Until 1984, the Santa Fe Railroad moved freight cars across the San Francisco Bay by barge. Railroad cars were decoupled from trains and loaded onto special "carfloat" barges, which were pulled across the bay by a small fleet of tug boats, to be re-attached to trains at the other end. The service ended when a fire destroyed the Point Richmond pier (the East Bay terminal for the operation), and that was that.A handful of rail carfloat operations continue in the US, most notably in NY Harbor.