Solano and Contra Costa Train Ferries

Berkeley, Saturday, May 30, 2026 1:59 am

A bit of history, before the local bridges. In this particular case, before the Carquinez Bridge.

Thanks to my friend A. to put this topic in my radars.

https://cprr.org/Museum/Solano (Heads up. The website is great. It is about the Solano Ferry. I skimmed it. But a link to download something will pop up if you click on it. The website looks legit. But I never accept to download anything that I do not know. So, if you click on no to download, still you can access to the website. It might be a short film about ferry the file that is requested to download, but I really do not know, and I won’t test that).

Here it is a model of the ferry: https://cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/Solano_Ferry_Model.html#Top (Same website)

And an easy read with two post cards. https://aboutmytrains.blogspot.com/2014/02/as-big-as-county.html

It contains the Solano Ferry train, which was quite large. And then the larger train ferry of the world, the Contra Costa Ferry Train.