Martinez Historical Society

Walking Tour of Martinez

Southern Pacific Depot and Locomotive

End of Ferry Street

Site of original Central Pacific depot of 1877. Southern Pacific depot beginning in the 1880's, and Amtrak depot until the opening of the new station nearby in 2001. The locomotive across the street represents steam trains that passed through in large numbers in the 1880 - 1950 era.

Martinez Historical Society Plaque #6 Reads: First located here April 28, 1876 by Central Pacific RR. First passenger train passed through on September 25, 1877 with Leland Stanford aboard.

Southern Pacific 1258

Southern Pacific steam locomotive number 1258 was one of 38 SP built S-12 switch engines. It was one of 6 built in SP's Los Angles shop's as LA Shop job # 8. Weighing nearly 80 tons, and operating at 200 psi steam pressure the 1258 and her sisters were the state of the art of steam efficiency at their time of conception in 1921. She spent most of her life working in the northern California area. Southern Pacific retired all of it's steam power by 1956, and the 1258 sat on the deadline track at Oakland yard waiting for the scrappers torch, when in 1959 she was donated to the City of Martinez as a museum piece. She was moved to Rankin Park in the hills of Martinez, where she sat until being moved adjacent to the Southern Pacific, now Union Pacific main line at the Martinez Amtrak station in the mid 1980's. She now sits there with her tender, a wooden Santa Fe boxcar, and a Santa Fe caboose. Vandalism took a good part of her features away, but a group of local residents went to work painting her up and today she sits as pretty as she has been in years.