Northern Rail Line

We went on our usual Sunday run to the food co-op and noticed two locomotives of the California Northern Railroad on the tracks that run north-south behind the co-op. The geography of Davis has been built around a T-intersection of rail lines just east of downtown. There is a doubletrack line running northeast-southwest heading into Sacramento that get both Union Pacific freight trains and Amtrak traffic, and then there’s the line heading to the north, the one running by the co-op, that gets only light use, mostly by the California Northern.

This is a small railroad with a dozen or so locomotives. It’s based in American Canyon in Napa County, but they also run trains on a line stretching from Davis up to Tehama in the northern Sacramento Valley. We like them because the locomotives are pretty, with green and beige trim. Someday we’ll sketch one in color.