Atherton's old depot on Dinkelspiel Station Lane reopens on Sunday, October 18, as the Atherton Train Station Museum. The Town is holding a ribbon cutting from 2 to 4 p.m., and you register through the Eventbrite code on the Town's event page. Caltrain formally closed the station in 2020. Since then, the nearest place to catch a train has been Menlo Park.
The building has stood beside the tracks for generations. With the restoration, it faces Town Center instead. The budget shows the shift clearly. Almost every dollar went toward making a 620-square-foot depot work as a place you walk to from the Town Center parking lot, not as a platform you board from.
Where the $400,000 went
The money came from the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board as a $400,000 grant for station-area improvements and possible changes to the building. At its April 19, 2023 meeting, the Town Council voted unanimously to put that grant toward the museum. It awarded the construction contract to Castillo Plumbing, Inc. of Hayward for $302,000, as The Almanac reported. The Town had already committed $96,000 to design.
Design and construction come to $398,000. That leaves $2,000 of the grant for everything else. Staff had flagged about $43,000 in additional work the grant would not cover:
- a mechanical heating and air conditioning unit, which staff said was needed to protect historic displays and electronic equipment
- rehabilitating and painting the existing monument sign
- cleaning and repainting the exterior of the clock
- furnishings
The contract itself covers wood and roof repairs and replacement, interior and exterior improvements, new furniture, and new doors to enclose the building. It also adds restriped accessible parking, a path from Town Center and its parking into the building, and limited landscaping on the track side. Council members agreed the price seemed steep for a building of this size. At $302,000 across 620 square feet, construction works out to roughly $487 per square foot before a single exhibit goes in.
The landscaping on the track side is limited. The new path runs from the parking lot. Enclosing the building with doors turns an open shelter into a room. Taken together, those choices point the station toward Town Center.
A building that has changed jobs before
This isn't the depot's first change of purpose. According to the Town and The Almanac's 2020 history of the station, the site has been rebuilt for each new kind of use:
- 1860s. The Fair Oaks flag stop opens. The Almanac credits the Pacific and Atlantic Railroad, while the Town places Atherton's first station on the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad, a line built largely by Chinese laborers.
- 1906. During the San Francisco earthquake, trains through the station help evacuate thousands of refugees.
- 1913. The railroad puts up a replacement shelter depot.
- 1923. The town incorporates, and Fair Oaks becomes Atherton.
- 1950s. Major changes add new features and move the windows. The Town describes the result as the enclosed depot that generations of commuters came to know.
- 2020. Caltrain closes the station after ridership declines, with the Council's go-ahead.
The two accounts differ somewhat on the building's middle years. The Town's event description traces a path from a modest wood-framed structure with a terra cotta roof to "a unique four-sided glass station, one of the few fully glass-enclosed railroad stations of its time." The Almanac dates a replacement depot to 1913 and major changes to the 1950s. Neither source names an architect or gives a single construction date for the building that stands today.
The Town's own description of the decision is direct:
"Rather than let this important piece of Atherton history disappear, the Town chose to preserve and restore the historic site."
What's planned for 620 square feet
The Town says the museum will cover more than 150 years of railroad history, "from early wood-burning locomotives to today's electric trains." Those electric trains still run past the building. They just don't stop.
The fullest description of the interior is in the Town's October 20, 2021 concept staff report. It laid out three parts. Free-standing displays would cover Atherton before the railroad, including Native American history, settlers, and stagecoach travel. A central display case would hold model trains on a track as a chronological timeline. A short history video would play near seating, and the walls could hold memorabilia. The model-train case was meant to pair engines from each period with photos of the station and its riders, and to end the timeline at the 2020 closure.
For source material, the report proposed drawing on the Atherton Heritage Association, the San Mateo Historical archive, the Menlo Park Historical Society, and the Sacramento Rail Museum archives. It noted that the Heritage Association held photos of the station and a limited amount of memorabilia. One image from that collection, published by The Almanac, shows two children in a wagon at the station in 1906, when it was still Fair Oaks. All of this is plan language from 2021 through 2023. October 18 will be the first public look at what made it into the finished room.
Three years past the centennial
In April 2023, staff estimated construction at four to six months. City Manager George Rodericks cautioned that outfitting the space with memorabilia could take longer. The Council had hoped to open in time for the town's centennial celebration that September. The opening is now set for October 2026, three years after that celebration and six years after the last train stopped.
At the same meeting, Vice Mayor Diana Hawkins-Manuelian pointed out that people already went to the depot to sit, and that changes were needed regardless to make the building safer. Even after service ended, the depot was being used as a place to sit. The restoration formalizes that use with new doors, a path from the parking lot, and climate control for the displays.
Getting there on the 18th, and after
The depot is on Dinkelspiel Station Lane at Town Center. The Town's event page lists only "Atherton, CA 94027" with no street number. The 2023 plan routes visitors from Town Center parking along the new path, with restriped accessible spaces close by. If you're coming by rail, Menlo Park is the closest Caltrain stop.
The Town's calendar listing covers the ribbon cutting and doesn't give regular museum hours. The Joint Powers Board keeps ownership of the property, and Atherton maintains the station area under a Maintenance and Use Agreement, with renovations requiring the board's approval.
Town Center will be busy again eleven days later. The Halloween Spooktacular runs Thursday, October 29, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., with snacks, bounce houses, crafts from Atherton Library, a Police Department costume parade, and a scavenger hunt, according to the Town calendar.
For a sense of the museum's scale, compare it with the Atherton Library's new Children's Garden, which San Mateo County Libraries announced on June 27. The garden covers 6,200 square feet, about ten times the depot's footprint, and cost $682,000. It includes an outdoor classroom linked to the makerspace, a willow hut, a tree house, a branch tunnel, and a climbing boulder. The museum has a single room, and the building has stood in Town Center since the town was called Fair Oaks.
If you're planning a move that involves Atherton's Town Center, from finding your way around it with a new household to timing a sale around the fall calendar, I'm glad to talk it through. Adriana Trenev can help you Schedule a Consultation, and I'm happy to pass along anything I learn about the museum's regular hours as the Town announces them.
