Thank you for reading this. I thought that i would throw out what I think I know and let the more knowledgeable correct my misinformation and thereby coalesce a useful body of knowledge. Hopefully I can edit this thing after posting.
As far as I know, the first transcontinental railway entered the San Francisco Bay Area through the Altamount pass and Niles Canyon to terminate at the Oakland waterfront in 1869. Over the next ten years the Central Pacific extended this line along the bay through Emeryville, Berkeley, Richmond, Pinole, El Sobrante, Hercules, Crockett, Port Costa, Martinez and out along the delta. At Port Costa, the railroad ferried the trains across San Pablo Bay to Benicia where they continued on to Sacramento and beyond. As the route along the bay was substantially flatter that the route over the Altamount pass it became the preferred route into the Bay Area for the Central Pacific especially after the completion of the Martinez-Benicia Bridge over Suisun Bay in 1931.
The county seat of Contra Costa County was established in Martinez in (fill in blank). At the time the county was primarily agricultural with orchards and ranches predominating. A series of towns developed namely Concord (which had been previously named Todos Santos - all saints in Spanish), Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton. The leaders of these towns determined that their fortunes would increase if the Southern Pacific (I've never really understood how the CP became the SP) extended a line from Martinez on through the flat lands of Concord to the San Ramon Valley and onto a connection with the Niles Canyon line. This line was completed in 1891,
As series of combination depots were built to serve the local communities. It also appears every town had a hay and feed business adjacent to the depot. Somewhere in the sixties or seventies the line was abandoned and the track pulled up.
The branch began approximately 3 1/2 miles east of Martinez at a town named Avon (alternately named Marsh after the owner of the land). Avon is gone, the town site is now under an oil refinery but some of the ROW may survive as a spur still in use.
The ROW from Concord through to Dublin survives as a bike path. The Concord depot and its trackage is long gone but a through truss bridge is visible from Monument Blvd. Some older railroad related warehouse buildings still survive in Pleasant Hill. Some of the ROW through Walnut Creek is now a bike path. The Walnut Creek depot was moved to a new location and converted into a restaurant. The Danville depot was also moved but probably now a museum.
The SRVL (San Ramon Valley Line) was crossed the ATSF about a mile from Avon. The Oakland, Antioch and Eastern (a predecessor of the Sacramento Northern, a branch of the Western Pacific) crossed the SRL at least twice, once in Concord and once in Alamo. It's ROW ran along the Port Chicago Highway thorugh Concord. There is also a section of it visible along Olympic Blvd in the section of Walnut Creek formerly known as Saranap.
AFAIK (as far as I know) the rest of the railroad has been lost to freeways, parking lots, office parks and suburban housing tracts. Whether enough information can be pulled together to develop a plan for a satisfactory model railroad based on the SRVL is an open question.
Aran Sendan
