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Rails to San Francisco Bay by Demoro & Sappers Soft Cover 1992
Rails to San Francisco Bay by Harre W Demoro & Vernon J Sappers
Soft Cover
96 pages
Copyright 1992
CONTENTS
East From The Golden Gate 4
Southern Pacific 20
Key System48
Switching Railroads 56
Western Pacific 58
Santa Fe 64
Sacramento Northern72
Petaluma & Santa Rosa 76
Northwestern Pacific 80
Napa Valley Electric 86
City By The Gate88
State Belt Railroad92
Epilogue 94
Bibliography 96
EAST FROM THE GOLDEN GATE
"If California ever becomes a prosperous country, this Bay will be the center of its prosperity," Richard Henry Dana wrote in 1840 in Two Years Before The Mast, recalling his visit to California in the mid-1830s.
Indeed, few harbors offer as much solace from weather and opportunities for maritime commerce than San Francisco Bay and the broad inland waterways and rivers that are its tributaries. The waterway is so important that to the Spanish explorers, the discovery of San Francisco Bay in 1769 was crucial in making king and church preeminent in Alta California. Simply by wresting the magnificent harbor from Mexico in 1848, United States control of California was assured and statehood came in 1850.
What was an ideal situation for mariners, however, was a geographic barrier to railroad builders. Because of the terrain, most local and transcontinental trains ended their journeys in trainsheds on ferry wharves along the shore across from San Francisco. Finding a favorable location for a ferry pier often was as important an engineering consideration as the route of the railroad itself.
The presence of the water barrier gave railroading in the nine counties surrounding San Francisco Bay -- Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa,San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma -- a distinctive flavor, because to be in the railroad business also required being in the steamboat business.
Passengers began and ended their journeys on the wooden decks of steam ferries that offered unrivaled views of the San Francisco skyline, Mount Tamalpais and the East Bay hills. The ferry lines competed to serve the tastiest food, with dining car departments of the steam railroads overseeing galleys. Graybeards have long argued that the boats of the electrified Key System commuter line had the best menu on the Bay. A revered corned beef hash recipe was lost when the company's chef, named only Toy, took the secret of the ingredients to his grave.
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