As the environmental costs of congestion and carbon from auto trips rise — not to mention the cost of the fuel itself — proposals for trains and trolleys in Marin as alternative modes of transportation are a leap back to the future, to a time when the county had a well-tuned train system that provided commuters with stress-free trips to work and students with the means to get to school that didn't involve parents in their cars.

It began more than a century ago when electric utility pioneers John Martin and Eugene de Salba Jr. — the companies they created would serve as the structure upon which PG&E was built — purchased the old narrow-gauge North Pacific Coast Railroad and converted tracks in southern Marin to the larger, standard gauge. With the addition of an electric third rail and sophisticated switching equipment, their railroad was the equivalent of BART in Marin in 1903.

Hub of Activity

San Anselmo was a prominent junction on the consolidated and renamed Northwestern Pacific Railroad system. Southbound cars from San Rafael and Fairfax would be coupled at the Hub in San Anselmo — now the central intersection — before heading through the Ross Valley and across the tidal flats to Sausalito. Trains heading north traveled from the Hub to San Rafael along the Miracle Mile corridor. Trains traveled to and from Fairfax along today's Center Boulevard.

A 1913 schedule shows a 58-minute commute from San Anselmo to San Francisco, including a 32-minute ferry ride. In the 1920s and 1930s the railroad ran a "School Special" to and from Tamalpais High School, picking up students throughout the Ross Valley. "Travel on the Special was almost a case of survival of the fittest with enough noise to break the ear drums of a deaf man, and with an occasional tomato fight added to the racket," recalls Vera Stump in, The Tamalpais Story.

Autos Ascending

Highway development, abetted by oil interests and automobile manufacturers — along with the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge — brought a quick end to interurban train-ferry service. By 1938, the railroad had asked the California Railroad Commission for permis-sion to shut the system down.

To many Marin residents, abandoning the railroad meant the end of a way of life. A 1939 leaf-let addressed to "Fellow Commuters and Friends" summed it up: "We do not need to remind you of all we may lose; of the advantages of rail and ferry service and all that it has meant to us. The friendships, the card games, the times to visit, read, relax, exercise, if you want even to knit — all this will be lost, never to return."

The line was officially closed as of March 1, 1941, with a train historian describing the scene on February 28: "It [the train] stopped and was serenaded at every station. A lot of these guys, even some of the guys working on the train, had had a snootful." And so it ended. But "never to return"? That, as they say, remains to be seen.

For More Information

Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society > www.landmarks-society.org

Marin History Museum > www.marinhistory.org

Mill Valley Historical Society > www.millvalleyhistoricalsociety.org

San Anselmo Historical Museum > www.sananselmohistory.org