The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route in Northern California operated by Amtrak between San Jose, in the Bay Area, and Auburn, in the Sacramento Valley. The route is named after the two points most trains operate between, San Jose and Sacramento. The route runs roughly parallel to I-880 and I-80. Some limited trips run between Oakland and San Jose. A single daily round trip runs between San Jose and Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.
The Illinois Terminal Railroad Company, known as the Illinois Traction System until 1937, was a heavy duty interurban electric railroad with extensive passenger and freight business in central and southern Illinois from 1896 to 1956. When Depression era Illinois Traction was in financial distress and had to reorganize, the Illinois Terminal name was adopted to reflect the line's primary money making role as a freight interchange link to major steam railroads at its terminal ends, Peoria, Danville, and St. Louis. Interurban passenger service slowly was reduced, ending in 1956. Freight operation continued but was hobbled by tight street running in some towns requiring very sharp radius turns. In 1956, ITC was absorbed by a consortium of connecting railroads.
San Jose Diridon station is the central passenger rail depot for San Jose, California. It also serves as a major intermodal transit center for Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley. The station is named after former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod Diridon Sr.
The Coast Line is a railroad line between Burbank, California and the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly along the Pacific Coast. It is the shortest rail route between Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Though not as busy as the Surf Line, the continuation of the Coast Line southbound to San Diego, it still sees freight movements and lots of passenger trains. The Pacific Surfliner, which runs from the San Diego Santa Fe Depot to San Luis Obispo via Union Station in Los Angeles, is the third busiest Amtrak route, and the busiest outside of the Northeast Corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston.
The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad (SF&SJ) was a railroad which linked the communities of San Francisco and San Jose, California, running the length of the San Francisco Peninsula. The company incorporated in 1860 and was one of the first railroads to employ Chinese laborers in its construction. It opened the first portion of its route in 1863, completing the entire 49.5-mile (80 km) route in 1864. The company was consolidated with the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870. Today, Caltrain and the Union Pacific Railroad continue to operate trains over part of the company's original route.
The Sacramento Northern Railway was a 183-mile (295 km) electric interurban railway that connected Chico in northern California with Oakland via the state capital, Sacramento. In its operation it ran directly on the streets of Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, Chico, and Woodland. This involved multiple car trains making sharp turns at street corners and obeying traffic signals. Once in open country, SN's passenger trains ran at fairly fast speeds. With its shorter route and lower fares, the SN provided strong competition to the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific Railroad for passenger business and freight business between those two cities. North of Sacramento, both passenger and freight business was less due to the small town agricultural nature of the region and due to competition from the paralleling Southern Pacific Railroad.
Santa Clara Transit Center is a railway station in downtown Santa Clara, California. It is served by Caltrain, Amtrak Capitol Corridor, and Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) trains. It is the planned terminus for the Silicon Valley BART extension into Santa Clara County on the future Green and Orange Lines. The former station building, constructed in 1863 by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad, is used by the Edward Peterman Museum of Railroad History.
The Oakland Long Wharf was an 11,000-foot railroad wharf and ferry pier along the east shore of San Francisco Bay located at the foot of Seventh Street in West Oakland. The Oakland Long Wharf was built, beginning 1868, by the Central Pacific Railroad on what was previously Oakland Point. Beginning November 8, 1869, it served as the west coast terminus of the First transcontinental railroad. In the 1880s, Southern Pacific Railroad took over the CPRR, extending it and creating a new ferry terminal building with the official station name Oakland Pier. The entire structure became commonly and popularly called the Oakland Mole. Portions of the Wharf lasted until the 1960s. The site is now part of the facilities of the Port of Oakland, while passenger train service operates at the nearby Jack London Square/Dellums Station and another nearby station in Emeryville.
The Peninsular Railway was an interurban electrified railway in the U.S. State of California in the United States of America. It served the area between San Jose, Los Gatos, and Palo Alto, comprising much of what is today known as "Silicon Valley". For much of its existence it was a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
The South Pacific Coast Railroad (SPC) was a 3 ft narrow gauge steam railroad running between Santa Cruz, California, and Alameda, with a ferry connection in Alameda to San Francisco. The railroad was created as the Santa Clara Valley Railroad, founded by local strawberry growers as a way to get their crops to market in San Francisco and provide an alternative to the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1876, James Graham Fair, a Comstock Lode silver baron, bought the line and extended it into the Santa Cruz Mountains to capture the significant lumber traffic coming out of the redwood forests. The narrow-gauge line was originally laid with 52-pound-per-yard (26 kg/m) rail on 8-foot (2.44 m) redwood ties; and was later acquired by the Southern Pacific and converted to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge.
Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad was a 600 volt DC electric interurban railway in Sonoma County, California, United States. It operated between the cities of Petaluma, Sebastopol, Forestville, and Santa Rosa. Company-owned steamboats provided service between Petaluma and San Francisco.
The Arkansas Valley Interurban Railway (AVI) was an interurban railway that operated in Kansas, United States, from 1910 to 1938 for passengers and to 1942 for freight, running between Wichita, Newton, and Hutchinson. It operated a small fleet of electrically powered passenger and freight equipment. Service was suspended during World War II and never resumed, except on a small portion owned the Hutchinson and Northern Railroad which is still in operation. (2020)
San Mateo station is the northernmost of the three Caltrain stations in San Mateo, California. It is in downtown San Mateo.
The San Francisco, Napa and Calistoga Railway, later briefly reorganized as the San Francisco and Napa Valley Railroad, was an electric interurban railroad in the U.S. state of California. In conjunction with the Monticello Steamship Company, the railway offered a combined rail- and ferry-service called the "Napa Valley Route."
The North Bank Depot Buildings, in central Portland, Oregon, United States, are a pair of buildings formerly used as a freight warehouse and passenger terminal for the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S). Formed in 1905, the SP&S was commonly known as the North Bank Road during the period in which these buildings were in use. The Portland buildings' passenger facilities were also used by the Oregon Electric Railway after that railway was acquired by the SP&S. Located in what is now known as the Pearl District, the buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. They were in use by the SP&S and its successor, Burlington Northern Railroad, from 1908 until the 1980s. Only the east building was used as a passenger station, and this usage lasted from 1908 until 1931.
The Los Angeles Pacific Railroad (1896−1911) (LAP) was an electric public transit and freight railway system in Los Angeles County, California. At its peak it had 230 miles (370 km) of track extending from Downtown Los Angeles to the Westside, Santa Monica, and the South Bay towns along Santa Monica Bay.
The Third and Townsend Depot was the main train station in the city of San Francisco for much of the first three quarters of the 20th century. The station at Third Street and Townsend Street served as the northern terminus for Southern Pacific's Peninsula Commute line between San Francisco and San Jose and long-distance trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles via the Southern Pacific's Coast Line. For service for destinations to the north, such as Seattle, and destinations to the east, such as Chicago, passengers generally needed to travel to Oakland, initially on ferries to Oakland Long Wharf, and later on buses to 16th Street Station. It was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by the Caltrain commuter station a block away at Fourth and King Streets.
The Portal, also known as the Downtown Rail Extension (DTX), is a planned second phase of the Salesforce Transit Center. When complete, it will extend the Caltrain Peninsula Corridor commuter rail line from its current northern terminus at 4th and King via a 1.3-mile (2.1 km) tunnel. The new terminus will be near the Financial District and will provide intermodal connections to BART, Muni, Transbay AC Transit buses, and long-distance buses. In addition, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) plans to use DTX and the Caltrain-owned Peninsula Corridor for service on the CHSRA San Francisco–San Jose segment. The Caltrain Modernization Program (CalMod), which included electrification of the line and acquisition of electrified rolling stock, was a prerequisite, since the former diesel locomotives were not suitable for use in a tunnel.
