"Ghost railroad" in San Francisco

[CHamilton]

Following ghost tracks of long-forgotten railroad

...I found it, too, at the corner of 22nd and Harrison streets in the Mission. Between the Atlas Stair Building Co. that looks like a toy house, and Western Plywood, a lumber sales company, there is a wide gap with a few feet of half-buried railroad tracks pointing southwesterly, right through the Mission District.

They are what's left of the old Southern Pacific main line to San Jose, which began in 1861 as the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad, and made it all the way to San Jose in the winter of 1864, 150 years ago this month.

The city was built up around the railroad, Victorian houses crowding along the tracks through the Mission and Noe Valley. When the line was abandoned, the city swallowed it up almost as if it were never there. All that is left are the ghostly tracks at 22nd and Harrison and a charming minipark called Juri Commons, built on the old line between San Jose Avenue and Guerrero Street.

 

[SarahZ]

That's so cool! Thanks for sharing. I'll pass it on to my railfan friend in SF. He's not on AU (yet).

 

[JayPea]

That's a neat photo. There are are a few places in Spokane that have half-buried tracks in some city streets, remnants of the long-abandoned trolley lines that used to cover the city.

 

[The Davy Crockett]

Charlie - THANKS for posting! :hi:

I really enjoyed pulling up Google Maps and tracing the old main line, as it ran close to where some of my family lives in the Noe Valley/Glen Park are of the city. Most interesting too was the information about the 'Bernal Cut.' Now that I read this it makes a lot of sense that it was an old railroad cut, but I never realized it until now. What I think is also interesting is that a rail line still passes through it - MUNI's J Church line!