TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

Up next in the line of new commuter rail services in the United States: the “Music City Star” service between downtown Nashville and Lebanon, TN. Service starts Monday, September 18 with 6 daily roundtrips (3 morning and 3 afternoon). 2 roundtrips will only go as far as Mt. Juliet.

This is good news in these times of $3 gasoline. But will it be as successful as the New Mexico Rail Runner? We’ll see.

(Image (c) Nashville RTA)

Last week, Caltrain published a preview of its future capital improvement plan, which includes snazzy fast and clean electric trains up and down the Peninsula by the year 2012. Let’s just hope they actually manage to make this come true!

I just love this quote:

The U.S. is a third-world country when it comes to rail travel, but this will make Caltrain a world-class rapid rail transit system.

The full report is due sometime later this year.

First run: 344 km/h - second and last run: 357 km/h

See also yesterday’s post and netzeitung.de (german).

Tomorrow - September 2, 2006 - Siemens will attempt to beat the World Speed Record for Electric Locomotives, which was set on May 28/29, 1955 by two French locomotives. The current record stands at 331 km/h - Siemens said they will try to go above 350 km/h. The attempt will be made using the new ES64U4 (OeBB class 1216) locomotive and will take place on the Nuremberg-Ingolstadt highspeed line in southern Germany.

Obviously they’re very confident in their ability to actually beat the record, otherwise they wouldn’t make such a big announcement in advance. It seems to be quite an event - they even brought over the two French locomotives who set the record in 1955 out of the museum so they can “witness” the event. Well, they probably have an ace up their sleeve: they’ve been running speed trials for a couple of weeks already, so maybe they have in fact already reached the targeted speed …

On August 14, New Mexico Rail Runner carried their 100,000th passenger - just 1 month after the start of the service on July 14 of this year. Ridership has already reached a level of ~4,000 passengers every day - probably aided by the fact that riding Rail Runner is free for the first three months.

This Saturday, we went over to Felton to visit with Thomas the Tank Engine at Roaring Camp Railroads (for the third year already …). The kids love it and there was also some fun to be had for the railfan parent. More “Day Our With Thomas” events are scheduled for all over the country until December of this year - click here for details.

Some railfan notes:
- Thomas the Tank engine is obviously a fake. The 10 car train was actually pulled/puhed by a CF7 (I think) diesel of the “Santa Cruz, Big Trees & Pacific Railway”, i.e. these are the engines that normally run the standard gauge Santa Cruz excursion trains. The train ride that is advertised and sold as the main attraction is a short 30-or-so-minute ride a couple miles down the San Lorenzo River canyon and back. And you don’t actually see much of Thomas while riding the train - not unless you’re in one of the cars right next to it.
- Diesel #40 seems to have received a new coat of paint - last year, it looked quite a bit less spiffy.
- This is the first time that I saw steamer #3 in operation at Roaring Camp. I wonder if the little engine would make it up the hill …

Day Out With Thomas @ Roaring Camp (Felton, CA)

Thomas the Tank Engine “pulls” a 10 car train loaded with ecstatic kids and their parents.

Diesel #40 runs the shuttle trains between the depot/water tower and the overflow parking lot.

Later in the afternoon, #40 gets a break and steamer #3 takes over the shuttle trains.

Due to the large crowds in the village, the narrow gauge trains up to Bear Mountain cannot use their usual loop track - instead, they back up towards the yard and then turn on the wye to get back up the mountain.

Shay #7 “Sonora” puts on quite a show as it ascends the grade.

The last spike for the new Lötschberg base tunnel was driven earlier today (Press release in German). The tunnel should be opened on June 16, 2007 and is 34.6 kilometers long.

They have now announced the schedule for the additional roundtrip that is slated to start at the end of the summer:

Altamont Commuter Express is happy to announce the debut of a new round-trip schedule added to the existing 3 round trips! Beginning on Monday August 28, 2006 a fourth train will depart Stockton Monday through Friday at 9:30 am making all stops en route to San Jose and arriving there at 11:40 am. Returning, this new train will depart San Jose at 12:05 pm and arrive back in Stockton at 2:15 pm.

Last Saturday, I had to go to Los Angeles for a meeting - and the nature of the meeting kind of required that one travel by train. I wanted to depart no earlier than Friday evening, so I wouldn’t need to take the day off. Is it even possible to go from Mountain View (well, San Jose) to Los Angeles and back in one day - and be at a meeting from 10am to 3pm?

Well, it is, but it takes just about a full 24 hours to do the trip and it involves more buses than trains (well, they’re Amtrak buses, so they almost count as trains …):
- Take the new overnight bus from San Jose (departure: 12:10am) to Santa Barbara
- Connect with the first Pacific Surfliner (train #768) out of Santa Barbara (6:45am) and arrive in Los Angeles at 9:25am
- To return, take the San Joaquin bus connection leaving Los Angeles at 3:10pm
- Arrive in Bakersfield at 5:55pm and connect to San Joaquin train #703 leaving at 6:10pm
- Arrive in Stockton at 10:15pm and connect to the bus to San Jose, leaving at 10:20pm and arriving in San Jose at 11:55pm

Total trip time: 23 hours and 45 minutes

What you get:
- No Amtrak parking at the San Jose station, since you need a permit, but the ticket office closes at 11pm …
- Not a lot of sleep on the bus during the night …
- Nice morning views of the Pacific Ocean before and after Santa Barbara
- A bus ride over the Grapevine (also known as Tejon Pass) with hopefully not too much traffic and a bus driver that doesn’t do races with his colleagues
- An uneventful train ride through the flat and surprisingly green (but scorchingly hot) Central Valley
- A late evening bus ride over Altamont Pass - in my case with only one other passenger on the bus

All in all, a good trip and ontime all the way. I wouldn’t do the overnight bus again though - while it is quite convenient, I’ve never been the type to be able to sleep on airplanes and as it turns out, I can’t really sleep on buses either. Now if they could only do this as a train all the way and have a sleeper on it …

Oh yes, and if we actually had High Speed Rail instead of only talking about it, I would have been able to leave San Jose at 7am and spent no more than 2 1/2 hours each way - I’d have been back home by 6pm …

Union Pacific freight train passing through Santa Barbara.

The UP freight rolls away into the sunrise.

Early morning along the Pacific Ocean between Santa Barbara and Ventura - that’s why they call it the “Pacific Surfliner”!

Surfliner trainset at Los Angeles Union Station.

“Drive me, will train” - But I don’t want to drive (or ride …) a bus, I want a train!

Which Amtrak bus is faster? Is that part of the training, too?

San Joaquin train in Bakersfield.

Imagine this:

- Freeways would not have any on- or offramps. They would be a completely separate road networks.
- Instead of on- and offramps, there would be huge parking lots (”freeway interchange”) every 10 miles or so, with a fence down the middle.
- If you wanted to do a long distance trip by car, you would drive on your local roads to the next “freeway interchange” and park your car there. Then you would walk across the fence and rent a “freeway car” to drive on the freeway. Sometimes, a “freeway car” might not immediately available for rent, so you would have to wait for a while. With this “freeway car” you can drive on the freeway to the “freeway interchange” closest to your destination. There, you would park your “freeway car”, walk across the fence and rent another car for the local trip (”local car”). With this “local car”, you drive to your destination on the local roads.
- When you want to travel back, do the same in reverse order.

Now that would be awfully inconvenient, wouldn’t it? But that’s exactly how the public transportation network seems to be set up around here (mostly anyway): every operator only cares about its own system and nobody ensures that you can connect smoothly and easily from one network to the other - things like take the bus to the local train station, then the commuter train to the next bigger city, then a long distance train, etc. - making all these connections is almost impossible here, plus fares and schedules are not coordinated and you need to get a separate ticket for each leg…

If the road system worked like this, nobody would bother driving a car. If you think about it, it’s surprising that people use public transportation at all! This needs to change, otherwise people will never switch …