What freight traffic is like in the Bay Area depends on what part of the Bay Area you are asking about. From what I have heard, there is not much on the peninsula, only one local per day. However, there is plenty of freight on the east side of the bay. The Coast Line technically goes from Burbank Junction to San Francisco. However, most, probably all, freight diverts off to the Mulford Line or Milpitas/Hayward Lines up the east side of the bay to Oakland, there it goes on the Sacramento Line to Roseville.
BNSF also comes in from Stockton, across Contra Costa county to Richmond, then has trackage rights down to Oakland.
How true!! Seems like its mostly commuter traffic between San Jose and San Francisco. Most of the rest of the traffic, like you say, cut inland towards Oakland on either the Mulford line or Milpitas/Hayward lines.
The California Northern still runs on former Southern Pacific trackage on the Vallejo/Napa line (northeast part of the Bay Area). All the former Northwestern Pacific trackage (which served the north part of the Bay Area has been removed or is no longer in service. The San Ramon branch (running through Concord, Danville, etc.) is gone, as well as the Southern Pacific trackage over Altamont Pass (but the former Western Pacific tracks are still there, as the Union Pacific acquired both WP and SP.) The Southern Pacific (now UP) Monaco route (running through Antioch to the Central Valley) is no longer used for through freights, but the BNSF (former ATSF) mainline operates on a similar route. Heavy industry and produce processing (with petroleum refining the exception) has largely exited the Bay Area. There are lots of passenger operations still here, and freight trains consist of a large proportion of container cars going to and from the East Bay ports.
Addendum to my above message…While there are several large refineres in the Bay Area (Richmond, Rodeo, Martinez, Benicia, all in the northeast part of the Bay Area), production is shipped primarily by pipeline and truck. While I notice tank cars parked by the refineries, I can’t recall seeing any operating trains with many tank cars in the consist.
I think they set them out (BARRIC) and pick them up (RICBAR) at Pittsburg for interchange with SP. When I was there in 1999, there was a yard that connected to the SP tracks and BNSF tracks that had hordes of tankcars. Is there anywhere where one can view Ozol Yard from public property?
As a local resident of the southern SF Bay area I can
give you the following first-hand information about
where the UP operates the main line freight trains.
The former Southern Pacific SF Peninsula main line is
currently owned and operated by the
Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board
which is known to the public as Caltrain.
North of CP Coast in downtown Santa Clara
(next to Santa Clara University)
the Caltrain line is about 98 percent commuter traffic
and ALMOST NO FREIGHTS use this line.
The SP and now UP currently operates about
two (2) local freights over the Caltrain line in the
evening and overnight hours as far north as the
small South San Francisco yard (sidings).
The South SF Yard is located just across from the
Caltrain South SF platform which is located
under the Grand Ave (road) overpass.
The Caltrain JPB purchased the San Jose to San Francisco
mainline from the SP back on July 1st 1992.
The UP currently operates almost all coast line freight traffic
south from Newark thru the small town of Alviso to
the CP Coast junction in Santa Clara where they enter
the joint trackage which is currently dispatched by
the Caltrain “Amtrak San Jose Control operator south”.
The former SP mainline thru downtown Milpitas
is a slow speed line that is only used by very few
local freghts. The 99 percent of coast mainline traffic
heading north from San Jose all runs through the
mostly single-track Alviso route.
This includes ALL passenger and freight traffic
(Amtrak Capitol corridor , ACE commuter and Amtrak Coast Starlights).
Currently Amtrak San Jose control dispatches ALL mainlines
thru the San Jose area which covers from
CP Coast to the Caltrain Tamien platform area which
is located at W Alma Ave in south San Jose.
San Jose Control North controlls the C
The norm for the oil train is 78 cars. It consists of 6 strings of 13 cars. If one car in the string id Bad Ordered, the whole string gets set out. This is usually the reason for a shortened oil train. Sometimes the plant can’t load a string and it is left at the plant while the rest are picked up by an EXTRA crew out of San Luis Obispo and taken into town for the Main line Pool crew to L.A.
To ERICSP
The road paralleling the Ozol yard has been closed for years due to landslides. The road ends, for vehicular traffic, at a quarry a couple of miles southeast of Port Costa and at the cemetary at the northwest end of Martinez. I have seen bicyclists coming off the road at the Port Costa end, so the closed portion is probably open to cyclists and pedestrians. However, the road above Ozol is up along the hillside and it is likely that thick tree cover hampers good views of the yard. I don’t know how far you can get down the cliff to get closer to the tracks. I’m sure the best views would be from a tall boat in the Carquinez Strait. Various passenger trains go through the yard (on the SP/UP mainline), so a quick view could be gotten from the train (would probably need several trips to take it all in).
I live north of denver there is a large oil refinery in commerce city north and east of denver there are always oil tank cars coming and going on the bnsf and the up to service this industry>>>>>glenn-bob