After years of trying to split the baby in handling the historic Southern Pacific Depot and relocated railroad tracks, the Sacramento City Council finally did the right thing. The tracks will be moved, and the depot will stay where it is.

The station at Fifth and I streets, built in 1925, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. It has a wonderful mural by John MacQuarrie, "Breaking Ground at Sacramento Jan. 8, 1863, for First Transcontinental Railroad." MacQuarrie also designed the memorial to railroad engineer Theodore Judah at Second and L streets.

The council's earlier split-the-baby solution was to move the tracks and move the depot with them, a distance more than a football field in length. In the end, though, rationality and the high price of a depot move won the day.

Now city officials and the council face another vexing decision. In the railyards project, the developer (Thomas Enterprises) and California State Parks have very different ideas about how tight the track curves should be in connecting Old Sacramento to the proposed new technology museum in the historic Central Shops.

It's a tough area for design, because you have to work with the I Street Bridge, Interstate 5 freeway pillars, switch connections with the Union Pacific main-line tracks, and the Sacramento River flood wall.

The developer wants tight curves, which would limit the kinds of locomotives and rail cars that could be handled on the tracks. State Parks wants curves that have the ability to take the full range of locomotives and rail cars.

The city has included both options in the next phase of track design, which postpones a decision. But a decision has to be made by mid-June, if the city wants to get moving on the track relocation and get $20 million in federal stimulus money.

The city needs to put all the engineers in a room post haste and work this out.

Does the city want to be able to hold events like the Sacramento Railfairs of 1981, 1991 and 1999, and have the ability to host large visiting locomotives and rail cars? The 1999 Railfair event was billed as the largest gathering of steam locomotives in modern times and drew crowds of 180,000 people over the 10-day event.

The next Railfair could come with the opening of the new technology museum – if the city has the right track access for locomotives and rail cars between Old Sacramento and the Central Shops.

The developer wants tight curves so that track doesn't have to run near the site of a hotel it hopes to build near Interstate 5. The developer should pay a visit to the Embassy Suites Hotel on the riverfront promenade at Capitol Mall. There, tracks and the Sacramento Southern steam excursion train run just outside the hotel's restaurant patio. The tracks are not merely tolerated, they're considered an attraction – people like to watch the trains going by.

With strong city leadership from Mayor Kevin Johnson, City Manager Ray Kerridge and City Council members (and perhaps a push from Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento), the developer and State Parks should be able to work this out.

A project that is called "The Railyards" and sits at the terminus of the nation's first transcontinental railroad should embrace as part of the theme the tracks from Old Sacramento to the Central Shops. They can only add to the site's character as a destination.