The Sacramento Northern Railway (reporting mark SN) was a 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.
History
Summary
The Sacramento Northern (SN) was an electrified interurban railroad in California that extended from Oakland north to Chico. A classic interurban in that it ran down the center of city streets in a number of towns, the SN was also a heavy duty electric railroad that moved considerable freight tonnage. There were three branches, one to Woodland, one to Colusa, and one to Oroville. The SN had been two separate interurban companies connecting at Sacramento until 1925. The Oakland, Antioch, and Eastern Railway was a catenary-wire powered line that ran from Oakland through a tunnel in the Oakland hills to Moraga, Walnut Creek, Concord, Pittsburg, to Sacramento. It was renamed the San Francisco-Sacramento Railroad briefly. The Northern Electric Railway was a third-rail powered line that ran from Sacramento north through Marysville-Yuba City to Chico. The SN crossed the Sacramento River on the Red Gate Bridge. It was renamed the Sacramento Northern Railroad in 1914. In 1928, the two lines combined to become the Sacramento Northern Railway under control of the Western Pacific Railroad which operated it as a separate entity. An extensive multiple-car passenger service operated from Oakland to Chico until 1941 including providing dining car service on some trains. Passenger traffic was heaviest from Sacramento to Oakland. Freight operation using electric locomotives continued into the 1960s. The SN was a typical interurban in that its trains, including freight, ran on downtown city streets in Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, and Woodland. This involved multiple car trains making sharp turns at street corners and obeying traffic signals. Once in open country, SN's passenger trains ran at fairly fast speeds. With its shorter route and lower fares, the SN provided strong competition to the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific railroads for passenger business and freight business between those two cities. North of Sacramento, both passenger and freight business was less due to the small town agricultural nature of the region and due to competition from the paralleling Southern Pacific Railroad.
Detailed history
The original, route connected Chico with Sacramento. The original name of this line was the Chico Electric Railway (CERY), in operation beginning in 1905. CERY was sold in 1905, after a few months of operation, to the newly-formed Northern Electric Railway (NER). The NER went into bankruptcy in 1914, and was reorganized into a new corporation named the Sacramento Northern Railroad (SNRR).
The Western Pacific Railroad (WP) purchased the SNRR in 1922 as a subsidiary and kept the original name. In 1925 the WP created a "new" Sacramento Northern Railway (SNRy), in order to group the growing collection of WP interurban railroad holdings.
The Sacramento Northern Railway was created from two interurban railroads: Northern Electric Railway — the third-rail-powered "North End" from Sacramento north through the agricultural Sacramento Valley to Marysville-Yuba City and Chico from late 1905 to 1918. It became the Northern Division of the SNRy. San Francisco-Sacramento Railroad — the trolley-wire-powered "South End" operated from Sacramento south through farmland, marshes, over a bay by its own ferry, to Pittsburg-Concord, through the Contra Costa County hills and tunnel to Oakland and the Key System ferry pier. In 1928 the San Francisco-Sacramento Railroad (formerly the Oakland, Antioch and Eastern Railway, and originally the Oakland and Antioch Railway) became the Southern Division of the SNRy.
By retaining the Sacramento Northern Railway as a subsidiary rather than just absorbing it into the Western Pacific Railroad, the WP earned more income by interchanging freight with a separate Sacramento Northern Railroad due to extra fees earned from shipper-customers by interchanging freight from one railroad (itself) to another (the Sacramento Northern). Western Pacific also owned regional sister electric railroads, the Tidewater Southern Railway (TS) (Stockton to Modesto) and the Central California Traction Company (CCT) (Stockton to downtown Sacramento). The TS and the CCT used the same downtown Sacramento terminal and ran directly on Sacramento streets.