This all came to my attention with a recent San Jose Mercury News article with a headline reading in part: "Much-maligned trolley service gaining popularity." The writer noted that the Valley Transportation Authority light rail parking lots were largely filled along the recently opened 5.3-mile extension of the line to Campbell. The completed segment will go to Vasona Junction, near Highway 85.

So what has all this got to do with Saratoga? Well, there are a couple of factors. One has to do with the feasibility, or lack thereof, in getting a light rail line closer than Vasona Junction. The second has to do with recalling the time when we actually had a trolley line running through town. This is a topic I have dealt with at length in previous columns, one as recently as January of last year, so if this seems too repetitious, feel free to turn the page.

First, as to feasibility. Frankly, I don't see any likelihood of a light rail line getting closer than Vasona Junction, although I suppose it could go all the way into Los Gatos. Light rail is extremely costly to build and the lines themselves are nothing like those that bore the trolleys that used to amble along country roads and through city streets. The cars are big and seem to radiate high-tech. Also the track tends to follow the straightest possible course.

In the Saratoga area, the most likely route would seem to be alongside, or replacing, the railroad tracks that now go only to the Permanente cement plant east of Monta Vista. That would put a light rail station a good mile outside of the Village, but that would be what we had when the train-stops on the line to San Francisco were at Congress Junction on Saratoga Avenue and Azule on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road.

Getting into the other phase of this dissertation, the historical angle, my most recent description, in January 2004, noted that the year marked the centennial of trolley service reaching Saratoga. The line opened as the San Jose-Los Gatos Interurban Railway Co. because the initial line ran between those two cities by way of Saratoga. The "Campbell Short Line," linking that community, opened in 1905.

The first car arrived in Saratoga on March 19, 1904, and the service lasted just 29 years, the last car running on March 11, 1933. One feature of that line played no small role in its ultimate demise. That was the fact that rails were laid alongside or in the middle of county roads, since horseless carriages of the time weren't much of a traffic threat. It saved the promoters from having to purchase right-of-way property from private landowners. By the 1920s and '30s, automobile traffic was a real problem, and there were some fairly serious car-trolley collisions.

The tracks entered Saratoga on Saratoga Avenue and, for the most part, ran down the middle of the road. I can remember an oak tree "tunnel" where limbs were cut in a way to allow passage of the car's overhead trolley. On reaching the Village, the line curved onto Saratoga-Los Gatos Road and the station was where the Village Post Office is today. Going up the hill toward Los Gatos, the track was alongside the road opposite Sheldon Patterson's stone wall (still there), and the vehicular passage was narrow indeed.

Back at the station, there was a switch for the track to continue up Big Basin Way, then Lumber Street, about a mile and a half up the canyon to Congress Springs. Originally the line was planned to serve Congress Hall, the elaborate hotel built near the mineral springs, but that hostelry burned in 1903 and was not rebuilt. The trolley line served the picnic grounds created at the springs, which were open to the public until World War II. They have since been fenced off by the San Jose Water Co.

The original San Jose-Los Gatos Interurban Railway became the Peninsular Railway in 1909. Five years later, a branch was opened, from Saratoga Avenue through Monta Vista and along the present route of Southwest Expressway on up to Palo Alto. There was even an extension from Palo Alto into Stanford University.

There are many stories--call them legends--about the Peninsular Railway, including the one about the cars racing the steam trains along the section adjoining the present Southwest Expressway.