15-05-22 PHOTOS: VTA Take Three

Every so often I end up in Sunny Downtown San Jose for a conference and in my free time I find myself looking to explore the local VTA light rail system. As far as railfanning goes the VTA is pretty lackluster with bulkhead cabs and rather plain, boxy vehicles. It also has one of the cheapest signaling systems I've ever seen, but the operators are friendly and it is certainly better than nothing. Way back in 2008 on my first visit to the city in 2008 I rode the VTA out to its farthest terminus at Santa Teresa, and the green line end to end from Mountain View to Winchester. Last year I took advantage of the new express service with a side trip on the spur to Almaden. This left only the Blue Line to Alum Rock as the only part of the VTA system I had yet to ride and when presented when another conference opportunity I knew what I had to do.

You can check out all the photos from that ride plus all sorts of others from the San Jose rail system right here and of course read on for the narrated tour.

Looking to save a fare I decided to walk down to the train station from my hotel early on the first morning, catching VTA LRV #970A on the way.

What was at the San Jose Diridon Station? Caltrain, and lots of it. Here we see MP36PH-3C #924 pushing north with a baby bullet trainset.

Gallery cab car #4001. 

My ultimate goal was to catch a northbound morning express train using gallery car equipment that I could shoot a head end video from. Caltrain is pretty consistent about using the same equipment from day to day and I wanted to see if any baby Bullets were going out gallery, like the 4:45pm train I typically catch.

Unfortunately all the gallery car trains I saw that first morning were limited to local trains. Here is a trio of F40PH's I saw pushing these locals and limited service trains, #909, #919 and #901.

Here is a video montage of that first morning's action.



On day 2 I boarded VTA LRV #980A to Alum Rock.

Like I said the VTA sucks for on-train fanning soooo...here 980A is again at Alum Rock with 959B on the rear of the 2 unit train.

14-05-20 PHOTOS: VTA Express

The last time I was in San Jose back in 2008 I made ample use of the region's ample Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority light rail system. Built at throughout the 1990's .Com boom, the VTA Light Rail has seen some of its fortunes decline as the city he was meant to serve failed to see the growth that was anticipated. Even with housing prices exploding in nearby San Francisco, the second tech boom of today has failed to make the city less of a ghost town after hours because for some reason Google workers would want to pay more and drive more to live at the opposite end of the bay.

Well this year a conference that I attended last year moved to San Jose this year to reduce costs and that meant I would have the better part of the week to get out and see what fun I could make a fairly typical and bland light rail system. spoiler alert, there wasn't much I could do, however the VTA did provide convenient connections to the San Jose Diridon Station, home of Amtrak and Caltrain, as well as the Caltrain Tamien station south of the city. The one interesting thing the VTA itself had to offer was an extress service running from the Ohlone-Chynoweth station on the Santa Teresa Line north along the CA 87 corridor to downtown. I was able to try the express run for myself by getting up sufficiently early to make it down to Ohlone-Chynoweth and then catch the express train back.

You can find the full set of photos here

I'll begin at the San Jose Diridon Station which is one of the southern termini for the Caltrain service as well as Amtrak's Capitol Corridor. Here we see Caltrain F40PH-2CAT #901 sitting next to Amtrak F59PHI #2006. Apparently the F59PHI fleet got some sort of ECO Engine rebuilding even thought they were already equipped with 12-710's.

Here is MPI built F40PH-2C #922 also laying over at Diridon. With a build date of 1998 this was probably one of the last F40's ever made.

Well this is odd. Apparently Amtrak has taken to using P32-8WHs on the Coast Starlight. #510 sits behind P42DC #206 along with Heritage baggage car #1237.

Here is a video of a little three way I caught at the end of the San Jose platform. First a departing northbound Caltrain local departs track #5 and lights up the Christmas tree signal gantry at CP-SHARK. Next to it a Caltrain deadhead powered by F40PH-2CAT #916 heads back towards the Caltrain yard north of the station on track #6 under Restricting signals. Finally the aforementioned Amtrak Train 14 arrives on track #1.


Same Train 14 departing under an Advance Approach indication at CP-JULIAN CP-SHARK.


Here we see VTA LRV #914 about to depart Ohlone-Chynoweth towards San Jose. The signals at this station were interlocked with the pedestrian crossing protection.

Here is a little video montage of operations at Ohlone-Chynoweth including the arrival and departure of Almaden shuttle trains.


LRV #938 was on Almaden Shuttle duty. The ~1 mile spur serves a major mall and residential area south of where the Blue Line curves off to continue its route down a freeway median.

Specially wrapped "Express Service" LRV #995 pulls into Ohlone-Chynoweth. Hmmm, wonder if they have had trouble with people mistaking it for a local. The service runs express all the way to the convention center.

Here's a good place to insert a montage of some videos I took downtown.


The VTA uses some of the cheapest signaling I have ever seen. There is no reverse direction signaling, there is no ATC, no ATC, no cab signaling and not even providing for reverse direction signals...even at interlockings. A fixed reflector is used instead.

I went back to Ohlone-Chynoweth later that afternoon for better lighting. Here is an inbound Blue Line train with LRV #957 entering the station.

LRV #938 again at the Almaden terminal.

11-08-09: PHOTOS: Caltran Caltrain IV

I get out to the Bay Area once a year or so on work related trips and each time I always make sure to include a ride on the Caltran Caltrain that runs between San Jose and San Francisco. Like I have said before it is easily the best commuter operation west of the Mississippi that was rebuilt in 2005 with new track, signals and a peak period express service that cuts 30 minutes off the normal trip time and completed the 50 mile journey with only 3 or 4 intermediate stops. Furthermore, the use of gallery cars provides a superb railfan view, although it is now quite frequently marred by bug splat.

Anyway this would be by 4th "survey" style photo set of the Caltrain system starting out from the Milbrae Station, which connects with the San Francisco International Airport, heading to San Jose then taking the train all the way back to San Francisco. Since I had already completed my standard def video compilation of the line I opted for only a few short clips on the return trip which is generally too backlit for standard photography at 4:30 in the afternoon.

New this year was an extended wait at the Millbrae station because BART eliminated the direct SFO to Millbrae connection during the day instead forcing people to connect with a Red Line train at San Bruno that in turn caused me to miss the hourly headway southbound Caltrain by 2 or 3 minutes. Yup, it seems like even out west public transit agencies can't seem to co-ordinate their schedules.

Anyway, you can view the entire set of photos here. What differentiates this set from those that came before is that I FINALLY got sunny weather for the initial southbound trip.

We begin at San Francisco International Airport where I get to sit around while a poorly scheduled BART service is screwing me out of my Caltrain connection. Here we see a 'C' car #430 sitting at the outbound end of the stub terminal.

After getting off BART, which is practically useless to railfan we see the still newish Millbrae intermodal transportation center, which was constructed in conjunction with the Caltrain rebuild and BART extension to the airport. 

The granite benches were pretty cool with various images of rail transportation etched into them.

While burning through my small-large lateness penalty I managed to photograph Rohr 'A' car #1263, which are rather uncommon outside of peak periods. The streamlined nosecone of the 'A' cars are a BART trademark which have been increasingly marginalized since the delivery of the flat cabbed 'C' cars, that are preferred due to their ability to be used in the middle of a consist. This car was originally numbered 263, but had a 1 added when it was rebuilt with AC traction in the 1990s.

Being extremely bored I wandered over to the old Southern Pacific train station which is now a local transportation museum. 

On display was some old signaling equipment and some locomotive controls...you know...for kids.

After about 40 minutes a "Baby Bullet" trainset finally showed up with Bombardier split-level #115 leading and MP36PH-3C #923 providing power on the rear.



Here is a photo of #923.

Finally after nearly an hour a southsound set of Gallery cars arrived with F40PH-2CAT #904 providing power.

Once on the road my train encountered #919 pushing another local northbound south of San Carlos.

Finally got a nice sunny picture of the truss bridge at Palo Alto.

Here we see some VTA LRV's at the Mountain View Station.

Another Baby Bullet trainset with #924 at Sunnyvale.

08-08-01 PHOTOS: San Jose VTA

I apologize for going nearly two months without a photo update, but my web hosting provider went down for about the last month and before that I was getting ready for my big Chicago trip. Anyway, my primary website is back online and its time for me to bite the bullet and do the write-up for my big trip to the 17th annual USENIX Security Symposium in San Jose, CA last August.

I used this trip to explore the VTA light rail system and the San Jose Amtrak/Caltrain station. Over the course of the week I rode 3 of the 4 legs of the VTA Light rail and also took a CalTrain trip to/from San Carlos and also inbound from Mt View after an outbound VTA trip.

It's fascinating how nice everyone is out in CA. When employees came up to me it was always to ask if I wanted to take pictures of something or where I could go to get a cab ride pass. For a moment I thought I had accidentally wound up in Canada!!

Might as well cut to the photos. You can see the entire set here. You can also keep reading to enjoy the cream that came off the top.

Starting off at the Diridon Station we see an Altamont Commuter Express train laying over next to a Caltrain set both headed by F40s (#911 and #3101). ACE trains have been running into congestion problems as they run through the Altamont pass with UP freight traffic.

Here is a closer view of F40PH-2C #3101.

At the south end of the station complex is CP-CAHILL where the line condenses down to a single track for the trip to Gillroy (Caltrain) and beyond (Coast Starlight). To the right an Amtrak California trainset headed by Am-Cal #2004 used in Capitol Corridor service is the only resident of the nearly empty Diridon Station yard which has been deprecated in favor of the new Caltrain Maintenance Facility about a mile up the tracks.

Here we have Caltrain F40PH-2CAT #901 departing under a clear signal at CP-JULIAN as it begins its trip north to San Francisco.

Check out this video of CP-JULIAN from the rear of an arriving CalTrain.



Caltrain uses fairly new gallery car equipment on most of its trains. Here is #4021 preparing to depart North with train #73.