Trolley Tuesday 7/20/21 - Peninsular Railway of San Jose

Over the past half year, we at Twice Weekly Trolley History have discussed the Southern Pacific Railroads's interurban holdings in excruciating detail, and it seemed like we covered everything. After all, their holdings ranged from legendary Southern California streetcars to the burning trolley-fire that was the East Bay and Marin County interurbans. However, in our discussions there's always been one company that usually avoids being mentioned when SP's trolleys are brought up. Nowadays, San Jose's own Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (or VTA) operates a rather-wide light rail system in Silicon Valley, but one hundred years ago the VTA's job was actually done by the Peninsular Railway, or "the Pin" to locals. Despite only lasting 30 years and being outshone by SP's other interurbans and being prematurely cut short by weather and war, the Pin remained an important asset to the SP and the South Bay and deserves appreciation on today's Trolley Tuesday.

Interurbans Up the Bay

Santa Clara Street in San Jose, showing off the local streetcars and
the famous Owen's Electric Light Tower.
(Unknown Author)

In December 1902, two businessmen named F.S. Granger and J.W. Rea incorporated the San Jose & Los Gatos Interurban Railway Company (SJLG) in Santa Clara County to run their own streetcars between San Jose and Los Gatos. Construction of the line took about a year and stretched almost 11 miles southwest from the invention and industrial center of San Jose to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Electric streetcars began running to Los Gatos in 1904 and the cost of a round trip was just 20 cents (or $6.11 in 2021). Unfortunately, Both Granger and Rea were quickly written out of the picture as the Octopus reared its ugly tentacles with its eye and beak poised upon the little trolley line. 

The infamous "Octopus" cartoon by G. Frederick Keller from 1882.
It seems for all its political cutting, Keller had no idea
what an octopus actually looked like.
(Public domain)

Locomotive No. 1, the "Menlo Park", of Southern Pacific's
"San Francisco & San Jose Railroad", circa 1870s.
(Unknown author)

The Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) had already near-monopolized mass transit around the Bay Area through the Northwestern Pacific (NWP) in Marin County and the Oakland-Alameda-Berkeley Lines (OAB) in the East Bay, and now there were calls to offer interurban service along the southern peninsula up to San Francisco. The SJLG was the perfect fit for the SP, and in order to get Granger and Rea to hand over the reins, the giant railroad bought the competing San Jose Railroad (which ran local streetcar services) and then announced it would build a more direct interurban line to Los Gatos through Campbell (a midway town that the SJLG did not connect to). Threatened by the possibility of being driven out of business, Granger and Rea sold the railroad in 1905 and quietly returned to local real estate and small business investment.

Pinned Down By Weather and War

The Southern Pacific tracks over the Colorado River are washed out.
(Salton Sea History Museum)

A Southern Pacific train carefully trails two men as it
navigates the floodwaters during the 1905 flood.
(Desert Sea Rat)

Before the SP could play with its new toy, however, bad luck saw fit to strike the new Peninsular Railway (PR, or the Pin) down. That same year as SP's purchase of the Pin, the Colorado River burst its banks in the Mojave Desert and flooded what we know, now, as the Salton Sea. The flood also damaged the SP line between Los Angeles and Yuma, Arizona, so rail and ties bound for the Pin were diverted away and only a few stretches of line were able to be built. By 1910, a new line to Palo Alto (north out of the city) was opened and became the main line out north. Unfortunately, the line never did reach San Mateo (and, thus, a connection to San Francisco) from Palo Alto, as the next attempt to complete the line was halted due to a metal shortage caused by World War I. This left the Pin bereft of useable rails for that project and halted at a length of 91 miles at its peak in 1931.

The PE of the North

A map of the Peninsular Railway by 1915, with the main line to Palo Alto via Cupertino Junction clearly shown.
(Unknown author)

The massive carbarn and yard at San Carlos Street.
(Saratoga History)

Despite being the "middle child" of SP's interurban holdings, the Pin did its best to set itself apart from its contemporaries by having the best infrastructure. A single carbarn and yard was constructed on San Carlos Street to house and service the entire fleet, while the powerhouse on Saratoga Avenue provided ample 1200V DC electricity. The Palo Alto mainline certainly proved useful when push came to shove, as it handled both passenger and local freight and rendered the existing SP steam train service from San Jose to Palo Alto obsolete. The most popular use of the line was during the Stanford University football games, which necessitated a later extension out of Palo Alto to Stanford Stadium. Trolley park traffic was also included in the operations, with lines to Alum Rock Park and Congress Springs providing much-needed off peak revenue. Even freight was a factor in the Pin as lumber, gravel, and less-than-carload freight were run up and down the line. 

A Peninsular Railway dash sign advertising service between Saratoga via Los Gatos
and San Jose via Mayfield, with no need to turn the signs around.
(Google Arts & Culture)

Mount Hamilton in San Jose, CA.
(Peakbagger)

Indeed, for much of the 1910s, the Pin was so sophisticated, dutiful, and ambitious in its extension plans that residents later referred to it as "The Pacific Electric of the North", and it shared more than just an owner with the Southern Californian trolley line. At one point, the Pin planned a giant scheme to replicate the Mount Lowe Railway in Pasadena, CA, (a Pacific Electric subsidiary) by creating its own mountain railway up Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose. This was one of many ideas meant to expand the Pin's reach as well as draw in more off-peak revenue. 

A stock sheet from 1911 for Francis Marion Smith's planned
San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose Railway.
(iCollector)

Another plan was to extend up the East Bay to Oakland over the Dumbarton Bridge and potentially interact with the Key System (who would have most likely formed a joint line with the Pin as the Borax King wanted his own interurban to reach San Jose), and a third was finally to connect Palo Alto to Menlo Park (the western side of the Dumbarton Bridge) in order to connect with the Market Street Railway and have a one-seat ride into San Francisco. Of course, none of these plans ever came to fruition, as the investments SP put in was never enough to definitively start anything. What SP did put plenty of money into, however, was the rolling stock. 

Prodigal Pallies

"Small Pally" No. 52 in service during the late 1920s.
(Western Railway Museum)

The relatively svelte interior of Pin No. 52.
There's no interior ventilation because it's the Bay Area.
(Creators Syndicate)

Due to the relatively brief existence of the Pin, only two classes of passenger cars were ever fielded by the railway. The first cars were built by American Car Company in 1904 and were originally built as narrow gauge coaches for a steam railway in Detroit. When resold to the SP, they were modified with front ends and standard gauge trucks, but maintained a relatively svelte figure. As was tradition for old interurbans, half of the order were delivered as "motors" (the odd numbers) and the other half were "trailers" (the even numbers), although all were rebuilt as motors later on. This coincided with a 1931 program of "one-manning", where in order to save money, railway companies made conductors redundant and had motormen work double-duty. Sadly, this cost-saving measure did not save the Pin in the end.

A false-colored image gives a great profile of the Small Pallies as it's seen on the last day of service.
Note the whistle near the clerestory end and the lack of a headlight. 
(Charles Smallwood, Cable Car Guy)

The "Big Pally" compares its size with a tiny child.
These cars remained mostly unchanged in PE service.
(Saratoga History)

The other class of cars run by the Pin were known as "Big Pallies", and were originally built by the Jewett Car Company in 1913. Due to their much larger size of 55 feet, compared to the 43 feet of the first American Car Co. interurbans, Nos. 105-112 got the nickname of "Big Pallies" (or "Big Palys" if that's your flavor). These cars were built side-by-side with their close cousins, the Pacific Electric 1000 Class or "Tens", and were among the last wood interurbans built. Following the 1913 Vineyard Junction Disaster in Los Angeles, many interurban railroads like the East Bay Electric turned to steel cars instead. The Big Pallies worked in San Jose until 1934 and, instead of being scrapped, were then shipped to Los Angeles to take over the Alhambra-San Gabriel-Temple City lines south of Pasadena. When the Alhambra lines closed in 1941, they found continued work on the Venice Shortline until 1950, by which point they were scrapped.

PE No. 1050 and 1051 are seen trundling down San Pedro Street, bound for San Pedro.
The year is 1940 and this assignment is actually rather odd for them.
(Unknown Author)

A Quiet and Dignified End

This is becoming a pattern, isn't it? 

El Camino Real today in Santa Clara, wide enough to show where the streetcar tracks once were.
(The Mercury News)

The Alameda Crossing under the Southern Pacific Railroad
in San Jose, 1937.
(Unknown Author)

If it's not the doings of our old friends at National City Lines, what really kills off any and all interurbans is the motorcar. The Roaring Twenties were particularly cruel to the Pin as in 1929, its main line to Palo Alto was shut down as the city wanted to widen the El Camino Real, or what we know now as State Route 82 between San Jose and San Francisco. As the tracks were in the street, it was too costly to afford the earthworks needed to move the tracks and build a new right-of-way, and this effectively shut the Pin off from its SP connection at Palo Alto and to Stanford Stadium. The cities along the Pin's tracks also turned on the interurban, as they were demanding increased road expansion at the expense of their public transit. 

A standard Peerless Stage GM Old-Look Bus.
(Pacific Bus Museum)

The final nail in the coffin came from the Peerless Stage Company when they received a charter for bus services along most of the Pin's lines. Due to the Pin paying taxes on its tracks and the Peerless company not paying to maintain or run on the roads, once again the interurban found itself priced out of business. In March 1934, the last train from Los Gatos to San Jose ran and the wires came down not long after. The interurban cars were pulled from service and either sent down the coast for a continued career or sold for new business and residences. After the tracks were pulled, not much of the Pin remained.

Surviving Rolling Stock

Peninsular Railway No. 52 departs Rio Vista Yard for a spin on the WRM's main line.
(Jamie West)

The only known photo of Pin No. 61.
(Western Railway Museum)

Today, three pieces of ex-Peninsular Railway stock fly the flag of what was once Silicon Valley's homegrown streetcar. Two are housed in the Western Railway Museum of Rio Vista, CA since 1969, with Peninsular No. 53 representing the original "Little Pallies" made from narrow gauge coaches. Originally named "Granger" and numbered SJLG No. 4, it was sold to a private residence in San Jose and used as a sewing room until 1969, when the Bay Area Electric Railway Association bought the car and moved it to their new museum. During the 1970s, the car underwent an intense operational restoration and can now be seen in service every so often at the museum. Joining this little car is Peninsular Railway No. 61. Originally SJLG No. 13, the trailer car was from the same order as No. 52 but never received a name. After retiring from service, it was stored in a barn until 1969, when it was brought to Rio Vista. It has since undergone a partial restoration, but remains without trucks as of 2021. It is currently undergoing a thorough operational restoration. 

Jewett Jewel No. 73 turns off the street as
it works its normal holiday beat in San Jose.
(Michael Strauch)

The third car is one of the original San Jose streetcars and also a rare Jewett product surviving on the West Coast. When first built, San Jose Railway No. 130 plied the streets of its namesake city until it was caught in the big merger with the Peninsular after SP purchased the line. Now Peninsular Railway No. 73, it continued serving as a mesh-sided "California Car" until 1934 when it was sidelined like all the other cars. After being used as a shed for over 60 years, it was purchased by the California Trolley & Railroad Corporation based out of Kelley Park and restored to operation. Today, it is operated by the VTA on the San Jose Transit Mall route as part of their "Historic Trolley" and can often be seen running during the Christmas season. One other San Jose Railroad streetcar, Nos. 124, also operates at the San Jose Historical Museum in Kelley Park but was never in Peninsular service.

San Jose Railway No. 124, showing off its more modern, closed-sided look.
(Frank Hicks)

A Proto-Bart To Palo Alto

BART advertises their newly-opened Silicon Valley extension
to North San Jose, which opened in 2021.
(The Business Journals)

Today, rapid transit service through San Jose is now helpfully provided by the Bay Area Rapid Transit, whose Silicon Valley extension now opened up service as far south as Berryessa and North San Jose as of 2021. Along the peninsula, service only runs as far south as Millbrae and even still the Airport lines of the Red and Yellow (and the Purple SFO-Millbrae shuttle) only operated on a limited basis. BART does plan to eventually connect to San Jose and the VTA and, in doing so, may even cover the old Pin line down to Los Gatos, but only time will tell. The only other direct service from San Jose to San Francisco via Palo Alto and San Mateo is aboard CalTrain, the remnants of which used to be the Southern Pacific's premiere commuter train, the "Peninsula Commute". Though it only lasted a scant 30 years and covered little of what it originally intended, it seems that for Mr. Granger and Mr. Rea, their interurban was certainly ahead of its time and only now are the local and regional transit agencies picking up the pieces.

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included a Saratoga History article about the Peninsular Railway, Harre W. Demoro's "California Electric Railways" from Interurban Press, "Interurbans Special 28 - Volume 1: City and Suburban Cars" and "Interurbans Special 36 - Interurban and Deluxe Cars" by Ira L. Swett, the Western Railway Museum, and all of the photo authors credited here. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Thursday, we take a trip through the fruit groves on our own Central Valley Trolley Tour as we look at the Visalia Electric! For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!