Actually, I swear this is the last post for tonight...

I thought this was cool... It shows a transition of time, and I used this as an example of showing how conventional railroads have been phased out over time and replaced by different and more efficient methods. This example comes with a bit of history, which I think you may find interesting.

This is was a picture taken in the mid-1960s. It shows a small locomotive pulling a couple of dated passenger cars through a crossing on Main Street in Walnut Creek, CA on this train's last journey on this rail line. This particular rail line ran from the north part of Livermore all the way until the east side of Concord. Today, this rail line does not exist. The old extension from the main line in Livermore has been torn up and developed over, and the only thing rail-like that still exists in Concord is an extension from the Amtrak line, and part of the old train yard (which is still used today) this particular line passed through.

At the time Walnut Creek, and most of the East Bay Area was known for it's lush farm land. After World War II, more people started heading out west to settle and raise families, which lead for demand in more houses and business. This phased out a lot of farm land in the East Bay to move over the hills into the Central Valley, where cities like Modesto, Fresno, and Stockton lie.

As Walnut Creek became a great spot for businesses, due to it's great location and easy access to San Francisco/Oakland without living in a busy city, it became quite a popular community to buy houses in. Which meant that certain things needed to be sacrificed in order to keep the community going. And since demand for a railroad in the East Bay was going down as more industries focused on using other forms of transportation (trucks, delivery vans, etc.), the railroad was used primarily for personal travel, as there were no major highways running through the East Bay. This soon however changed, as Highway 680 was built, which connected up with Highway 80 in the north and Highway 280 in the South. This lead to more people using cars to drive from one end of the East Bay to the other.

So now a railroad was basically sitting around, wasting space and money to maintain. The railroad was soon torn up, and trackage rights were bought to build a system for fast rail transit, what we now know as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).

This is a picture of what this exact scene looks like today...


Definitely looks different huh? It looks a lot more developed and current. Which is what Walnut Creek, as well as most of the East Bay has become today.

Was this transition a good one? Yes and no.

The fact that and older outdated rail system could be replaced by something efficient and easy to maintain, was a great change on the economy for this area. People are able to get to work faster, and are able to go around to different spots in the Bay Area faster.

Unfortunately, the good always has a bad. The noise of a railroad still remains. While the conventional and more noisy rail system has been torn out, the sound of a train whistling through the night making an ever-so annoying whining sound really doesn't sit well with the residents that live near these tracks.

Also, because BART does connect to some major populated areas (San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco), it has brought in new groups of people that shop there. It has also increased the amount of people that come in the town just to be there. Jammed up streets, busy sidewalks and long store lines at this once peaceful shopping/residential area have got residents heading for the hills to find a nicer and quieter place to live.

Hope you enjoyed this little tid-bit of information from a "railroad buff".