Inbound lumber and outbound refrigerator cars of locally grown Brussels sprouts, artichokes, and lettuce provided additional freight traffic.
[6] Suntan Special summer excursion trains carried 900 passengers per trip from San Francisco to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk from July 1947 to September 1959.
Daily local freight service was replaced in 1982 by tri-weekly branch line trains operating at 20 mi (32 km) per hour including a caboose until 1986.
The line features street running sections in Watsonville and Santa Cruz where trains interact directly with roadway traffic.
After leaving Santa Cruz, the line runs parallel to California State Route 1 until Davenport, where the tracks end.