Caltrain is a California commuter rail line serving the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley. The southern terminus is in San Jose at Tamien station with weekday rush hour service running as far as Gilroy. The northern terminus of the line is in San Francisco at 4th and King Streets. Caltrain has 28 regular stops, one limited-service weekday-only stop, one weekend-only stop (Broadway), and one football-only stop (Stanford). While average weekday ridership in 2019 exceeded 63,000, impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been significant: in February 2022, Caltrain had an average weekday ridership of 11,000 passengers.
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 Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.
The establishment of America's transcontinental rail lines securely linked California to the rest of the country, and the far-reaching transportation systems that grew out of them during the century that followed contributed to the state's social, political, and economic development. When California was admitted as a state to the United States in 1850, and for nearly two decades thereafter, it was in many ways isolated, an outpost on the Pacific, until the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869.
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.
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.
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 the company's original route.
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. 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.
Santa Fe Depot in San Diego, California, is a union station built by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to replace the small Victorian-style structure erected in 1887 for the California Southern Railroad Company. The Spanish Colonial Revival style station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a San Diego Historic Landmark. Its architecture, particularly the signature twin domes, is often echoed in the design of modern buildings in Downtown San Diego.
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.
The Oxnard Transit Center, originally known as the Oxnard Transportation Center, is an intermodal transit center in historic downtown Oxnard, California. As a transit hub, the station serves Amtrak and Metrolink trains as well as local and regional buses. Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner from San Luis Obispo to San Diego, Amtrak's Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington, and Metrolink's Ventura County Line from Los Angeles Union Station to East Ventura stop here.
Palo Alto station is an intermodal transit center in Palo Alto, California. It is served by Caltrain regional rail service, SamTrans and Santa Clara VTA local bus service, Dumbarton Express regional bus service, the Stanford University Marguerite Shuttle, and several local shuttle services. Palo Alto is the second-busiest Caltrain station after San Francisco, averaging 7,764 weekday boardings by a 2018 count. The Caltrain station has two side platforms serving the two tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision and a nearby bus transfer plaza.
Santa Clara–Great America station is a train station in Santa Clara, California. It hosts Amtrak's Capitol Corridor trains and Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) trains. The station is close to Levi's Stadium and California's Great America. Amtrak service to Santa Clara began on May 21, 1993.
Gilroy station is a Caltrain station located in Gilroy, California, United States. It is the southernmost terminus of the Caltrain system, and is only served during weekday rush hours in the peak direction, with trains going toward San Francisco in the morning and returning southbound in the evening. The station building was constructed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1913 and restored in 1998. Future plans call for extended Amtrak Capitol Corridor service to also stop at Gilroy. The station was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 as Gilroy Southern Pacific Railroad Depot.
Salinas station, also known as the Salinas Intermodal Transportation Center, is an intermodal transit center in downtown Salinas, California, United States. As a transit hub, the facility is a passenger rail station and bus station.
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 Suntan Special was a summer excursion train service operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, California, from 1927 to 1959.
The Monterey County Rail Extension is a planned commuter rail extension that would bring Caltrain passenger service south of its existing Gilroy, California terminus to Salinas in Monterey County, using the existing Coast Line owned by Union Pacific (UPRR). Implementation of the rail extension will occur over three phases, starting from Salinas and moving north. When construction is complete, there will be four trains operated over the extended line per weekday: two northbound trains that depart from Salinas and travel to San Francisco in the morning, and two southbound trains that return to Salinas in the afternoon.
