Maybe two decades from now, passengers heading to Los Angeles on
sleek bullet trains traveling at 200 mph will enjoy the rural
panorama of Pacheco Pass. Or maybe not.
Maybe two decades from now, passengers heading to Los Angeles on sleek bullet trains traveling at 200 mph will enjoy the rural panorama of Pacheco Pass. Or maybe not.
If the proposed high-speed train network is ever built, I’d love to ride on some futuristic train hurling through the Central Valley to Los Angeles. Such trains are successful in Europe and Japan. And California dreams of building a similar system.
A high-speed rail line spanning the length of the state is technically, environmentally and economically feasible. It will help decrease our dependency on foreign oil, and also decrease air pollution by diverting up to 68 million passengers a year away from automobile and airplanes. It will also discourage urban sprawl into prime agricultural lands.
Most of the route for this proposed high-speed line has been determined. But the debate continues on where exactly the tracks will cross over the Diablo Range from the Central Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Environmentalists are now pushing for the East Bay’s Altamont Pass as a high-speed rail corridor over the mountains. Many Silicon Valley leaders want a Pacheco Pass crossing. That route would impact Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill by connecting into the Caltrain line heading north.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the first debate on which route trains should venture over the Diablo Range. Back in the early 1860s when the construction of the transcontinental railroad was proposed, politicians had to make a very similar choice.
Railroads were to the 19th century world what the Internet is to ours. Americans 150 years ago dreamed of traveling from coast to coast in the comfort of train cars.
To be a true railroad spanning the nation, a transcontinental railroad needed to reach to the Pacific Ocean. And that, of course, meant it must pass somewhere over the Diablo range.
Finding the best route for transcontinental trains over these mountains was as crucial then as it is now for our own proposed high-speed train system. Several routes were proposed and surveyed. These included Pacheco Pass and a direct line over the Altamont Pass to Oakland.
In July 1853, a survey crew from the Benicia Arsenal explored Niles Canyon as a potential route. (The canyon was named after Addison C. Niles, a former railroad attorney who became a prominent state judge.) Engineers believed the narrow and relatively flat ravine would make a more efficient crossing than the arduous grades of Pacheco Pass and the Altamont Pass. Steam locomotives would use less fuel through Niles Canyon. And with brake technology still evolving back then, Niles was also considered a safer route.
President Abraham Lincoln made the final decision to go through the canyon. In July 1862, he set the massive transcontinental railroad project in motion when he signed the Pacific Railroad Act.
The building of a railroad stretching from the Mississippi River to the Pacific soon began. Christened by newspaper as “The Great Race,” the construction captured the nation’s attention. The Union Pacific track-building crew headed west from Omaha while the Central Pacific workers built eastward from Sacramento.
On May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah, near the Great Salt Lake, the two railroad lines met. At a special ceremony, Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific, swung a silver-headed maul at a “last” spike made from California gold. A telegraph operator tapped out the word: “Done.” From San Francisco to the eastern seaboard, the nation celebrated.
But in reality, the massive engineering project was not yet truly done. Sacramento still needed to be tied to San Francisco via rail. So work continued on track-laying through Niles Canyon.
With much less fanfare than the event at Promontory, on Sept. 6, 1869, the true “last spike” of the transcontinental railroad was driven in this narrow gorge through the Diablo Range.
A junction depot was built on the western end of the canyon. At the Niles switchyard, trains could either journey north to the port of Alameda or south to San Jose. In San Jose, the trains could switch to tracks (today’s Caltrains route) heading north up the Peninsula to San Francisco.
Over time, a community grew around Niles. The village prospered for almost a century by serving as a site for Bay Area farmers to ship their fruit and produce. In the 1910s, a movie studio came to town and churned out westerns and Charlie Chaplin comedies for a few years.
Although the sleek-looking Altamont Commuter Express (ACE) now passes through Niles Canyon, the original tracks of the transcontinental railroad are no longer used through the canyon for regular passenger or shipping service. (ACE trains travel on a different line.)
However, throughout the year, a group of volunteers known as the Pacific Locomotive Association runs old-fashioned diesel and steam trains along the historic tracks laid down in the 1860s.
Popular with families, the Niles Canyon train trips are a journey through American railroad history. Rides last about an hour. They are scheduled the first and third Sunday of the month through March and every Sunday from April through September. Trains depart from downtown Sunol and downtown Niles (now a district of the city of Fremont).
“We’re the best-kept secret in town in the South Bay,” says Al McCracken, chief station agent for the Pacific Locomotive Association. “We feel as if we’re custodians of a national treasure. There’s a lot of history here.”
Thanks to the Niles Canyon connection, the coast-to-coast railroad line dramatically benefitted the San Francisco Bay Area and also our own South Valley. Passengers and freight service expanded our region’s industry. The railroad served as a major economic artery for the west coast.
Maybe bullet trains over Pacheco Pass might some day bring economic benefits to the South Valley. Who knows what might happen if 20 years from now we can board a high-speed choo-choo in San Jose and find ourselves in Los Angeles two hours later?
