The interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled railcars which run within and between cities or towns. The term "interurban" is usually used in North America, with other terms used outside it. They were very prevalent in many parts of the world before the Second World War and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution, when most roads between towns, many town streets were unpaved, and transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts.
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 Key System was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines in the East Bay, and commuter rail and bus lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco by a ferry pier on San Francisco Bay, later via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles (106 km) of track. The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
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.
The Central California Traction Company is a Class III short-line railroad operating in the northern San Joaquin Valley, in San Joaquin County, California. It is owned jointly by the Union Pacific and BNSF Railway.
The Shipyard Railway was an electric commuter rail/interurban line that served workers at the Richmond Shipyards in Richmond, California, United States, during World War II. It was funded by the United States Maritime Commission and was built and operated by the Key System, which already operated similar lines in the East Bay. The line ran from a pair of stations on the Emeryville/Oakland border – where transfer could be made to other Key System lines – northwest through Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, and Richmond to the shipyards. It operated partially on city streets and partially on a dedicated right-of-way paralleling the Southern Pacific Railroad mainline.
The East Bay Electric Lines were a unit of the Southern Pacific Railroad that operated electric interurban-type trains in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning in 1862, the SP and its predecessors operated local steam-drawn ferry-train passenger service in the East Bay on an expanding system of lines, but in 1902 the Key System started a competing system of electric lines and ferries. The SP then drew up plans to expand and electrify its system of lines and this new service began in 1911. The trains served the cities of Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro transporting commuters to and from the large Oakland Pier and SP Alameda Pier. A fleet of ferry boats ran between these piers and the docks of the Ferry Building on the San Francisco Embarcadero.
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.
The East Troy Electric Railroad is an interurban heritage railroad owned and operated by the East Troy Railroad Museum. Passenger excursions run on a 7-mile (11 km) stretch of track from East Troy to Mukwonago, Wisconsin.
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 Fox River Trolley Museum is a railroad museum in South Elgin, Illinois. Incorporated in 1961 as R.E.L.I.C., it opened in 1966 and became the Fox River Trolley Museum in 1984.
The Indiana Transportation Museum was a railroad museum that was formerly located in the Forest Park neighborhood of Noblesville, Indiana, United States. It owned a variety of preserved railroad equipment, some of which still operate today. ITM ceased operations in 2023 and the line is now owned and operated by the Nickel Plate Express.
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."
W. L. Holman Car Company was a streetcar and cable car manufacturer based in San Francisco, California. It mainly built equipment for rail operation, including San Francisco Municipal Railway's first publicly owned streetcar, and some of the cable cars still operating on San Francisco's California Street line. Holman also constructed heavy interurban coaches and combines that ran on inland California electric railroads including Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad, Sacramento Northern Railway, and Central California Traction Company, as well as the Sierra Railroad, a Common Carrier line which operated out of Jamestown, California.
This article lists the railroads and a timeline of railroad history in Solano County, California.
The Southern California Railway Museum, formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds.
The Vallejo and Northern Railroad was a proposed 58.15-mile (93.58 km) interurban railway line between Vallejo and Woodland, California. The company was incorporated on November 9, 1906, promoted by the same person who put forward the Dixon Branch. Terminal sites were purchased in Fairfield, Suisun, Vacaville, and Vallejo, California. Additionally, the railroad also began planning an extension from Woodland to Sacramento, going on to acquire franchise rights for running on Sacramento streets and purchasing property in Woodland. Despite the swift property acquisition, construction had not commenced, reportedly a result of the Panic of 1907. The company was merged into the Sacramento Northern Railway predecessor Northern Electric Railway in 1909 after Northern Electric floated $10 million worth of bonds in Amsterdam. A single tram lettered Vallejo & Northern # 1 operated in downtown Sacramento from November 15, 1911 until 1914. Construction of what would become the Sacramento Northern Vaca Valley Line began in 1913; and line opened for service on May 16, 1914. Northern Electric combination cars numbered 103, 104, and 22 offered passenger service over this isolated branch until passenger service was abandoned in 1926. Motor #701 pulled carloads of freight transferred from barges and shallow-draft steamboats at Suisun. The line was connected to Sacramento Northern's main line via a new branch between Vacaville and Creed in 1930. Western Pacific Railroad proposed extending the Willotta branch of their Sacramento Northern subsidiary through Jamison Canyon to connect with the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad (P&SR) as late as 1932, but the Great Depression and Northwestern Pacific Railroad purchase of the P&SR prevented such expansion. The connecting line through Cordero was relocated during construction of Travis Air Force Base in 1942, and diesel locomotives replaced electric operation in 1947.
