The Sierra Railroad Company a privately owned common carrier which has a freight division (Sierra Northern Railway) which handles all track maintenance and freight operations for all branches owned by the Sierra Railroad Company. The company's Mendocino Railway group operates the diesel- and steam-powered Sierra Railroad Dinner Train (Oakdale), the Sacramento RiverTrain (Woodland-Sacramento) and the Skunk Train (Fort Bragg-Willits). The company's Sierra Energy division is for energy projects.
The similarly named Sierra Railway Company of California was founded in 1897 to connect the California Central Valley to the Gold Country foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Its historic western terminus has always been in Oakdale where a junction was once formed with both the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and the Southern Pacific. The Santa Fe's (now BNSF Railway] Oakdale Branch provided one freight outlet to the AT&SF mainline at Riverbank, California; the SP Oakdale Branch from Stockton was abandoned and torn out in the early 1980s. The Sierra Railroad bought the BNSF mainline from Riverbank MP1 to Oakdale in 2008. The portion of the former Sierra Railway conveyed by the railroad's historic owners, the Crocker Family, to the California State Park System are with "Sierra Railway", which preserves the original operating name of the entire line and is headquartered at Railtown 1897 State Historic Park in Jamestown, California.