Shipyard Railway
| Shipyard Railway | |
|---|---|
| Operation | |
| Opened | (?) |
| Closed | September 30, 1945 |
| Owner | United States Maritime Commission |
| Operator(s) | Key System |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) |
| Electrification | Overhead lines |
The Shipyard Railway was an electric railroad line, rapidly constructed during World War II to transport workers to and from the Kaiser Shipyards located in the city of Richmond, California.
The Shipyard Railway was funded by the United States Maritime Commission and was built and operated by the Key System, a local transit company in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Key System also provided commuter rail service between San Francisco and the East Bay over the Bay Bridge.
The Shipyard Railway ran from a specially constructed depot at 40th Street and San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville, up San Pablo Avenue northward (along the Key System's No. 2 San Pablo Avenue line streetcar tracks) to Grayson Street in Berkeley then two blocks west to Ninth Street, then a far stretch north along Ninth (along the recently abandoned Interurban Electric Railway's No. 5 Ninth Street line's tracks), across a bridge over Codornices Creek, then diagonally northwest across Albany Village, a federal housing project for war workers, then up and over a specially constructed trestle above the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Eastshore Highway, thence continuing northwest along the bayshore in Richmond, and terminating in a loop line serving the four massive shipyards of Kaiser.
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