Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway

Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway
Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway #2641 stops at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the summer of 1993.
Locale	Santa Cruz County, California, USA
Commercial operations
Built by	Santa Cruz and Felton Railroad
Original gauge	3 ft (914 mm) converted to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Preserved operations
Reporting mark	SCBG
Preserved gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Commercial history
Closed	1940
Preservation history
1985	Started
Headquarters	Felton
Website
roaringcamp.com/beachtrain.html

The Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway (reporting mark SCBG) is a freight and heritage railroad in Northern California.

It uses diesel locomotives to haul excursion trains over an 8-mile (13 km) route between Felton, California and an interchange with the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay Railroad (formerly the Sierra Northern Railway, Union Pacific Railroad, and Southern Pacific Railroad). From there, trains continue on to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on the SC&MB Watsonville-Davenport line. The SCBT&P is one of very few railroads in North America with extensive street running rails.

The railway began life as the 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge Santa Cruz and Felton Railroad, built between its namesake cities of Santa Cruz and Felton in 1875 to send logs and lumber down from the Santa Cruz Mountains to mills and wharves on Monterey Bay. In 1876, the South Pacific Coast Railroad narrow gauge network completed its line from Alameda to Los Gatos, then over the mountains to Felton, absorbing the Santa Cruz & Felton to complete the line to Santa Cruz. In 1887, the Southern Pacific purchased the South Pacific Coast and converted it to standard gauge over the course of more than a decade. Washouts closed the majority of the line in 1940, and the Santa Cruz-Olympia section remained in operation to serve the timber and sand industries. In 1981, further washouts brought closure of the line from Eblis to Olympia, until the line was purchased by Norman Clark, operator of the narrow gauge Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad and adjacent 1880s-themed park in Felton. Local legend has it that the name "Roaring Camp" is historical too, coming from the moniker that Mexican authorities gave to what was then, in the 1840s, the wild settlement of Zayante, founded by mountain man Isaac Graham. The first train from Felton to Rincon ran in 1985 (the year after Clark's death from pneumonia that he acquired in his work to reopen this line) and the entire line to Santa Cruz was once again reopened to traffic some time later. As of 2006, Clark's widow Georgiana continues to serve as the railway's Vice President of Operations.