Nostalgia & History > California RR History Question- Pacheco Pass

Geography is a formidable barrier to rail links between The Bay Area and Southern California, and to places South and East

You either head down a long, winding 460 miles route along the Coast, or head north, then south through the Central Valley, before facing Tehachapi, and a winding route down from Palmdale, a similar distance.  It’s 360 miles as the crow flies. 

A route over the Pacheco Pass could have been up to 50 miles shorter, also of benefit to the ATSF heading east, plus the SP with the Palmdale cut off built earlier. It would have given easier access from the southern end of the valley to the Bay Area.

Pacheco Pass is a formidable barrier. It would have taken by my reckoning a five to six mile tunnel to conquer (prior to the San Luis Reservoir). Such a barrier didn’t stop railroads elsewhere.

My questions are whether the route was ever surveyed, if so by whom and why?  Also, there don’t seem to be too many RR tunnels in California.  Is this because the economics of tunnelling just never worked out at the economy’s state of development back then?  

The currently proposed 13 mile tunnel is of no interest in this context of these questions.
 
 

The SP did intend to build a line near or thru Pacheco pass. A branch from the coast line to Hollister was part of the route. Think that line made it to Tres Pinios and ended. Was supposed to connect in the San Joaquin valley.

I believe that the SP made reconnisance surveys of both Pacheco and Panoche pass to the south.
These surveys found that the Panoche pass was fraught with fault zones and landslides and would have been very difficult ot build through.
Out of curiosity I drove the gravel road through there looking at where one might have built, or maybe could build a railroad.  Interesting day and patient wife kept in the game with a promise of a fine dinner.
Pacheco may have had fewer geotechnical issues but no business plan would support the capital requred to build such a long tunnel.
This was back when C.P.Huntington was working the streets and offices on New York investors and bankers selling stocks and bonds to finance pushing the SP south and east towards El Paso and beyond.  He had to take the low cost construction option to get miles built before the T&P beat him to El Paso.

If you're building a RR from Oakland to Bakersfield,
why would Pacheco be better than Altamont?

Altamont is rather far north, to get from San Jose to Los Angeles you have to go north to Fremont before turning east, then you only get to turn south at or near Tracy.
San Francisco traffic has to get across the bay, Dumbarton bridge is south of Fremont.
From a pure straight line perspective, Panoche Pass is closer to the great circle route used by airliners than Pacheco.  
But you don't want to take that route too closely, much of it is also the line of the San Andreas Fault, better to get a little further east into the valley  where grading is easy and the fault some distance away.
Just idle speculation for these last 15 decades and likely for the next 2 to 4 decades.
Of all California's public transportation services I think the air corridors between north and south do very well for travel to the big cities..  
CA needs local and regional networks for everyone NOT simply going to/from the biggest cities.

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> CA needs local and regional networks for everyone
> NOT simply going to/from the biggest cities.

That applies everywhere. Some of the HSR enthusiasts effectively want to increase the amount of 'flyover' territory in the US. The Washington state program is a fine example of that. Vancouver BC, Bellevue (not Seattle), Olympia, Portland and nothing else counts. You guys can drive for all we care. If we haven't gentrified it, we don't want to be there.

TAW

Those decisons reflect reality, like it or not.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Klondyke Wrote:

>  Also, there don’t seem to be too many RR tunnels in California.  

The last Altamont Press California Region Timetable (#20) lists 158 tunnels in California, which doesn't count the two that were daylighted on Cajon.  How many tunnels would constitute "lots of tunnels?"

railstiesballast Wrote:

> I believe that the SP made reconnisance surveys of both Pacheco and Panoche pass to the south.
> These surveys found that the Panoche pass was fraught with fault zones and landslides and would have been very difficult ot build through.

I don't think the SP was too concerned about fault zones when the early railroad surveys were made.

Posted from iPhone

Thanks for these inputs, which answer my query comprehensively. They made me appreciate the enormous financial burden of building and maintaining a RR across 1200+ miles of often barren land to the West Coast. This must have constrained what you did and how you did it once in California.

I imagine their builders were always pushing and sometimes exceeding the limits of the financially possible. In this case the number of tunnels you have is the ‘right’ answer.

The wild idea that the ATSF might have supported a Pacheco venture amused me, at least, thinking of the fireworks this would have caused. The San Francisco Chief at Mission Bay? A Z train heading south through Hollister?  No, it would never have happened.

I did try the trick of promising a good meal to gain my wife’s company on a trip find the remains of the FC Olot to Girona narrow gauge railway in Catalonia, whose existence I had never suspected. The expedition turned into a most enjoyable day out for both of us.Worth trying. now and again.
 

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> San Francisco traffic has to get across the bay,
> Dumbarton bridge is south of Fremont.

I'm not certain if I misunderstood this comment, and it's not key to the discussion, but nearly all of Fremont actually lies south of the Dumbarton Bridge.

DJ

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