
History of the Train
“Julian now has stores, public hall, blacksmith-shops, school-houses, quartz-mills, and a telephone line to San Diego. … When the Julian Railroad is completed, it will be a region well worth visiting.” (1888, Walter Lindley, California Of The South.)
The “Julian Railroad” is here, and this is how it happened…
When my wife and I were children, we enjoyed riding on the train at the San Diego Zoo in Balboa park and also the now-removed monorail at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. We’ve also always loved learning about American history, so when our family moved to Smith Ranch, we began cleaning out the old Smith Ranch mine. It had filled in with debris over the years and had only a 24″ crawl space at the top. As we dug near the portal, we discovered remnants of the original door, still in-place, buried in the soil. The wooden door was 3″ thick and had been pried open. It had been hung on an 8×8 timber frame, with the hinges on the right. We also found the lock and hasp the miners’ had used to secure it.
It wasn’t until some years later that we discovered some of the original track in the Smith Ranch mine. We were cleaning out an area of the tunnel around a curve and found two parallel “roots” on the floor. We kept digging. The “roots” turned out to be two, 2×4’s laid on edge. The original miners had actually used wooden railroad track. The 2×4’s the miners used were not like the ones used today, which measure 1 1/2″ x 3 1/2″, but were actually a full 2″ by 4″.
We rebuilt an old flat car found in a shed on the property. It had originally been used to haul an ore bucket by the previous land owners, but our kids now used it for a “rollercoaster ride” out of the mine. After several trips off the end of the track at the tailing pile, we discovered two more pressing needs on the railway: brakes, and a new bridge. And so the SR & J Railroad grew.

It’s taken over two decades of hunting, searching, and building to get the SR & J, or SMITH RANCH & JULIAN GOLD MINING RAILROAD, to where it is today. Wheels, mine rail, and equipment was purchased from rail yards, mines, and museums all over America’s southwest. We have rail made by CF&I (Colorado Fuel & Iron), Illinois Steel, GH&H (Germany), Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company (Pennsylvania), and more. The oldest rail dates back to the time of the American Civil War and has a distinct profile. Some of the rail was brought across America’s first Transcontinental Railroad to the Nevada silver mines in 1884.
Included in the SMITH RANCH & JULIAN RAILROAD, you’ll find a wide variety of rolling stock, including passenger cars, tank cars, timber cars, ore cars, and more. The locomotives are storage-battery powered gold mining and tunneling locomotives. Because they are electric, they are non-polluting and environmentally-friendly. Each locomotive is rated to pull dozens of tons on level track.
The SMITH RANCH & JULIAN RAILROAD is something quite unique and special. The railroad is no longer open to the public. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to own and enjoy this complete, historic gold mining railroad!