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Research dossier · General Reference

West Oakland Yards

rail yard facility in Oakland, California, USA

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ5264060 ↗
Source-derived summary

The West Oakland Yards are a rail yard facility in West Oakland, Oakland, California, in the United States. Formerly a major facility for the Southern Pacific Railroad, the yards have been operated by Union Pacific Railroad since 1996.

Under SP, the yards were home to a variety of railroad facilities, including a signal shop and a creosoting plant.

SP was said to "dominate" West Oakland with its "massive switching and maintenance yards, roundhouses, car assembly and repair shops, creosoting plant, and shipyards".

The Amtrak Oakland Maintenance Facility opened in the yards in 2004.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “West Oakland Yards” as rail yard facility in Oakland, California, USA. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 2004—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where West, Oakland and Yards can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as rail yard facility in Oakland, California, USA. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5264060. Authority coordinates are 37.818, -122.298. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 2004.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “West Oakland Yards”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow West Oakland Yards primary sources, West Oakland Yards archive and West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “West Oakland Yards”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “West Oakland Yards” 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.