10-03-01 PHOTOS: Caltran Caltrain III

Last March I was once again sent out to the West Coast on my employers dime to attend a week long conference in San Francisco. As always I took an early flight to give myself about 6 hours on Monday to ride the Caltran Caltrain down to San Jose to see a friend there. Unfortunately this is the crappy time of year in the Bay Area where the weather is uniformly gray and wet and this day was a particularly bad example. However I was not to be deterred and came away with quite a few good photos, even if they aren't railpictures.net quality.

Many of the photos were simply a third pass at documenting the signaling and stations along the route and because of the general "gray" quality of the pics I don't plan to subject any of you to them, but if you have an interest just follow the link to the main set of photos and check them out. I documented ever signal and interlocking between San Fran and San Jose.

The photos document a trip taken from the Millbrae Station to the San Jose Diridon Station, which also serves Amtrak and the Altamont Commuter Express and then a second trip from the 4th and King St Terminal to San Carlos.

You can find all of the photos at the following link.

http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/10-03-01_CALTRAIN_III/-Thumbnails.html

Also if you want to keep track of where things are a fairly up to date track diagram can be located in the 2007 Caltrain ETT Suppliment.

We kick off with F40PH-2CAT #918 in push mode with a mid-day local just north of Hayward Park.

Someone at the yard must have been trying to be clever as F40PH-2CAT #919 was pushing behind the following local just north of San Antonio.

The preserved CLARA tower is still standing next to the recently re-configured CP-COAST north of the Santa Clara station with some Caltrain maintainers standing by.

 Since I had last been here the new yard and maintenance area north of San Jose had been completed. Here we see the new shop building with some gallery cars and F40PH-2 #907 hanging out behind it.

Also in attendance in the yard with trainsets are numbers 908, 916 and 906.

Moving through CP-JULIAN at the northern throat of the San Jose terminal we see that the leads to the old yard tracks west of the station have all been cut since my last visit. Moroever the old yard isn't just disused, its been completely ripped out.

Arriving at San Jose the Track 2 signal on the "473 Bridge" in CP-JULIAN was already displayed for the next northbound train.

On the adjacent Track 4 was an Amtrak California trainset with Superliner Cab Car #8313.

On the storage track 6 was another Amtrak California trainset with Superliner Cab car #8307.

There must be some maintenance issues as standard Amtrak P42 #177 was subbing for the more usual Amtrak California branded equipment. In the background we also have MPI built F40-2CAT #920.

The other trainset is also using substitute power in the form of P42 #13.

Behind #13 on Track 6 was one of the Baby Bullet trainsets lead by Bombardier Coffin Car #112.

I believe that #920 was behind the next northbound train. That would mean that on this day we would have trainsets powered by 918, 919 and 920 one after another.

06-05-01 PHOTOS: Caltran Caltrain I

Here is my first set of photos from my big trip to San Francisco. On my first day I went from SFO to the Caltrain station at Millbrae and from there took the Caltran Caltrain to see a friend in San Jose.

It was a fun ride, although the stops were a little close together and the line had been recently resignaled, (although at least they are using speed signaling now) Caltrain its a pretty good operation easily up to the standards set by the east coast and chicago. At the San Jose terminal I got to see trainsets from ACE, Caltrain and Amtrak all together.

On my return trip I took one of the new express "Baby Bullet" trains (although fortunately my train was not using the new shit Baby Bullet equipment) so I got a nice railfan window express run all the way back. Yes, all the gallery cab cars have a railfan window, however all the cab cars are also "bike" cars so seating is limited.

I took the express all the way back to the 4th and King terminal which is perhaps the only location on the West Coast with pneumatic switch machines.

Anyway, the whole set of photos can be found at:

http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/06-05-01_CALTRAN_CALTRAIN/-Thumbnails.html

SFO station on BART with a 'C' style car that has a flat front cab.

My southbound local train to San Jose arrives at Millbrae with F40PH-2CAT #900.

MP36PH-2C with gallery car stock. Too bad we don't get to see these in NJT colours :-(