Beginnings

All aboard for the Calico & Potomac Railway!

The Calico & Potomac Railway is a western themed ghost town amusement park based on the 30” gauge railway that runs at Calico Ghost Town in the Mojave Desert of Southern California.  Calico was once a subsidy of the Walter Knott themed parks enterprise when he purchased the town in the 1950’s to preserve a part of California History dating back to the 1800’s.  The narrow gauge railway that served the town was originally called the Waterloo Mining Railroad and then became the Daggett-Calico Railroad as it serviced the silver mines in the calico colored mountain range not far from present day Barstow, California. Today the loop of track re-established in the 1950’s by Walter Knott of Knott’s Berry Farm fame is called the Calico and Odessa Railroad, named for the town and the nearby Odessa Canyon.

Since the present day C&O RR is a simple loop of track winding around small desert hills, I decided that this would fit perfectly in a small space under the pergola between my house and the garage.  When I moved into the house four years ago, the space was a flower garden of sorts that was only established to make the house look nice to a new buyer.  No real thought.  Plants in pots set into the ground for a quick splash of color that was not suited for the predominantly shady area through-out the day.  The area receives the morning sun that only lasts about two hours.  The spring rains of Virginia fed the “garden” and the best of indigenous species of weeds took a firm hold, creating an eyesore within a few weeks of when I moved in.  I pulled and raked the small plot several times over a two year period as I thought about what I was going to do with a space that seemed to require more maintenance than my first garden railway I had built at the old home many years earlier (Jan-Feb 1989 Issue of GR).