Ventura County Railroad HO Scale Models

The Ventura County Railroad, operating under reporting mark VCRR, is a Class III short line railroad serving the industrial corridor between Oxnard and Port Hueneme in Ventura County, California. The railroad traces its roots to the Bakersfield and Ventura Railway, incorporated in February 1903 with the ambitious goal of linking Port Hueneme to Bakersfield via Santa Paula and Piru Canyon. Construction got underway in 1907, producing a main line of approximately 5.5 miles running from Port Hueneme into Oxnard along with two branches extending to agricultural areas east and west of the main corridor. The enterprise was reorganized as the Bakersfield and Ventura Railroad in June 1908 before being sold in 1911 to the newly formed Ventura County Railway, which had been incorporated in the interests of the American Beet Sugar Company, the operator of a sugar beet processing factory at Oxnard. That company was later renamed American Crystal Sugar Company in 1934. For much of the early twentieth century the line served a predominantly agricultural economy, hauling sugar beets from surrounding farms to the Oxnard factory and handling significant volumes of lemons, beans, and other commodities moving through Port Hueneme packing houses. Passenger service, operated with gas motor cars making several daily round trips, was abandoned in January 1927. The railroad faced serious competitive pressure from trucking as agricultural freight declined, but World War II development of naval facilities in Ventura County provided crucial traffic that helped the line survive. Martin V. Smith purchased the property in 1958, and the railroad continued operating under the Ventura County Railway name through the subsequent decades. In September 1998 the Ventura County Railroad was organized by RailAmerica to lease the line from the Ventura County Railway, taking over freight operations and connecting to the Union Pacific Railroad at Oxnard. The Oxnard Harbor District acquired the Ventura County Railway Company LLC in 2003, though the Ventura County Railroad continued as the operating tenant. RailAmerica was eventually absorbed into Genesee and Wyoming, and the VCRR became a subsidiary of that large short line holding company. The railroad continues to serve the Port of Hueneme as well as Naval Base Ventura County, handling commodities that include new automobiles, petroleum products, wood products, and military equipment, with annual carloads estimated at approximately 2,000. The Ventura County Railroad occupies a modest but strategically useful place in the regional rail network of Southern California, providing the sole rail connection to Port Hueneme, which remains one of the few deepwater ports on the California coast outside of the Los Angeles and Long Beach complex. Its motive power fleet consists of a small number of EMD locomotives including a GP15-1, a rebuilt GP7, and a GP38-2, sufficient for the switching and local freight demands of its short line operation. As a Genesee and Wyoming property, the VCRR benefits from the resources and operational expertise of one of the largest short line railroad operators in North America while continuing to fill a niche role that has persisted, in various corporate forms, for well over a century.