Railfanning Freight in the CA East Bay

[ashleythebee]

Looking at Google maps it seems as though all of the freight traffic from the Port of Oakland would either go north through the Emeryville Amtrack station, or south through Jack London Square.

I haven't had a chance to spend a weekday in either location, but the comments have made both locations seem rather blasé?

I guess I could imagine there not being much freight traffic south through Jack London Square during the day given how the line runs basically right down the middle of the street, but I would imagine that there would be a good amount of freight traffic coming out of the port.

Am I just overestimating that?

People here have suggested heading north to Pinole, which seems like it's north of the junction where the lines from the Port of Oakland and the Port of Richmond join? Is it simply a matter of having the traffic from both, or is the traffic from the Port of Richmond just a lot higher?

Anyway, sorry for the babbling as an initial post here. I have some time to watch tomorrow, but I'd like to stay close to Bart (I was going to make an exception for Emeryville, but I think I could see the same things at Richmond Bart station since I *think* it's right next to the Amtrak station there which are the same lines as Emeryville)

Anyway! Thank you in advance for comments.

[David1005]

The north bound line out of Oakland is handling both the UP and BNSF traffic.  At the south edge of Richmone, the BNSF splits off and goes to their own yard near Point Richmond.  There is a new crossover near Pinole that will take some of the BNSF trains headed for the Port of Oakland off their own track and put them onto the UP, avoiding having to through the BNSF yard in Richmond.  This is new and I do not know how much use it is getting.  But the point is that maximum freight operation will be south of the Richmond city limits where the lines split.  that would be Berkeley and Emeryville.  None of it is near BART.  If you are interested in the passenger operation, the street operation between Jack London station and the Amtrak maintenance yard see all the regular passenger trains and all the dead heads between the station and the Maintenance yard. This is about 10 blocks from the 12th street BART station.