CORONADO RAILS: End of an Era
-Title Insurance and Trust Company Photo
THIS IS A TYPICAL SCENE IN THE HEYDAY OF THE CORONADO BELT LINE. HERE A RESORT TRAIN OF THE "ISLAND" RAILROAD POSES NEAR THE HOTEL DEL CORONADO IN AN 1890 SCENE.
GENERAL MEETING
The next PSRMA General Meeting will be held on Sunday, April 18th, in the House of Charm, Balboa Park. The La Sala Room, where the meeting will begin at 7:30 P.M., offers a much more comfortable setting than the Safety Room of the Santa Fe depot, where previous General Meetings have been held. There is also ample lighted parking facilities.
As usual, this meeting will offer an evening of railroad oriented entertainment as well as give all members an opportunity to find out all the latest developments concerning PSRMA. The House of Hospitality is on Laural Street right in the middle of the park just east of the large horseman statue.
On March 24, 1971, a small PSRMA-sponsered ceremony commemoarated the end of rail service to the community of Coronado which had begun almost 83 years before. A "first spike" was symbolically pulled from one of the old, weathered ties by Coronado Mayor Robin Goodenough, Miss Coronado Janet Clare, and PSRMA President H. Chalmers Kerr, Jr. The spike pulling followed a short historical speech by Dick Pennick, Chairman of the Board of PSRMA.
Complete scrapping of the line began a couple of weeks later by the firm of Walter H. Barber & Son of La Mesa. Wally Barber, incidentally, is a member of PSRMA, and he must have had mixed feelings as his crew began tearing up the old roadbed.