34-year railroad veteran recalls hearing Petaluma trestle ‘pop and creak’

Like many children, Jon Kerruish grew up playing with trains.

“We had the standard Christmas tree with the train running around it,” he recalled.

Kerruish was one of the lucky ones: He turned his childhood love into a career. His grandmother told him to follow his dream.

“And here I am,” he acknowledged, “34 years later.”

Now the freight manager for Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, Kerruish was one of the last engineers to operate a train on Petaluma’s famed trestle. The beloved structure turns 100 this year, a milestone that has renewed calls for its restoration - albeit as a pedestrian path and gathering place, rather than a spot for pedestrians to dodge actual trains, something Kerruish has vivid memories of.

The trestle runs marked just one of Kerruish’s brushes with history in a memorable railroading career, which began in 1987, when he worked for five years building and running the noted Napa Valley Wine Train. After he left, he moved to the California Northern Railroad, where his primary job was the “Petaluma Turn,” the run from Lombard in American Canyon to Petaluma.

“It was six days a week,” Kerruish said, “and we serviced all local customers. Part of my service was to Bar ALE.”

In the 1990s, Bar ALE was located at First and East D streets, on the west side of the drawbridge. Today it’s known as Rivertown Feed. Freight train access to the business was via a spur line for the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad, originally laid in Petaluma’s days as Egg Basket of the World.

According to a 2007 historic structure report, “The spur linked to the P&SR’s main line at approximately Payran Street, ran south and crossed Washington Street, ran across the trestle behind the G.P. McNear Company mill (now the Great Petaluma Mill). After the trestle, the spur continued south and terminated at a turkey farm at approximately H Street (now Foundry Wharf).”

Moving down the spur to Bar ALE was complex. Kerruish explained that operating a train is difficult and exacting.

“When you have mass and weight, it takes time for it to stop,” he said. “You have to plan ahead for whatever comes up.”

By the early 1990s, Kerruish continued, there were a number of challenges including crossing two main arteries, Washington and East D streets, and navigating the trestle.

The trestle, built in 1922, was by that time showing its age. In 1994, freight train service along the spur was stopped, Kerruish said, because the condition of the trestle couldn’t support the weight of the cars and the locomotive at one time.

“It was the most nerve-wracking part,” he said, “being on it, listening to it pop and creak.”

But that wasn’t the only nerve-wracking part.

“The hardest part was cars being parked, or the driver not realizing there was a train, or pedestrians walking in front of the train,” he said.

And then there were children — children who loved trains — who’d dart toward it. Kerruish shook his head at the memory.

“They didn’t understand the train can’t stop,” he pointed out. As a result, “We went very slowly, especially crossing Washington Street.” People wanted to get up close and personal with a real, live moving train. “They’d follow us.”

That, he explained, was why two employees were stationed to stand on the front of the locomotive.

Matt Stevens, communications and marketing manager for SMART, said that the spur is no longer active.

“Part of the line has been severed for a condo complex,” he said.

The current property owner, he went on, removed the tracks.

While Kerruish’s last slow trips are now only cherished railroading memories, the future for rail in Petaluma looks bright. SMART, he said, has expanded into freight as well as passenger traffic, and services Willowbrook Foods, Lagunitas Brewing Company, Hunt & Behrens and Dairymen’s Feed, averaging between 10 and 15 cars of feed grain, barley and malt each week.