Off The Rails: Duncans Mills caboose now holds a library

The stately, elegant railroad car near Duncans Mills Station could not have imagined a more complex or distinguished tenant than Doug Carmichael. As to whose story is more fascinating, it’s a toss-up.

The car was built in St. Louis in 1903, 34 years before Carmichael emerged on the scene in New York City. It was one of the North Pacific Coast Railroad’s narrow gauge passenger cars that operated from 1875 to 1930 between Sausalito and Cazadero, serving Valley Ford and Occidental along Dutch Bill Creek.

Once the redwood forests had been mercilessly thinned to build San Francisco Victorians, the railroad stopped carrying timber and replaced it with Bay Area residents who had discovered the west county’s inimitable magic and visited in droves.

This passenger car was purchased in 1957 by the late Mike Contos, who kept it on his trout farm. For a time, it served as the Point Reyes Station library, and in 1975, Toby Giacomini of Toby’s Feed Barn and Toby’s Trucking fame bought the rail car and moved it to downtown Point Reyes.

Six years later, the Millerick brothers of Sebastopol purchased the car and kept it at their boat yard. In 1983, Duncans Mills Trading Company bought it, moving it to its current location in the Duncans Mills Depot Museum.

Doug Carmichael, who with spouse Penny Knapp owns a home near Duncans Mills, explains that “in 2009, a neighbor was using it as a real estate office and offered me half the space and then decided he didn’t want any of it, so I took the whole thing.”

Carmichael and Knapp had recently moved from Whidbey Island, Wash., and had “3,000 books and no place to put them,” he said. “The timing was perfect. The moving truck just moved up to the back of the railroad car, and I off-loaded all the books and spent the next couple of months building a lot of bookcases.”

Carmichael’s svelte passenger car has “North Pacific” painted in large gold letters on its side. “It had red velvet seats with wood paneling throughout, with a separate room whose use is unclear, maybe for the conductor, maybe for baggage, maybe for first class,” he said. He now thinks of the space as a writing studio and painting studio, although most of his books are still there, too.

“I like the word ‘studio’ because it implies things happening,” Carmichael said. “The light inside is terrific.”

During the last countywide Art at the Source open studios event, Carmichael exhibited his original paintings in the train car.

“I have about 40 paintings there,” he said. “It is a fun place to show paintings. People enjoy the strange setting, but mounting them and dealing with getting the proper light will take some experimentation.”

The railroad car continues its static journey on a little sliver of track it shares with a few other railroad cars near the Duncans Mills depot. While Carmichael spends a good deal of time on the road, the car seems content where it’s parked and has no immediate plans to go anywhere.

Contact River Towns Correspondent Stephen D. Gross at sdgross@sonic.net.

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