TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

My wife is planning to fly to Switzerland with the kids next March and she wants to fly from Los Angeles (so she can take the Nonstop flight with Swiss). I’ll take her down there and thus, I will have two Bay Area to Los Angeles trips on the train to do. I’m figuring I can do one trip on the Coast Starlight (although I’ve done that before - years ago) and the second trip on the San Joaquin route. I’ll also have some time in L.A. to potentially do a Pacific Surfliner round trip and maybe some Metrolink trips.

Since I’ve already done the San Jose to Seattle segment of the Coast Starlight on an earlier occasion and we just recently did San Jose to Sacramento on the Capitols, I’ll have almost the whole Amtrak California rail network covered after that.

Imagine this - California is much larger than Switzerland, but it is much easier to reach a stage where you have traveled all the available passenger rail routes in the “country” (I still can’t say that about Switzerland, although I’ve done a lot of them already. But it’s the little trains here and there that get you).

Having visited the excellent California State Railroad Museum over the weekend, I wanted to spend a few words on railroad preservation activities in the U.S.

As a European, one may be really surprised to see how many tourist and historic railroads and railroad museums there are in this country. I mean, the view in Europe is basically that the (passenger) trains are non-existent in the United States and when you come here, you’ll find a lot of very dedicated people working on preserving what’s left of the railroad history in this country. Obviously, railroads had a major role in the history - maybe without railroads the western part wouldn’t have been settled that quickly - and there are a lot of excellent facilities here. Now, I cannot claim to have visited or even have heard of every each one of them, but still, the following are among my favorites:
California State Railroad Museum
Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum

Here’s finally a bunch of pictures from our Sacramento trip:
Sacramento Light Rail
Amtrak California F59PHI
Caltrain MP36PH-3C
Sacramento Station
Davis Station
Amtrak California Train

Carl @ Trainweb has also put up his reports about the TRAC Conference and MUNI tour (see also here for my report on the MUNI tour)

We took a little trip over the weekend, riding public transportation (i.e. trains) with our two little children (3 years old and 4 months old) from our home in Mountain View to Sacramento, to visit the Railroad Museum. Here’s a little trip report (pictures to follow):

- Friday:
We started off by taking VTA Light Rail from Middlefield station to Downtown Mountain View. Then we switched to Caltrain for the short trip to San Jose. At Diridon station, we boarded Amtrak Capitol train 534 that took us all the way to Sacramento.

- Saturday:
Visited the California State Railroad Museum and we loved it.

- Sunday:
Boarded Amtrak train 737 in Sacramento to Great America station and again VTA Light Rail from there to Middlefield station again.

Pros
- All trains were more or less on-time, no connections missed or anything.
- The cars on the Amtrak trains are pretty comfortable and spacious, the Snack Bar isn’t too bad (it’s only a three hour trip, so you don’t really need more).
- On board personnel was friendly.

Cons
- While you can see special spaces being reserved for Seniors and Disabled people everywhere, there really are no provisions for people with small children. Access with strollers is sometimes very difficult (e.g. on the older Caltrain cars - Amtrak and VTA are more or less low-floor and therefore ok) and there is no storage space (and you’re not supposed to use the Wheelchair or bike spaces …). What you’re supposed to do is fold up your stroller and put it in one of the luggage spaces. But when your traveling with two small children, one of which can neither stand or sit by herself, then this is a problem. And usually, you’ll have luggage and stuff all over your stroller anyway. And while we did not ride the Sacramento light rail, we did read the signs at the stations and they say that you’re supposed to fold up your stroller before you board the train - now how are you going to do that if you’re alone with two small children? Forget about taking the train … use the car, it’s much easier …
And at Great America station, you have to climb the stairs to get up on the bridge where the light rail is - no elevator or anything. And then you have to walk off the bridge along a busy street to get to the light rail station. That connection could be very convenient, if it were easier to use …
- Amtrak ticketing staff at the San Jose station don’t seem to be working very efficiently. And there is no Quik-Trak machine. We had to go pick up our website-ordered tickets and must have waited about 15 minutes in the line (there were only two or three people in front of us) and when we left at 10 minutes before departure time, there were still quite a few people in the line. I doubt that they all got their tickets, because the train did leave on time …
- VTA ticketing machines don’t give a lot of change and there is no option of saying “I don’t care about the change, just give me the *&% ticket”. So if you only have a ten dollar bill and want to get a ticket from the machine, forget it …

All in all, taking the train with your family can still be an enjoyable experience, but you have to be prepared, take your time and you better be at least two adults …

Just thought it interesting to note that as of November 19, the clock on the screens at Whisman station was still showing Daylight Saving Time - and I never got a reply to my email that I sent to them, either …

These new locomotives for SBB Cargo (intended for service between southern Switzerland and Italy) are slowly turning up now - Re 474 001 seems to be back in Chiasso right now (while up to 10 locomotives should already have been built by Siemens) and out of the Re 484 series, the locomotives up to # 484 011 have been seen in Switzerland.

Update: see also this update.

While each country’s state railway traditionally had its own relations to the locomotive builders of that country (and almost every country used to have its own set of manufacturers), the trend nowadays is to buy standardized locomotive types that are interoperable (or at least meant to be capable of being interoperable) between various countries and rail networks. This is probably due to two main reasons:
* Consolidation in the railroad industry has caused the disappearance of many of those traditional builders - nowadays, only three major companies are engaged in the business of building (electric) locomotives on a large scale: Alstom, Bombardier and Siemens
* Deregulation of the european (freight) railroad network (move towards open-access) has changed the strategy of a lot of the former national railways (which have become privatized companies) towards providing service over foreign networks as well as their traditional national networks. In addition, new startup operators have joined the market - and these often take advantage of the services offered by locomotive leasing (e.g. Angel Trains) and rental (e.g. Siemens Dispolok) companies to fulfill their motive power needs.

Thus, the three major builders have each introduced their own family of electric four-axle (freight and/or passenger) locomotives in the 4000-6000 kW range that are offered in multiple variants (power systems, train control systems) according to the needs of the buyers:
* Alstom Prima
* Bombardier TRAXX
* Siemens EuroSprinter

This year’s schedule change - which will be effective on December 12 - is a big one for SBB: this will be the final schedule change to bring into play all the improvements done through the first phase of the “Bahn/Rail 2000” project. As of this date, the new line between Mattstetten and Rothrist with the branch to Solothurn will be put in service (unfortunately, only with temporary train control systems, since the new ETCS system is not fully functional yet, which will only allow speeds up to 160 km/h instead of 200 km/h). All major intercity trains between Bern/Biel and Olten (with service further on to Zurich and Basel) will use the new line and travel time from Bern to Zurich will be reduced to 58 minutes from currently 69 minutes. Also, half hourly service will be available on most main intercity lines.

They did release a new map yesterday according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle (HIGH-SPEED RAIL / Agency reveals likely bullet train routes), but I can’t find it yet on their website. According to the article, the map currently does not yet show an alignment for the link between the Bay Area and the Central Valley, pending further study of the Altamont Pass route (which was left out of the original EIS/EIR draft).