In one of those tragedies that just leaves you feeling so hollow, a young man — and friend of the vintage streetcars — has been taken from us. His name was Pippin Seales. He was playing with two friends in a cave at Natural Bridges State Park in Santa Cruz on October 11 when it collapsed on them. One friend got out, one was injured, and Pippin was killed. He had just turned 11.
He was a boy with an amazing range of interests according to the remembrance published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. One of those interests was rail transportation:
More than one family vacation was centered around trains: steam railways in Britain, rail travel in California, streetcars in San Francisco. He was passionately interested in public transit, and in the hours he spent planning & working on his model train layout with his father – drawing wiring diagrams, solving design issues, perusing catalogs – he always kept alive the connection between the imaginary world he was creating and the real world of trolleys, buses, streetcars, and trains. He would have made an excellent civil engineer.
Pippin’s family named Market Street Railway as one of the two causes to which donations could be sent in his memory. We have already received a number of them. If you’d like to join in honoring Pippin, you may donate to our acquisition and restoration fund, as Pippin’s family designated.
So sad. 🙁 Makes me cry.
I’ll gladly make a donation.
It was at his birthday party. God.
May his memory be eternal!