Wild Flower Train Excursion

Have you considered celebrating spring by taking a wild flower tour into the country on a 1906 electric train? Located on Highway 12, between Fairfield and Rio Vista is the Western Railway Museum. It’s like stepping back 100 years in time to tour the extensive collection of trains and streetcars that date from 1890 to 1960. To ride the slow moving antique train with beautiful stained glass windows, sipping lemonade and munching cookies is delightful. In April each year, the Wild flower Tour will take you 5 miles out into the countryside to view the fields of wild flowers. Many of them have unusual names that make you laugh. There are groupings of Red Owl Clover (Orthocarpus purpurascens), Butter and Eggs (Orthocarpus erianthus), Narrow-leaf Mule Ears (Wyethia angustifolia), Brass Buttons (Cotula coronopifolia), Tidy Tips (Layia chrysanthemoides), Goldfields (Lasthenia chrysotoma), and Wally Baskets (Triteleia laxa). You can also see the more common wild hollyhocks, Red-stemmed filaree, vetch, California Blue-eyed grasses, Douglas’s lupines, California Golden Violets and of course California poppies. A docent will take you back to the past as he gives you information on the flowers, the trains and history of the area.

On the ride, you will see the Shiloh Presbyterian church built in 1870. Although the church is no longer in operation, an occasional wedding is still held in this historic sanctuary. Next to the church the original cemetery is still maintained.

Shiloh Road runs parallel to the train tracks. While we were riding the train, a Model A Club  (about 12 autos) drove down this road, waving at the train. Evidence of spring is everywhere as cows are feeding their calves and baby lambs are following their mothers through the wild flowers.

For more information and for the schedule of events held at the Western Railway Museum, call (707)374-2978 or go to www.wrm.org.  

wildflower train pic

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