897 first class coach.

And this particular coach came from the Florence and Cribble Creek,
Railroad in Colorado, and was built for him in 1897 by the St.

Charles company.

And anyway,
this was our first acquisition in 1984.

We were looking for something to display artifacts in,
and so we were able to obtain this coach.

The coach was only cosmetically restored.

And
we've had it all these years.

And I got hit by a tree when it was parked in the yard.

And so now
it's getting a total rebuild.

All right.

I think we have to bring this to a close.

Any of the
students have any questions they want to ask of John? All right.

Well then, I'll thank you very
much for agreeing to do this.

And I'll thank the crew.

And we look forward to getting the
post production number.

Thank you.