Santa Fe Railroad tugboats
Tugboats used on San Francisco Bay
The Santa Fe Railroad tugboats were used by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to barge rail cars across the San Francisco Bay for much of the 20th century, as there is no direct rail link to the San Francisco peninsula. In the post World War II period, a fleet of three tugs moved the barges: the Paul P. Hastings, the Edward J. Engel, and the John R. Hayden. After cross-bay float service had ended and the tugs had been sold, the Hastings sank off Point Arena, California in 1992, in water too deep to raise. The Engel sank off Alameda, California in 2007 and was raised and scrapped in the winter of 2013-14. The Hayden remains afloat and in service in Oregon.
Background
The Santa Fe Railroad tracks only went as far west as Oakland, California. (The Southern Pacific Railroad had a line on the San Francisco Peninsula from San Jose, but blocked the Santa Fe from access.) Santa Fe did have some isolated tracks in the city of San Francisco. To connect to them from Oakland, Santa Fe used a fleet of tugs and barges to move freight across the San Francisco Bay. This service began in 1900 and continued until 1984.
Various cargo was carried by the float service.
The public source identifies “Santa Fe Railroad tugboats” as tugboats used on San Francisco Bay. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Santa, Railroad and tugboats.
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This entry incorporates text from “Santa Fe Railroad tugboats” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.