by Andrew Cox and Eric Cortinas/photos as noted
When you think of Silicon Valley, names such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and countless other tech giants will likely come to mind — but not the railroad. Before moguls of the tech age contributed to creating the world as we know it today, railroads played a key role in building the Valley. The San Francisco Bay Area owes its beginnings to the California Gold Rush, attracting thousands of people from around the world in 1848. Following the Mexican-American War in 1848, a small town 50 miles south of San Francisco would become California’s first officially recognized city.
San Jose was conveniently located in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley, a fertile and temperate valley nestled into the foothills of the Calaveras and Santa Cruz mountains at the southern edges of San Francisco Bay. By the early 1860s, a small network of narrow gauge railroad tracks crossed the valley, carrying gold from the Sierra foothills and timber from the Santa Cruz mountains.
Throughout a majority of the 20th century, the Santa Clara Valley was the largest food producing region in the world. Leland Stanford of Central Pacific noted in an 1859 journal that the Santa Clara Valley had “one of the best growing climates in the world” that closely resembled Mediterranean climates of Tuscany’s wine-growing region. Every type of fruit tree you could imagine, plus vegetables, nuts, grapes, tomatoes, and even missionary wine filled carloads from the “Valley of Heart’s Delight.”
ABOVE: With stormy skies hanging over the Bay Area, the Mission Bay Local rolls through Milpitas en route to Redwood City. At Great Mall Parkway, VTA light rail crosses over UP. The timing was right for an eastbound light rail train to pull into the Great Mall Station just as the Mission Bay was passing through, making for a perfect over-under capture. —Eric Cortinas photo
Southern Pacific, followed by Western Pacific, had a stronghold over industry in the valley with expansive industrial parks and branch lines strategically laid out to serve numerous customers. The railroad brought in canning and packing materials, while customers shipped out mostly canned foods and perishables, resulting in a diverse exchange of goods into and out of the Santa Clara Valley and all across the American West.
In 1971, American journalist Don Hoef-ler coined the name “Silicon Valley’’ in a series of articles for Technology Weekly. The publication detailed a small region in California that was taking the semiconductor industry by storm. Although Hoefler was a technology expert, I don’t believe he knew at the time just how impactful technology would be on the development of San Jose and surrounding areas. The rise of Silicon Valley and the demise of American railroading came together like a perfect storm. Over the next 50 years, line by line and tie by tie, industrial leads that once covered Silicon Valley slowly faded away as developer after developer severely altered the landscape.
ABOVE: Like clockwork, Train LWS82 has begun its daily ritual of sorting out inbound manifest cars dropped off at Warm Springs Yard on February 16, 2023. The ex-Cotton Belt GP60 eases a healthy-sized set of cars down into the lower bowl of the yard. Each car is meticulously set aside onto its respective yard track based on the car’s terminating location and the train that serves that location. —Eric Cortinas photo
Fast-forward to the year 2024. Sunset on the region’s industrial era is well upon us. Customers that were once served by rail have slowly faded away due to gentrification of the area, leaving many of these once prosperous industrial zones in derelict states. Abandoned rails can be found with vegetation growing between ties as Mother Nature slowly reclaims the land, while other trackage has been ripped up to make way for the latest high-density condo project or futuristic technology campus. If one looks in the right spots, traces of Silicon Valley’s industrial past can still be found. However, the large industrial complexes and rail network of Silicon Valley have all but fallen to history. This article provides a comprehensive study of the last local rail operations of Silicon Valley.
The Bay Area will always be synonymous with Southern Pacific for railfans. The SP octopus stretched its tentacles across orchards and packing houses throughout the valley. Towns such as Campbell and Los Gatos lay in the southwest while Fremont and Milpitas rested in the north. Right in the middle of it all was downtown San Jose, with a population that doubled from 200,000 to 400,000 between 1950 and 1960. San Jose reached its peak population of more than 1,000,000 in 2020, becoming the tenth-largest city in the U.S.
ABOVE: UP 9992 and crew swing through the S-curve about halfway down Rogers Avenue on their way back to the Warm Springs Subdivision on March 27, 2020. The longer-than-usual train consists of two Geeps, three empty bulkheads, and five tank cars from the since-closed San Jose Univar Chemical Plant. —Andrew Cox photo
The Santa Clara Valley’s industrial trackage was divided into 10 geographic zones that all connected to Southern Pacific’s Coast main line or Niles Junction. SP operated Lenzen and Newhall yards, dueling facilities in North San Jose that offered classification, staging tracks, and even full locomotive facilities with a 15-stall roundhouse. San Jose alone was home to five complex switching zones with 400 unique switch numbers, all organized by SP headquarters. Iconic packing houses that are still around today were served in this area such as Del Monte Fruit Company and Mariani Packing Company. Mom-and-pop industries also dotted the trackage such as Western Appliance in Zone 8 and San Jose Pottery in the northside Japantown neighborhood close to Zone 5.
Western Pacific also laid claim to booming business in Silicon Valley. Its line from Stockton crossed Altamont Pass through Niles Canyon and into the small town of Niles, located in the northwest corner of Silicon Valley. Niles was a very active diamond, interchange, and double-wyed junction between Southern Pacific and Western Pacific. SP and WP would run nearly parallel north to Oakland and southwest toward Fremont and San Jose. Niles Junction was controlled by a WP tower operator until 1982 when UP absorbed WP, but the tower operator position survived until 1986 when Southern Pacific activated DTC in the area.
At its peak, Niles Junction saw 50 through freight trains per day. By 1986, when Niles Tower was demolished after falling victim to fire set by vandals, daily train counts had dropped to around 10. Western Pacific even ran through freights on its own trackage all the way into downtown San Jose, crossing the Southern Pacific Coast main line at Luther Junction south of downtown. Just across the tracks from San Jose’s brand-new Southern Pacific depot, WP operated a small yard that served as the western- and southernmost end of track for its entire system…