Del Mar Racetrack
A Day With The De Lara's
Del Mar Racetrack Adventure...
We go to the races wit the De Lara's once a year and just enjoy a day out in the crowds, ride the train, and kibitz for twelve hours straight. See the 2007 is a ProShow movie format! We have picture evidence for 2007 and 2008.
It's
August and the De Lara Gang is headed for Del Mar for an afternoon watching
the horses and attempting to remove a lot of alcohol from circulation!
When Del Mar opened in 1937, Bing Crosby was at the gate to personally greet
the fans. Today it was just Mike attempting to do the same!
In an era when horse racing ranked second in popularity with Americans to
Major League Baseball, the match race was much written and talked about
and was the first nationwide broadcast of a thoroughbred race by NBC radio.
In the race, Seabiscuit was ridden by jockey George Woolf and Ligaroti by
Noel Richardson. In front of a record crowd that helped make the fledgling
Del Mar race track a success, Seabiscuit won an exciting battle by a nose.
By 1940, Del Mar became the summer playground for many Hollywood stars.
Today it is our play ground so lets get to playing. In 1946 Santa
Fe Railroad began offering a racetrack special bringing spectators, bettors
and horses to Del Mar from Los Angeles. That's our mode of transportation.
2007 Highlights!
Here are a few of our photos. Please see the departure from Fullerton train station, at the races, and coming home photos. Some of the participants also sent their Del Mar pictures,
We
caught the train at the Fullerton California station at 9:00 am
A little pre-alcohol breakfast seemed the right thing to do!
The ride was about two hours but it was relaxing to glide by the ocean
at 60 miles an hour
We stopped for a light lunch before the heavy gambling began
Sue is almost in tears with the first class kibitzing going on all day!
Mike really did not do it (whatever it was)
The police knew that the DeLara's were in town so they stepped up the
patrols!
The buss took us to the races and Mike & Margie
continued their careful supervision of the group!
We had to watch these two!
We made it back to "civilization" and had an enjoyable dinner at the train
station.
Highlights 2008
It
is exciting to stand on the loading area and watch a 2,000,000 pound
train flash by at 60 miles and hour!
The trucks are the heaviest things on the train -- each one weighs 37,000 pounds (16,783 kg). The trucks do several jobs. They support the weight of the locomotive. They provide the propulsion, the suspensions and the braking. As you can imagine, they are tremendous structures.
The traction motors provide propulsion power to the wheels. There
is one on each axle. Each motor drives a small gear, which meshes with a
larger gear on the axle shaft. This provides the gear reduction that
allows the motor to drive the train at speeds of up to 110 mph.
We
always enjoy dining at the Tidewater Tavern. Rick provided a load
of entertainment.
Robin
didn't win and we got entertained on the drive back to the train
station.
We
backed up all the way home! It allways seems odd. Everybody
is chilling out!