Sacramento Northern

Created in 1918 to take over the Northern Electric Company, an interurban from Sacramento to Chico, the SN was purchased by the WP in 1921.  In late 1928, the SN purchased and merger the San Francisco-Sacramento Railroad, itself a reorganization of the Oakland, Antioch and Eastern.  At one point, the SN operated the longest point to point interurban line in the world: 183 miles from San Francisco to Chico.  It also featured the last electric powered railroading in the state until 1965, when its switching district in Yuba City and Marysville dieselized.  Once a major bulwark of the WP's freight loadings, the SN was dismembered into isolated segments beginning in the 1960's.  Today, only the Woodland Branch out of Sacramento (operated by the Yolo Shortline/Sierra Northern) and a spur south of Marysville survive as operating freight trackage.  The Yolo/Sierra also owns the embargoed Clarksburg Branch and the Bay Area Electric Railway Association owns a large piece of former SN mainline from the Vacaville area to the north bank of the San Jouquin River.  BAERA operates excursions on part of the line.

The Western Pacific also owned two switching railroads in Oakland and Alameda jointly with the Santa Fe.  The Alameda Belt Line was abandoned in the late 1990's, while the Oakland Terminal survives on a small stretch of its original trackage and some former Santa Fe spurs.

In the steam era, the WP owned several other subsidiaries, including the Indian Valley Railroad and Boca and Loyalton Railroad in California and the Deep Creek Railroad on the border of Nevada and Utah.