Here's a quick, down and dirty recap of a short trip down to Southern California to do nothing more than meet up with some very good friends and ride some trains.
I left bright and early from Sacramento on the morning of Friday the 13th of March. Since I wanted to get into LAUS at a particular time, I had several bus trips in conjunction with a jaunt on the San Joaquin. I packed super light (just a backpack) and had my wife drop me off at the lightrail station nearest the house (Mrs. Blackwolf was unable to join on the trip due to work.) Rode Sacramento RT to SAC and boarded Amtrak Thruway bus #3712 bound for Stockton. The bus driver was a colorful and somewhat awkward man, but he drove quickly and efficiently for an on-time arrival. SKN was extremely crowded, and I joined the crowd on the platform waiting for San Joaquin #712 to arrive into the station.
My train pulled into the station just as another San Joaquin was departing toward Oakland, and I was surprised to see the distinctive front of an F40 locomotive instead of a double-deck cab car. This meant only one thing, that I was being treated with a trip to Bakersfield with a Comet set. Boarding was a mess, with only two doors on opposite ends of the train being opened. I got aboard quickly, found almost no open seats and relegated myself to sharing a four-top table with two others already seated. My seatmate was a woman who, thankfully, only wanted to sleep the whole trip and was very easy company.
The train changed about 40% of its passengers at Fresno, but a large portion of the new passengers were all wearing plain white tee shirts and holding white mesh bags with varied contents. I soon found out that there had been a large release of inmates from Chowchilla State Penitentiary that morning, and the State of California had supplied most of the ones heading to Los Angeles with tickets aboard the San Joaquin. Most only wanted to get to where ever it was they were going, but several were very free in their conversation about why they had been locked up, where they were locked up, bragging rights, etc. and all with large amounts of profanity. With the train being nearly sold-out, there was no moving to a different car, so I just pulled out my laptop and used the marginal WiFi to listen to Pandora for the rest of the trip.
#712 was late by almost 45 minutes into BFD, but all buses were standing and waiting for our arrival. I transferred to #5812 for an express ride to LAX. It was an uneventful ride on a brand-new bus, and every seat was filled. We ran into heavy traffic in Burbank and crawled our way to the station, arriving an hour an a half after our scheduled time. I met my friend at Traxx and hopped a Metrolink to his car in Buena Park.
I left bright and early from Sacramento on the morning of Friday the 13th of March. Since I wanted to get into LAUS at a particular time, I had several bus trips in conjunction with a jaunt on the San Joaquin. I packed super light (just a backpack) and had my wife drop me off at the lightrail station nearest the house (Mrs. Blackwolf was unable to join on the trip due to work.) Rode Sacramento RT to SAC and boarded Amtrak Thruway bus #3712 bound for Stockton. The bus driver was a colorful and somewhat awkward man, but he drove quickly and efficiently for an on-time arrival. SKN was extremely crowded, and I joined the crowd on the platform waiting for San Joaquin #712 to arrive into the station.
My train pulled into the station just as another San Joaquin was departing toward Oakland, and I was surprised to see the distinctive front of an F40 locomotive instead of a double-deck cab car. This meant only one thing, that I was being treated with a trip to Bakersfield with a Comet set. Boarding was a mess, with only two doors on opposite ends of the train being opened. I got aboard quickly, found almost no open seats and relegated myself to sharing a four-top table with two others already seated. My seatmate was a woman who, thankfully, only wanted to sleep the whole trip and was very easy company.
The train changed about 40% of its passengers at Fresno, but a large portion of the new passengers were all wearing plain white tee shirts and holding white mesh bags with varied contents. I soon found out that there had been a large release of inmates from Chowchilla State Penitentiary that morning, and the State of California had supplied most of the ones heading to Los Angeles with tickets aboard the San Joaquin. Most only wanted to get to where ever it was they were going, but several were very free in their conversation about why they had been locked up, where they were locked up, bragging rights, etc. and all with large amounts of profanity. With the train being nearly sold-out, there was no moving to a different car, so I just pulled out my laptop and used the marginal WiFi to listen to Pandora for the rest of the trip.
#712 was late by almost 45 minutes into BFD, but all buses were standing and waiting for our arrival. I transferred to #5812 for an express ride to LAX. It was an uneventful ride on a brand-new bus, and every seat was filled. We ran into heavy traffic in Burbank and crawled our way to the station, arriving an hour an a half after our scheduled time. I met my friend at Traxx and hopped a Metrolink to his car in Buena Park.
