Thank you, SP 0-6-0, Not Normal, and usmc1401.

Looking at the info you presented above, I may have been a passenger on that car on that trip on that date at that location.



The date, 2/17/80, provided by SP 0-6-0, was the Sunday of a three-day Birthington's Washday weekend. It was on such a weekend that I was part of a group on a baera/wrm private-car excursion to San Diego to ride their then-new trolley system.

Well, it rained. And it rained. And in-between the times it rained, it rained. (I may be exaggerating, slightly.) Anyhow we got word that the Amtrak train pulling our car would be annulled at San Louis Obispo due to flooding of the track somewhere between there and Santa Barbara. Amtrak-ticketed passengers would be bused from SLO to Santa Barbara, but, because we in the private car were not Amtrak passengers, we would have the privilege of spending that night in our car, parked at the SLO station. At some point, our train's locomotives would be moved to our end of the train (as seen in the photo) and we, and the rest of the train, would be hauled back north when Amtrak's northbound passengers had arrived at SLO by bus from Santa Barbara and boarded onto the Amtrak cars.

As a consolation to us private-car passengers, someone arranged for us to spend a portion of our time waiting for the arrival of the Amtrak passengers from the south on an excursion to Bill Hearst's "castle" at San Simeon.

BTW, according to this page -- [www.nycsubway.org] -- "Muni Metro opened on February 18, 1980." Since that was the Monday of the weekend of our trip, I wonder how many of my fellow private-car passengers celebrated that event in person.