The Northern Electric Railway was a third rail powered line that ran from Sacramento north through Marysville and Yuba City to Chico.

In 1928, the two lines combined to become the Sacramento Northern Railway under control of the Western Pacific Railroad which operated it as a separate entity.

[3] The Southern Division began as the Oakland and Antioch Railway, which opened its line between Bay Point and Walnut Creek in 1910, extending to Lafayette the following year.

[4] In 1925 the WP created a "new" Sacramento Northern Railway (SNRy), in order to group the growing collection of their interurban railroad holdings.

[15] At the southern end the SNRy shared track, electric propulsion power, and facilities of the East Bay's expansive Key System commuter lines.

[12] At 183 miles (295 km), the railroad's Comet and Meteor services between San Francisco and Chico were the longest interurban lines in North America.

As with most interurban railroads in the US, the SN's return on initial investment was lower and its annual operating costs were higher than had been projected at conception.

It traversed a low density population rural farm country from Chico which contained only Marysville and Yuba City as major towns before reaching Sacramento.

[29] Segments of the Woodland Branch continue to see limited freight service as well as excursion trips and railbike hires operated as the RiverFox Train.

The main line ran on single track north up the center of Shafter Avenue in a residential area, passing Emerson Elementary School at 49th Street.

During the preparations for the Broadway (Caldecott) Tunnel project, this inlet was filled in and the Sacramento Northern tracks re-routed along the top of a new high embankment above the lake, buttressed by a massive retaining wall that still exists today.

High above the northwest side of Shepherd Canyon, the line headed east, then made a sharp turn northeast as it passed through a major cut in the hill.

At Havens, below Saroni Drive, the line entered a short ravine leading to the entrance of a one mile long single-track tunnel under the Oakland Hills.

At Pittsburg, the tracks ran parallel, adjacent, and south of the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific main lines, then dropped down, turned north sharply and went under the SF and SP through an underpass to almost immediately reach the SN ferry landing on Suisun Bay.

After the trestle, the tracks continued north through farmland past Montezuma, Rio Vista Junction, and Creed, where there was a branch west to Vacaville and Travis Air Force Base.

Past Creed, the line continued to Dozier and Yolano before crossing the four-mile-long Lisbon trestle into West Sacramento.

Downtown Sacramento streets, particularly east and south of the Tower Bridge, carried many SN and Central California Traction tracks.

When the Union Pacific absorbed Western Pacific/SN it obtained further trackage rights on the Santa Fe which extended to Port Chicago where SN had a small yard.

From the Sacramento depot at present day Terminal Way, the SN's "North End" ran to a Northern Electric-built truss bridge crossing the American River and then on to Rio Linda, to East Nicolaus, then to Marysville where it crossed the Feather River into adjacent Yuba City, split off the branch to Colusa, then went on to Live Oak, split off the branch to Oroville, then to Gridley and to Chico where it terminated.

It crossed the Sacramento River on a narrow combined rail and vehicle bridge before turning northeast and running to Market Street in Colusa.

[4] Sacramento Northern would go on to acquire the Shasta Southern Railway in 1909; the company had built a short line between Hamilton City and Monroeville.

The SN mission style terminal in Woodland was unusual in that the interurban cars from Sacramento went through an arch in the station's wall to reach a rail yard in the rear.

[45] While trains utilized Key System trackage for the final few miles of passenger service in Oakland, SN bypassed all intermediate stops and ran direct to the San Francisco terminal.

Because of its history as separate railways as well as the interconnection with the Key System, SN cars had to operate under a number of different electrical standards.

Catenary allows the vertical supporting poles to be spaced farther apart than if a single suspended trolley wire is used, plus it is better for pantograph operation at speed due to stability (The South Shore line uses pantographs with a single trolley wire in Michigan City streets but has catenary for high speed operation elsewhere).

The Alabama had been built in 1905 as the private car of Pacific Electric Railway owner Henry E. Huntington and was purchased by the SN.

[51] The railway, not meeting revenue expectations, never did restart construction, and the "temporary" ferry service became the permanent method of traversing the waterway.

Power was by a 600 horsepower (450 kW) distillate engine, one of the largest constructed, which was insufficient to counteract high winds and currents in the bay.

The Ramon was retired in 1954 after a Coast Guard inspection determined that the hull plating was no longer in a safe condition, and it was scrapped locally.

The Lisbon trestle near Rio Vista was built by the OAE as part of the main line on the north side of Suisun Bay;[28] a 4,000-foot (1,200 m) section collapsed into the flood plain in 1951,[53] with the replacement only in service a few years before abandonment.