Nostalgia & History > NWP Question

This was certainly an interesting railroad.

Stindt and Dunscomb's book is one of my favorite.

But, my question is, why didn't NWP ever realize the full potential of electrication and become a truly heavy electric? As far as I can tell, only the suburban passenger operations were electrified - Was there nothing to serve as far as freight was concerned in Marin County? Or did they secretly field a fleet of 3rd rail 1-B-D-D-B-1's or Quills running on 600 volts?

A corolary question: What if they had?

Those "Marin-ites" would have still ripped it all out when they got their hands on thier precious cars..

Marin was still fairly rural until after WW2 and didn't have the population base to support a large system. The Golden Gate Bridge and other factors finished it off. Most of all the right-of-way is still intact and you could build it back if you wanted to.

Then, in 1969, they voted down BART. They didn't want to promote growth in the North Bay. If they only could see the trafic now, they might have voted FOR it. Then again, it takes alot to get these folks out of there HUMMER II's...

> Then, in 1969, they voted down BART

From http://www.bart.gov/about/history/history_2.asp

"With the District-wide tax base thus weakened by the withdrawal of San Mateo County, Marin County was forced to withdraw in early 1962 because its marginal tax base could not adequately absorb its share of BART's projected cost. Another important factor in Marin's withdrawal was an engineering controversy over the feasibility of carrying trains across the Golden Gate Bridge."