San Joaquin (train)
The San Joaquin is an Amtrak- operated passenger train line in California . The trains on the line run from Bakersfield at the southern end of California's long valley via the nearly megacities Fresno and Stockton to Sacramento at the north end. A branch runs from Stockton west to San Francisco Bay and ends in Oakland .
history
Today's connection was originally used by several different pairs of trains. The Golden Gate led over routes of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (later the BNSF ) and the San Joaquin Daylight led over routes of the Southern Pacific Railroad (later Union Pacific ). Before the cuts in the 1960s, trains ran beyond Bakersfield to Glendale and Los Angeles.
In 1965, the number of passengers had dropped so much that ATSF obtained permission to thin out the traffic. Three years later the Golde Gate was completely closed. The former San Joaquin also had break-ins. After the takeover by the semi-state Amtrak company, however, this went over to the new connection. Other features in the Central Valley, such as the Owl of Southern Pacific and the San Francisco Chief and the Valley Flyers , both of Santa Fe , did not survive.
In 1971, Amtrak took over almost all passenger trains in the United States and began a reorganization. The connection from San Francisco to Los Angeles was only served via the coastal route, with the Coast Starlight train. The central San Joaquin Valley was bypassed, however, so that, under pressure from the Californian parliament, an additional line was created in 1972 - the San Joaquin that still exists today .
In 1979, under the Carter government, numerous connections were thinned out and only through subsidies from the state of California could a second daily pair of trains be re-established. The extension requested by California via the Tehachapi Loop , however, was not re-established, as this is already fully utilized by the freight trains of the Southern Pacific .
In the course of the steady Californian population growth, the number of circulations has increased from one train pair a day to five daily train pairs (as of 2019) to Oakland and two daily train pairs to Sacramento. In fiscal 2013, 1.2 million passengers were carried, making the line one of Amtrak's five busiest train routes.
