Maybe they ought to create a public agency, like the NCRA.


After nearly 140 years, Vallejo & Mare Island rail service ends

Reply | Forward Message #38418 of 38545 < Prev | Next >

Published Sunday, May 4, 2008, by the Vallejo Times-Herald

Rail service reaches end of line
For nearly 140 years, trains helped Vallejo grow, prosper

By Sarah Rohrs
Times-Herald staff writer

When the last train cars recently rolled out of Mare Island,
something more happened -- Vallejo's once-vital railroad tracks
became completely unused.

Due to a lack of customers on one rail line, and developer Lennar
Mare Island canceling service on the other, California Northern
Railroad is no longer running trains into Vallejo, a company
spokesman said.

After nearly 140 years of freight and passenger rail service in
Vallejo, an era has ended.

"There's no need for it," said California Northern marketing director
Bob Gill. "The little bit of need there was, was on Mare Island. The
bigger users of rail have moved away."

The final rail cars serving Vallejo delivered steel beams and other
goods and equipment to four Mare Island companies. Rail service
stopped on March 31 on tracks between American Canyon and Vallejo
due to the steep $11 million costs of meeting California Public
Utilities Commission standards.

When General Mills closed in 2004, train service halted on the city's
other line running the length of town.

Both tracks -- one from Napa Valley and the other from Suisun City
-- merge at Napa Junction just north of American Canyon. Once in
Vallejo, the tracks run down Broadway for about a mile. Then, at
Flosden in North Vallejo, the line to Mare Island veers to the west;
the other tracks go south to the end of Lemon Street.

Train service was crucial in helping to establish Vallejo, said
Jim Kern, Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum's executive director.

Rail served Solano County's farmers and its early businesses and
also allowed passengers to connect to Napa Valley, Sacramento and
San Francisco, via ferries and steam boats.

"Rail was a big part of Vallejo, particularly before the Carquinez
Bridge opened in 1927, because it wasn't easy to bring any materials
here by highway," Kern said.

Early train service resulted in bustling train stations in South
Vallejo, where numerous bars, repair facilities and the enormous
Frisbie House once operated. A North Vallejo train station also
served early steam locomotives going to Napa Valley.

Trains also played vital parts in Mare Island's ship-building
operations, though rail service on the former naval base ran mostly
on 56 miles of intra-island tracks and service, local historians
said.

Tracks to the capital

Beginning in 1868, the California Pacific Railroad built the line
running from Vallejo to Sacramento. Notable Vallejo businessman
DeWitt Clinton Haskin financed the new rail line, according to
historical reports.

In 1869, California Pacific established its southern terminus in
South Vallejo, where trains were turned around on a turntable at
the foot of Lemon Street. A big palm tree planted by a locomotive
engineer still stands at that spot.

After arriving in South Vallejo, passengers and freight were loaded
onto ferries and steamboats headed for San Francisco and other
points.

Trains and ferries catered to the enormous wheat export trade.

The California Pacific, also known as the Cal-P, operated
independently from 1865 to 1876, until it was taken over by the
Central Pacific and finally sold to Southern Pacific. The present-day
route of the Amtrak Capitol Corridor follows the original Cal-P line
from Suisun to Sacramento, with tracks still visible along Highway 12.

In the late 1860s, Vallejo had grown into a thriving, young
community. The advent of the rail service resulted in more industries
and the city's first "real estate" boom, according to the Vallejo
Naval and Historical Museum.

But stiff competition against Cal-P from Central Pacific eventually
led to Vallejo's decline as a thriving rail center, according to an
account of early Solano County rail history by Thomas Lucy, published
in "The Solano Historian."

As Central Pacific built a parallel line from Suisun Bay to Benicia,
the company also aggressively pursued a takeover of its competitor,
Lucy wrote. Central Pacific eventually prevailed, building the
California-to-Utah portion of the first transcontinental railroad.

After the sale, "the Cal-P was soon in shambles," Lucy wrote. Flooded
tracks from an unusually wet rainy season in Napa and Solano that
year were not repaired quickly, and a large number Vallejo employees
in train-related businesses were laid off.

Locomotive repair and related facilities relocated to Sacramento,
Vallejo's population declined and even workers were laid off on Mare
Island in the few years following the sale.

Meanwhile, Central Pacific completed the Suisun-Benicia line in 1879
after bringing in tons of rock and other fill to lay tracks over
sinking marshes. At the foot of First Street, entire trains were
dismantled and put onto the Contra Costa and Solano ferries.

Mare Island trains

As Vallejo recovered from the early blow, rail continued to serve
Mare Island. Between 1869 and 1919, freight destined for the shipyard
was put onto barges at the South Vallejo train terminus, wrote
historian and author Sue Lemmon in "Sidewheelers to Nuclear Power."

The first rail connecting Mare Island to the mainland came in July
1919, when the Causeway opened and an adjoining trestle carried the
tracks to A Street, Lemmon wrote. The railroad tracks running down
the middle of the three-lane Causeway are now owned by the city.

During the Great Depression, miles of tracks on Mare Island were
built by federal Works Progress Administration crews, with a circle
of continuous rail around the island completed in 1936.

In Mare Island's World War II heyday, train service intensified,
Kern said. Pre-fabricated ships were made in Denver, shipped by
rail to Mare Island and then quickly assembled, he said.

After Vallejo's electric trains stopped running in the 1930s, the
freight line onto Mare Island continued with switches made in North
Vallejo. Following World War II, Southern Pacific asked the Navy to
take over the line due to the dramatic decline in usage, Lemmon
wrote.

In 1904, passengers could ride the Napa Valley Electric Railroad up
Sonoma Boulevard to Napa and Calistoga. A busy train station for the
electric trains existed at Monticello Wharf at the foot of Georgia
Street.

Napa Valley line

As Vallejo grew, crews laid another railroad line to Napa Valley.
Founded by California pioneer and San Francisco millionaire Samuel
Brannan in 1864, the Napa Valley Railroad Co. built 42 miles of
track to bring tourists from San Francisco to Vallejo and then to
Calistoga.

In 1869, the company went into foreclosure and was bought by
California Pacific. Trains ran on tracks alongside the current
Highway 29, now the route of the Napa Valley Wine Train.

Plans for resurrecting service from Vallejo to Napa Valley train
tracks have been studied over the years, but nothing has come to
fruition.

The city of Vallejo owns a 2.5-mile section of tracks running from
Flosden and onto Mare Island. Real estate manager Steve England said
the line could someday be used as a bicycle path, linear garden, or
even for light rail when business intensifies on Mare Island.

In the decades following South Vallejo's early glory days as a train
center, the bay was filled in and the Frisbie House abandoned. The
1868 railroad depot was moved in 1962 to West I Street in Benicia
and converted into a private home.

Today, California Pacific has no immediate plans for tracks serving
the former General Mills plant. At one time, nearly 35 rail cars
came daily to the mill, said former general manager Tom Bartee.

Bartee still holds out hope for an industrial use in the former mill,
but that doesn't appear likely now. Vallejo developer Brooks Street
bought the site with plans for a restaurant, waterfront park and
hundreds of housing units.


Information and photos for this article came from Vallejo Naval and
Historical Museum, the Mare Island Museum, Times-Herald and Vacaville
Reporter archives, and The Solano Historian.