How far north do they haul freight from San Jose to San Francisco, if any ?
What is the best map to show railroading in this area ?
The company I used to work for owned hi-cube warehouse buildings in Oakland, Hayward, and Santa Clara, that we leased to multi occupancy tenants. I was Project manager/leasing agent for all three properties during th 3 years I worked there, and during that time became very familiar with the freight/distribution game all around the bay area, during my efforts to locate tenants.
As far as rail on the Peninsula goes, I know we had rail at the Santa Clara facility, and if memory serves, I think there were rail served buildings as far north as Burlingame and South San Francisco.
But, you ask ‘how far north do they haul freight to SanFranciso?’ which makes me think you are talking “incoming” goods and merchandise.
Space is at such a premium and the rents consequently so high, that no one operates a facility there unless they HAVE to. Most of the distribution facilities that supply materials, merchandise, and consumer goods to San Franciso from “points east” made a mass exodous to the East Bay long ago , in pursuit of cheaper rents.
Oakland, Richmond, San Leandro, Hayward, and Union City have become San Francisco’s “loading dock”, with the final distribution being via truck over the San Mateo and the Bay bridge…
There is (or at least there was) a rail line that paralleled King St, past where Pacific Bell park is, then along the docks, under the Bay bridge, and out beside the Embarcadero to Fishermans Warf, that I remember seeing, and driving across, but can’t recall ever seeing an actual live train ever running on it.
Speculating, but it was probably a relic from the days when the Port of SF was a major happening freight terminal. You can look directly across the bay to see where that action
In South San Francisco I noticed several warehouses and a large container facility on the bay which I thought might have some freight service.
Los Angeles to San Diego they haul freight over the commuter line at night, I thought they might do the same for the cities north of San Jose.
Thank for your reply. My interest is in the switch yards, accounts, distribution, loading and unloading facilites. Which I would like to find a good map for.
You have a very fasinating area to live in. It’s very dull here in Flagstaff Arizona we only have one dog food plant and the BNSF main line to watch.
Yes, it is a fascinating place to live, …wish I still lived there[yeah]
I’ve lived in 6 major metro areas over my career, and the SF Bay area was by far my favorite. Nowadays I live in Indiana…
As far as “maps” go, I can’t think of any “railfan specific” guidemap to suggest, but one standard that tends to be the choice of commerce is the “Thomas Register”, which was an invaluable guide to me when making door to door sales calls looking for industrial/distribution space users who might be unhappy with their present building(s)
I hoofed just about every industrial developement from Richmond all around the bay to South San Francisco, andit is a mega cool place.
We had Southern Pacific at all three facilities, and a self destructive set of policies by the Railroads seems to be cutting their own throats. Again, we owned large buildings that we subdivided and rented to mid to large sized (50,000-300,000 sq ft) users. If the aggregate use of the rail sidings by all tenants did not add up to a sufficient volume suitable to the railroad, they started trying to bill us, the property owner for exhorbinant “switch maintenance” fees, etc. As a direct result of that, I ended up terminating the relationship with SP at our Hayward facility and paving over the rail siding, providing more parking area for,…you guessed it “trucks”. It was not something I was particularly fond of doing, but the owner was dead set on not letting the rail company stick him with a fee he didn’t feel like paying for them,…and , the extra parking area did come in handy. Couldn’t help but to think at the time"And the rail companies wonder why they are loosing so much marketshare to trucks?"
Anyway, back to your curiousity. Hey, I can understand your curiousity with specific geography , I get that way too sometimes, when I wanna know about something, I just plain want to know because that’s what I’m curious about. And people telling me differently is not muc
Photo of Western Pacific’s christening of the California Zephyr on SP tracks. The only time the Zephyr reached SF. These tracks have been replaced by light rail. A few blocks north is a roundhouse converted to offices.
India Basin is SF’s remaining port about 2 miles South of Ferry building, mainly it handles shallow draft ships that sail upriver in China. It has rail connections. Not too long ago, I saw a local frieght 3 cars long just South of 4th and Townsend
There are piers on the left and the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge are in the background. I think the Zephyr is on State Belt Rairoad track.
The State Belt ran all the way to the Presidio, where my late dad (who was stationed there in WWII) said the Army had about a 10-12 track station built during WWII exclusively for handling hospital trains (Letterman Gen Hospital there was the central receiving hospital for the entire Pacific Theater and got a huge amt of traffic–they got them off the hospital ships, ran them through ASAP and quickly got them on hospital trains for facilities nearer their homes, as was War Dept policy), in addition to the tracks for freight delivery to the post. Of course there were freight spurs all along the Embarcadero docks and in the adjacent industrial areas by the waterfront-- WP came over on car floats and had an operation there; SP came up the peninsula. Much nicer now since they ripped down the freeway monstrosity and put in the LRT.
Go on? as in? One of the things I found intersting was the large number of companies who maintained their corporate offices on the peninsula, along side a relatively small “token” distribution center, with their main Distro hub over on the East side of the Bay, a pattern I saw repeated again and again. Seems like most everyone who “could” operate that way, had chosen to do so. Made good economic sense, regardless if they were leasing or building their own buildings, since growth on the peninsula became very expensive.
One part of SF that they tell me is gone now is the old derelict “Hills Bros” coffee building at the west end of the Bay Bridge, very near the site of the photo others in this thread have posted. It’s been since 1992 that I last was there, but I’d really miss that old landmark I had become so accustomed to seeing.
Aunty Gates-
I believe the Hills Bros building still exists. It was recently converted into offices…
LC
Here’s the Hill’s Brothers building, look closely and you can see the COFFEE sign.
It has a Gordon Biersh brew pub in front. The gigantic bow and arrow is a gift from the owners of the GAP and something to contemplate for those on the Bay Bridge coming to SF for the first time.
I thought that the Thomas Register was a book listing corporations. Do you mean Thomas Guide? If so, Thomas Brothers has been bought out by Rand-McNally. They now have three levels of detail with only the most detailed maps showing the rails. For those of you outside of the Western US, Thomas Guides only cover the Western US and Washington DC.
There used to be a magazine (8-1/2"x5-1/2") called SP Review, occasionally they would have reports on the SP on the peninsula. Unfortunately, it folded a couple of years ago.
DeLorme’s Northern California atlas shows the area in some detail, including most of the “now gone” spurs in the area. I rode CalTrain on this route in 2001; I don’t specifically recall much in the way of active sidings north of the Santa Clara yard.
The former Bayshore yard (just south of the San Francisco city limit) was tall grass/weeds with some remnants of rail hardware here and there.