Railroads shaped the fortunes of small California communities, and Antioch benefited from two lines that came through town. The San Pablo and Tulare Railroad staked out its route between 1876 and 1878 through the Los Medanos Rancho on its way to the central valley and southern California, but because it had no rolling stock of its own, the Central Pacific operated it until April 1885, after which Southern Pacific took over until May 1888, when all three railroads were consolidated. Their stations followed a uniform statewide design, mostly two-story buildings in yellow and brown, including Antioch's A' Street station at W Street and Railroad Avenue. Antioch's other station, a single-story building on the waterfront at First Street across from the Roswell Butler Hard House, was built by the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, whose route hugged the water's edge in many communities and opened stations in Knightsen and Oakley in 1898. In Antioch, the first Santa Fe station was simply a boxcar beside the tracks serving warehouses and the asparagus packing shed along the river, and the formal station opened in 1902 and lasted until it burned in 1979. By 1971, train service had been greatly reduced to Southern Pacific's San Joaquin Daylight between San Francisco and Los Angeles and Santa Fe's San Francisco Chief between San Francisco and Chicago, and Amtrak then began National Passenger Rail. Although the San Joaquin line was not originally included, Amtrak in the 21st Century operates the old Santa Fe and San Joaquin lines with a modern station at First Street. Today both original stations are gone, and the old Southern Pacific lines are seldom used and maintained mainly as a railroad right of way.