Back in the Limelight : Neon Soul Mates With a Colorful Past Are Basking in the Glow

December was a big month for neon nostalgia in San Diego.

Shortly after 5 p.m. Dec. 19, the famous Frank the Trainman sign lit up on Park Boulevard, near where Washington and Normal streets converge with El Cajon Boulevard.

A few nights earlier, as if to herald the re-emergence of her brother the Trainman, the equally famous 50-foot-high majorette--which once anchored the entrance to the old Campus Drive-In--was turned on as the centerpiece of a flashy new theater complex.

Frank the Trainman is a bit older, having first lit up in 1946. The majorette followed two years later.

Electric Soul Mates

The pair are electric soul mates, and they have inspired tube-loads of nostalgia among neon enthusiasts behind the big push to save both signs.

Richard Hartley is senior vice president of Mission Federal Credit Union, which just opened new offices where the Frank the Trainman shop was once situated, at 4310 Park Blvd. Hartley’s company purchased the site from Jim Cooley, owner of Frank the Trainman, which sells model trains.

“We just wanted a branch location next to the city schools’ administration offices,” Hartley said. “We had no idea we’d be walking into a public relations disaster. We didn’t want to be the bad guys who marked the end of Frank the Trainman.”

Public opinion tilted the credit union in favor of buying the sign, along with the property on Park Boulevard. So, the Frank the Trainman sign is now the centerpiece of a credit union’s new building. Cooley, sans sign, has moved his shop down the street from where it used to be.

Hartley points out that the sign is the fourth-oldest animated neon sign in the world and was celebrated at the 1982 World’s Fair in Tennessee.

The “train actually appears to move,” he said. “The little bars on it move. The sign depicts Engine 99 pulling a coal car down the tracks. The wheels really appear to turn.”

Asked the Old-Timers

Hartley said the sign was sent to California Neon and “brought up to code, with modern touches thrown in. They even had to go to some of their older employees to learn how to do it just right.”

The majorette is twirling her baton at the new Mann Theatres complex at the Marketplace at The Grove shopping center in East San Diego. Neon preservationists were militant about keeping the majorette intact.

She, too, is animated--the baton appears to really twirl. She and the baton had been in jeopardy since the 1983 demise of the Campus Drive-In on El Cajon Boulevard, near San Diego State University. The redux sign is credited to the Save Our Neon Society, which says neon is making a serious comeback in San Diego.

Check out Horton Plaza, say the neon believers. Check out Mission Valley.

Like the drive-in itself, the majorette was born in 1948. Movies played for years behind her back, as did children, who scampered on the playground beneath the screen.

“The majorette and Frank the Trainman are beautiful,” Hartley said. “It’s almost as if a little bit of our history is back on, after being off for a good long while. Let’s look at both and see them as the celebration of the past that they’re meant to be.”