Off The Rails: Dreaming of a railroad cafe in Healdsburg

While Eric Ziedrich’s 30-year-dream of owning a rail car has not yet come to fruition, he refuses to give up hope.

The three-term Healdsburg City Councilman, 58, has his heart set on opening a coffee shop/café at the Healdsburg Railroad Depot. All that’s missing is the caboose.

Ziedrich started the search in 1985, the year he purchased a parcel at the corner of Front and Hudson streets, across the street from his business, Healdsburg Lumber. He developed it into the Old Roma Station, now home to 11 wineries and described as where the “river meets the tracks.”

Alongside it is a pie-shaped sliver of property just waiting for his rail car café. The property now is used for storage and as a loading area for trucks serving Healdsburg Lumber, but once SMART trains travel north to Healdsburg, a coffee shop at that location would be well situated to serve commuters waiting for or arriving on the rail line.

Ziedrich has heard that the Healdsburg depot is scheduled for a new façade, parking lot and landscaping, causing his rail car dream to stir anew.

Several years ago, he found an old dining car less than a mile away, on the other side of the river near Bailhache Avenue, but the North Coast Railway Authority wouldn’t give him permission to move it across the Russian River on a railroad bridge, he said.

Transporting it down Healdsburg Avenue would have required road closures and Caltrans permits, escalating the cost by $10,000 and further complicating the process. He walked away from that deal.

Demand for cars has gone up over the years, escalating prices to between $10,000 and $20,000, Ziedrich said. He shifted his search to trolley cars but couldn’t find one of those, either.

Then on a recent visit to San Francisco, a new idea was kindled. He was wandering around in the Noe Valley when he came upon a beer garden in a retrofitted shipping container. He discovered a company in South San Francisco that turns containers into “industrial funk” environments, and found out that there’s a surplus of shipping containers.

Ziedrich is still in the research and planning phase on that concept, but he is taking his time because he doesn’t expect the SMART train to reach Healdsburg any time soon. Current funding will take SMART trains only as far north as Airport Boulevard in Santa Rosa, with a projected start date of 2016.

“It’s not going to happen in the next year,” Ziedrich said with a laugh.

Then he continued wistfully, “But if someone has a reasonably priced caboose, I’m still looking.”

Contact Healdsburg correspondent Ann Carranza at Healdsburg.Towns@gmail.com.

Read more about repurposed rail cars at pressdemocrat.com/news/3095017-181/off-the-rails.