When Tourism Reigned

The Ocean Shore Railroad in it's beginning was expecting a large influx of tourists, flocking from the cramped city of San Francisco to the sandy beaches of the San Mateo Coast. This dream, which was built upon developing real estate for these wealthy tourists is what cost the Ocean Shore Railroad it's life. In the beginning, the tourism was slow to start, but got to the point so much that the OSRR had no choice but to put tourists on flatbed cars with benches! These following pictures display a time when Tourism reigned on the Devil's Slide portion of the line.

The location is most likely somewhere after the Pedro Point Tunnel. This image, not sure how the photographer had gotten there, shows what can be presumed as an Ocean Shore Railroad commuter train along the Slide.

Approaching the Pedro Point Tunnel can reveal the relationship with Humans and the development of a railway along a constantly changing coast. Sure would be a wonder if this were still around.

Of course, tourism was so much from the wealthy people of San Francisco, that the Ocean Shore Railroad had to leave people on flatbed cars with benches!

The Devil's Slide caused more problems on its own than during construction. Landslides plagued the cliff, as by its name. It trapped many trains when it ran, yet one can only imagine being stuck on a cold train by a landslide, with the fear of it plummeting to your death.

The caption on the picture reads:

"This photo shows the nature of construction in the Devil's Slide area by the Ocean Shore's contractors. But, this is not a construction image. It is actually a photo of crews battling to free a train trapped by a landslide at this notorious slide area. The San Pedro Point tunnel portal is a dark spot on the far left mountain going out of the ocean."

Advertisements by the Ocean Shore Railroad ran rampant through newspapers, encouraging those who wanted to escape the bleak city life of San Francisco to ride the train down South. Of course, this barely even worked.

Possibly the most famous phrase of all Ocean Shore Railroad advertisements: "Reaches the Beaches!"

SOURCES:

I gather my images mostly from Oceanshorerailroad.org and Half Moon Bay Memories. Just to be clear, I do NOT own any of these. Sorry for the un-bibliographical phrases here, the website I usually use to make the websites and authors look biblical is down.