On Google I see an abandoned yard on the CalTrans line right north of the San Francisco airport before you get to the tunnels near Bayshore station. On Historic aerials in 1987 the yard was filled with freight cars. In 1993 the entire yard was gone. Did freight business on the peninsula of San Francisco really vanish overnight or was the railroad pushed out for other reasons..typical CA?
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I reckon there's a long story there which involves many factors. Property values and taxes soared, patterns of freight distribution changed. Railroad car ferry operations across the bay became uneconomic. The San Francisco waterfront was no longer a hub for ocean-going freighters. Industries closed or moved out. You could spend all day researching it.
This is the site of the former Western Pacific mole near Oakland, where railroad car ferries were loaded for transport to San Francisco in the left background. The site is now a park. http://www.waterfrontaction.org/learn/parks/mhp.htm
Immediately adjacent to the park is part of a huge container terminal - a sign of changing times. Photos from 2006.
I assume the new container port connects to rail? Or at least an inland rail terminal?
Mike W. posted:I assume the new container port connects to rail? Or at least an inland rail terminal?
Yeah I reckon, but I don't know the story with this pile of gravel on the tracks. Photo from Oakland 2006.
Container ships don't usually load directly to and from trains, it seems. The ports I've seen use "yard tractors" to whisk the containers to a parking spot in the terminal until called for by a highway truck that transfers them to somewhere else.
Probably not many places have a public park next to a big container terminal. Oakland 2006.
https://goo.gl/maps/Kc81KVNVf8H2
Near the dock yards you can see a rail yard where they obviously load containers.
Both UP and BNSF run into the Port of Oakland. I believe that the terminal in Ace's photo is built on UP property. Port of Oakland is 2nd or 3rd busiest container port in US. I was just reading that the former Bayshore yard site, the yard you originally ask about in your post, is now planned to be the yard and maintenance facility at the northern end of California High Speed Rail operation. There is some opposition since the city of Brisbane wants to build high density housing there.
San Francisco is on a peninsula and is not a good place for a rail/ship transloading facility. Originally the east bay shoreline was all marshes and mud flats. The deep water port was in San Francisco. Dredging, filling and modern construction practices made deep water ports in the east bay practical and moving the port operations to east bay saves almost a days travel time and one crew change.
As Ace stated, high costs in San Francisco ran all the local industry out of town and off the rest of the peninsula. That area is now the home of computer and software development, medical and biotech, finance, education, and tourist.
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