Relic of San Jose’s Frontier Village may be at dead end
For decades after San Jose’s Frontier Village amusement park closed, the beloved little train had a second life with new owners who rescued it and sent it chugging around a Western-themed strip mall outside Sacramento.
But after the mini locomotive T-boned a minivan and jumped the tracks in the parking lot last week, damaging the front end and frying the electrical system, the future of the 1960s-era train was thrown into doubt.
“It’s the original train from Frontier Village — it’s the last working vestige of that amusement park,” said Bill Glasser, who inherited the train in 2008 when his family bought Burke Junction shopping mall on Highway 50 in Cameron Park. No one was injured, but the train is “kind of
knocked out of operation.”
Whether he’ll get it running to carry passengers again is uncertain, he said.
News of the train’s precarious fate is a blow to longtime San Jose residents nostalgic for Frontier Village, a 39-acre park that operated from 1961 to 1980 in southeast San Jose and symbolized a bygone era of simpler times before the city fancied itself as the Capital of Silicon Valley.
“Oh man, it would be a shame if they closed that train down,” said Mat Lindstedt, 51. He is part of a devoted group of locals who fondly remember Frontier Village as well as San Jose before it succumbed to urban sprawl.
Frontier Village fans
More than 13,000 people are members of the “Remembering Frontier Village” Facebook page, and diehards gather each summer for a Frontier Village reunion at Edenvale Garden Park to reminisce about Indian Jim’s Canoe ride, the Lost Dutchman Mine Ride, the Silver Dollar Saloon. Lindstedt remembers when stuntmen would jump on the five-car, 30-gauge train and pretend to rob passengers.
“The train really was the landmark of Frontier Village. When you walked in, the first thing you saw was the train station,” he said. “It looped around the park, and as a 12-year-old boy in the early ‘70s, it was a big deal to be on that train.”
It’s one of the few such trains — including one at Pixie Woods in Stockton — made by the Arrow Development Corp. of Mountain View, which built Disneyland’s Matterhorn ride.
When a photo of the train/SUV crash showed up on Twitter, it was reposted to the group’s Facebook page. “That engine survived many ‘off track’ excursions over the FV years … hopefully lives to see another round trip!” commented
one former Frontier Village employee.
When the park shut down in 1980 and the owners held “The Last Roundup” to sell off all the rides and equipment, Jerry Burke of Cameron Park bought the train and shipped it up to his Burke Junction strip mall. He installed the track and for years, passengers looped around the shopping center’s nail salons and restaurants.
The train had been out of commission for nine years when Burke sold the strip mall to Bill Glasser and his family in 2008. Glasser’s brother, Richard, was the train fanatic and insisted the family restore it and get it running — at a cost of about $150,000.
“I was the one family member who said this is a terrible idea and I’m going to have to manage it, which is true,” Glasser said Tuesday. “But they said the whole shopping center is around that train. It’s beloved in the community.”
When his brother died suddenly before the restoration was complete, Glasser felt even more compelled to honor his brother and fulfill his legacy. “It took another 10 months and a massive effort”
to restore the train, he said. “It was cuckoo, absolutely cuckoo.”
The little train pulled him in, however.
“Yes, I did buy a full conductor’s outfit, OK? Yes, I found a whistle that people used for trains. And yes, I found a vintage ticket puncher,” Glasser said. “There’s something to be said for watching a little kid’s face light up and see them jump up and down and go ga-ga over the thing.”
He loves the train, he said. “I love parts of it. But the breakdowns and some of these accidents, they’re fender benders, but … it’s well past 50 years old.”
Collision at crossing
A contractor had been operating the train last week when it collided with the passenger door of a red van. The crossing arms apparently didn’t go down as they should have and the train operator didn’t brake in time to avoid the accident, Glasser said.
A tow truck had to lift the locomotive back onto the rails, but it was too damaged to move on its own. A group pushed the train back into the station.
“Now everything is offline to get this train fixed and see what we’ll do next,” Glasser said. “We gotta fix it. I’m in too deep.”
If his mechanic can fix it, Glasser said he might just operate the train on special occasions instead of every weekend. But part of him would rather get rid of it and turn the train station building into a drivethrough coffee shop.
“It’s an antique, for God’s sake. It requires love — a lot of loving, which means money,” Glasser said. Charging only $3 or $4 for a train ride means “it’s not exactly a revenue hero.”
That’s why he thinks it’s time to donate the train to someone else, like a community group “who would love it and care for it,” he said.
Linstedt, who organizes the Frontier Village reunions each year, says he plans to reach out to Glasser to see if he and his group can do anything to help fix the train or encourage him to keep it running.
“I hope they can figure out a way to save it,” he said. “It would mean a lot to a lot of people.”