Fallbrook Vintage Car Club visits three Campo museums

FALLBROOK – Members of the Fallbrook Vintage Car Club assembled in the state Route 76 Park and Ride lot early Saturday morning, Feb. 10, to get instructions for a Caravan trip to Campo, California to visit three museums.

The first museum stop was the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum and park. The museum was founded in 1961 to preserve the rich railroad heritage of the Pacific southwest. The Pacific Southwest Railway Museum is one of the largest operating railroad museums in California and the only international railroad museum in North America.

At PSRM, the car club members first took a train ride in a coach car pulled by a diesel electric engine on a short trip down to the Mexican border and back. Mark Hoffman bought an extra ticket to ride in the diesel locomotive with the engineer during the train ride.

After the train ride, a guided tour was provided of the various museum buildings and displays. This tour included a visit to the train restoration facility where locomotive and railroad cars were undergoing restoration. The magnitude of restoration was impressive, considering the club members' understanding of the effort required to restore vintage cars. Next, they viewed several restored locomotives and train cars plus displays of railroad equipment. The mail car was of interest, learning how mail was sorted and delivered along a train route. The Robert Peary Pullman coach car was configured to transport first-class passengers across the United States. The particular Pullman was actually used to transport former President Franklin D. Roosevelt on one of his railroad trips.

After taking a lunch break at the train station park, the Fallbrook Vintage Car Club proceeded to the Gaskill Brothers' Stone Store Museum where they learned some of the history of the Campo area. The stone store was built in 1885 to serve as a country store and is actually built of stone to provide protection in a lawless Old West time period. For example, in 1875, there was an incident that went down in history as the second bloodiest civilian gunbattle in the history of the Old West after the OK Corral incident in Arizona. The museum also houses many artifacts from World War I and II troops that were camped in the area, undergoing training and performing border security.

The last museum visited was the Motor Transport Museum, a collection of old discarded trucks and buses with a few vehicles that are being restored as funds are available. The intent of the museum is for the public to gain an appreciation for old trucks and the development of the motor transport industry.

The final tour being completed, the car enthusiasts headed back for the two-hour ride to Fallbrook, having a better understanding of the history of Campo as captured in the museums and in particular, the importance of the railroad in the history of California.