The San Francisco and Oakland Railroad (SF&O) was built in 1862 to provide ferry-train service from a San Francisco ferry terminal connecting with railroad service through Oakland to San Antonio. In 1868 Central Pacific Railroad decided that Oakland would be the west coast terminus of the First transcontinental railroad and bought SF&O. Beginning November 8, 1869, part of the SF&O line served as the westernmost portion of the transcontinental railroad. It subsequently was absorbed into the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). The track in Oakland was electrified in 1911 and extended across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1939. Service was abandoned in 1941. History The San Francisco and Oakland Railroad (and Ferry Co.) was formed in October 1861 under the leadership of Rodman Gibbons and other Oakland residents in order to provide transportation to Oakland by means of a ferry from San Francisco to a small wharf at Oakland Point where passengers could take a train into Oakland. Service began in September 1862 along 7th St. to a station in downtown Oakland at Broadway. Traffic increased steadily so an extension of the line was planned. In 1864 the track was extended across a bridge over Indian Creek Slough, the outlet to Lake Merritt, then along private right-of-way adjacent to San Antonio Creek (Oakland Estuary) to the Commerce St. Wharf (foot of 14th Ave) in San Antonio. The cost of the extension and of building a new larger ferry boat caused Gibbons and his associates to lose control of the company SF&O in 1865 to A. A. Cohen, president of the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad (SF&A). After Central Pacific Railroad (CP) decided in April 1868 to make Oakland the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad, its subsidiary purchased the majority of the stock of the struggling SF&O from A. A. Cohen in August 1868 and began to expand the small wharf at Oakland Point. In August 1869 the CP subsidiary also purchased the majority of the stock of SF&A, bankrupt by the 1868 Hayward earthquake. In 1870 they merged the two local railroads together and then brought them back into the Central Pacific. Meanwhile, the Western Pacific Railroad (1862-1870) had surveyed a line from San Jose via Niles Canyon and Altamont Pass to Sacramento, but ran out of money in a 1866 dispute, after laying 20 miles of track from San Jose into the middle of Niles Canyon. By 1868,