Placerville & Sacramento Valley Railroad

The Placerville & Sacramento Valley Railroad is a heritage operation running scenic excursions out of Folsom toward Latrobe over one of the oldest rail corridors in the American West — the former Placerville Branch of the Southern Pacific. The route descends from the Sacramento Valley Railroad, incorporated on August 4, 1852 as the first transit railroad company incorporated in California; engineered by Theodore Judah, later the chief proponent of the transcontinental crossing of the Sierra Nevada, it ran its first train on February 22, 1856 into Folsom, whose depot site served as the line's eastern terminal and the state's first passenger railroad destination. In 1877 the original Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad — the modern operator's namesake — was deeded into the consolidated Sacramento and Placerville Railroad, which passed to Southern Pacific control, fully so by 1898. After the corridor was acquired by the Sacramento Placerville Transportation Corridor Joint Powers Authority in 1996, today's heritage railroad took up operations on the segment from Folsom to the El Dorado County line, sharing the historic branch with the El Dorado Western heritage railroad farther east.