Steve Elkins filed this report from Portola’s Railroad Days.
Portola, California, is rich with railroad history, as the town grew up around the WP Railroad yard. It’s the home of the Western Pacific RR active from 1903 until 1983 when WP merged with Union Pacific. WP was the last major railroad completed into California, eventually running from Salt Lake City, Utah to Oakland, CA. The significance of this location is that their tracks cross the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range at the lowest point, near Beckwourth Pass (5,200′). There’s less climbing for the trains, and there’s less snow to hinder the railroad in Winter; unlike the Southern Pacific RR route, crossing the mountains further South near Lake Tahoe (7,100′). Western Pacific is known as the “Feather River” Route, following the Feather River West of Portola into the Sacramento Valley, then turns toward the San Francisco Bay Area.
In celebration of the railroad town’s heritage, Portola held their annual Railroad Days last weekend. There were three days of activities, including a car show and shine, and a parade. Here are photos of the three Willys that participated, two traveling from Nevada.
Mellouise owns that nice M-38. She and her husband enjoys visiting the e-Willys website and driving the M-38 as her summer car around town for general transportation. “Mel” and two of her friends joined the parade in her well kept Jeep.
Mel is looking for a rear seat for her M-38. If you know of one, contact me at willys57@sbcglobal.net and I will pass the information on to her.
That’s one nice early 1950 Sedan Delivery, my favorite kind of Willys (I just bought another Parkway last week.) And that’s a beautiful pickup, apparently owned by the same family. I didn’t get a chance to meet them. I know that’s unlike me, but I had trains on the brain, spending most of the weekend at the RR Museum; a live museum with lots of action this weekend. I had just enough time to enjoy talking with Mel about her Jeep, then take a few snapshots and run off to the activities.
