By 1867 Central Pacific had decided that the route via San Jose to San Francisco was too long and that it would be better to change to a route using ferryboats from the planned CPRR 's Oakland Pier in Oakland . To reach Oakland a CPRR subsidiary bought the Western Pacific , owned at that time by Charles McLaughlin and William Carr . Construction started again in the spring of 1867 and included a line from Niles toward Oakland . The CPRR briefly considered a shorter route west from Dublin/Pleasanton to the Hayward/San Leandro area ( a route later built by Bay Area Rapid Transit ) , but decided that the grades were too much of a disadvantage compared to the Niles Canyon route . Since Central Pacific had decided to make Oakland the western terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad , it purchased in 1868 the San Francisco and Oakland Railroad ( SF&O ) , which provided ferry-train service from a San Francisco ferry terminal connecting with railroad service through Oakland . In early 1869 Central Pacific also purchased the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad ( SF&A ) , which connected Alameda Terminal to Hayward , California and was bankrupted by the 1868 Hayward earthquake . By mid 1869 the railroad from Niles to San Leandro was completed , as well as a temporary connection at bay side of San Leandro to the old tracks of SF&A which led to the functioning Alameda Pier . The first transcontinental train to reach San Francisco Bay arrived not at the CPRR 's Oakland Pier but at the SF&A RR 's Alameda Terminal on September 6 , 1869 and the passengers took the SF&A RR ferryboat '' Alameda '' to San Francisco . Two months later , the rail connection to the San Francisco and Oakland Railroad was finally in place , and the transcontinental trains ran through Oakland to CPRR 's Oakland Pier . On the morning of November 8 , 1869 , the first transcontinental train to use the expanded ferry terminal at Oakland Point traversed the SF&O and the Western Pacific Railroad to get to Sacramento and continue east on the Central Pacific Railroad . The city of Oakland held a large celebration later in the day to greet the first westbound transcontinental train . After November 1869 , the Oakland Pier was the western terminus of the transcontinental trains . Alameda then went back to local train service
1868 Hayward earthquake
1868 Hayward earthquake
Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870)