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 interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled rail cars 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 North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Poland. 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 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 California State Railroad Museum is a museum in the state park system of California, United States, interpreting the role of railroads in connecting California to the rest of the nation. It is located in Old Sacramento State Historic Park at 111 I Street, Sacramento.
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 California capital, Sacramento. In its operation it ran directly on the streets of Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, Chico, and Woodland and ran interurban passenger service until 1941 and freight service into the 1960s.
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 Tidewater Southern Railway was a short line railroad in Central California in the United States. For most of its history, it was a subsidiary of the Western Pacific Railroad. It was originally built as an interurban system, connecting to the Central California Traction Company, Western Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Railroad and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in Stockton, California. Its mainline went southeast from Stockton to Escalon, California and thence to Modesto, California before splitting into two branches ending at the towns of Turlock and Hilmar. Until the mid-1930s, there were plans to extend the line to Fresno and even toward the Los Angeles area. Today, much of the line is still operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. Of all the former interurban railroads in California, the former Tidewater Southern retains the highest percentage of still operating trackage.
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.
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 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 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 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 line between Vallejo and West Sacramento, California. Terminal sites were purchased in Fairfield, Suisun, Vacaville, and Vallejo, California; but the 1906 San Francisco earthquake temporarily prevented further construction. The company had become a subsidiary of the Sacramento Northern Railway predecessor Northern Electric Railway by the time construction resumed. A single tram lettered Vallejo & Northern # 1 operated in downtown Sacramento from 15 November 1911 until 1914. Construction of what would become the Sacramento Northern Willotta branch began in 1911; and rails were laid in 1913. A steam train operated over track from a dock on Suisun Bay toward Fairfield from February until the line was electrified in June. 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. 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 Willotta branch was relocated during construction of Travis Air Force Base in 1942, and diesel locomotives replaced electric operation in 1947.
