Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad

Billy Jones (1884–1968) spent a lifetime railroading — starting as a 13-year-old engine wiper on the narrow-gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad and rising to engineer on Southern Pacific's Coast Daylight run. In 1939 he found an 18-inch-gauge steam locomotive on the San Francisco docks, a 1905 engine built for the Venice Miniature Railway that was bound for Japan as scrap, and bought it for $100. He and his railroad friends laid out the "Wildcat Railroad" on his Los Gatos prune ranch, and after losing both sons in World War II, Jones ran it for neighborhood children every Sunday in their memory until his death in 1968. The little line drew admirers including Walt Disney, who became a friend and made Jones an honorary engineer on Disneyland's trains for the park's opening weekend in July 1955. After Jones died, local residents formed a nonprofit, bought the railroad, and moved it to Oak Meadow Park in Los Gatos, reopening on July 24, 1970, after nearly two years of restoration that included repurposing a wrecked 89-foot Southern Pacific piggyback flatcar as a bridge over Los Gatos Creek. A mile-and-a-half extension into Vasona Park followed in 1972, and by 1992 the railroad was carrying well over 100,000 riders a year. The 2-spot returned to steam in July 2005 after a ten-year restoration, on its 100th birthday.