about 12 mph, though on the first day of her trial did not exceed 8 mph. She was constructed and operated by the Central Pacific Railroad to ferry entire trains (up to 48 freight cars at a time) on the Central Pacific transcontinental line to and from the San Francisco Bay Area. Once in service, the transcontinental railroad was re-routed from its original 1869 120-mile course from Sacramento to Oakland, via Altamont Pass and Niles Canyon, to the 1879 more level 92-mile course from Sacramento to Benicia and, via the Solano, to Oakland. Before her sister ship, Contra Costa, was constructed, Solano was the largest ferryboat ever built. Operation The Solano began regular service between Benicia and Port Costa in December 1879. A typical operation was described in detail by Harris in 1890: "A passenger train of, say, ten cars comes to the slip. During its pause of a minute, the train has been uncoupled in the middle and a switching engine has been attached to its rear; the regular engine proceeds with the forward half of the train on to the boat, the switching engine pushes the rear half on another track of the boat, the steamer is cast off with the entire train and both engines as cargo..." The time card for the station of Benicia on the north and Port Costa on the south of the Straits allowed twenty-five minutes for the entire operation, including embarkation, ferriage, landing and station stops. This feat was accomplished with two watches of sixteen men each. Apart from a few drydocks for rebuilding and upgrading, the Solano was in continuous service, 24 hours a day, between Benicia and Port Costa for 51 years, from 1 December 1879 to 15 October 1930. In 1904 she was making thirty six to forty six crossings every 24 hours, transporting about 115,000 freight cars and 56,000 passenger cars a year. Her sister ship, Contra Costa, was built in 1914 with the propelling machinery under the main deck, which made her main deck completely open for four parallel tracks with no center post. She was slightly larger (13 feet longer) than Solano and thus was the largest rail ferryboat. Contra Costa was named for the county in which Port Costa is located. By 1927, the two ferries had reached their maximum capacity. On 31 May 1928, the Southern Pacific (successor to the Central Pacific in operations