LD Train Serving San Diego?

[jis]

Since Caltrain pushes into San Fran why not couple any SAN cars south of the loco ?

Why? That will mean stationing a person in San Jose to couple/uncouple cars, it will require the same staff on train as would be required to just run the train to San Fran (except one additional engineer). And somehow these cars will have to be switched from the south of the train to the north end of the train in San Fran requiring a person to be stationed there to couple and uncouple cars and shuffle them around, and an Engineer to stick around to do yard work. Why bother? Just run the Amtrak California train to San Fran. Even if you are running it from San Diego, one can always figure out a link that terminates the consist in LAX to send it for servicing. All this is not rocket science. Really.

Then the Amtrak equipment becomes orphaned in San Fran, so to speak. There' s no maintenance base for Amtrak there. Going to Oakland is a better operation, for that reason, but only for that reason. If a piece of equipment has to be taken out of service, it would be much better to do that at the Oakland terminus, don't you think?

Ideally it should go to Oakland and let passengers connect at San Jose to Caltrain. But if one must send it to San Fran, it is doable with some additional effort. Clearly if there is a bad ordered car discovered at San Fran then it will have to be switched with the help of Oakland.

The Amtrak equipment gets exactly as orphaned in San Fran as say the Vermonter gets orphaned in St. Albans or the Empire Service trains get orphaned in Niagara Falls, or the Palmetto gets orphaned in Savannah. It is not that big a deal.

 

[west point]

Orphan layovers ? wouldn't San Fran <> San Diego both ways be orphans ? Your examples of Vermonter and others only have one night layover. This poster's example would still require 4 days before major maintenance location of Oakland which might be too long. 2656 miles between heavy maintenance might require an extra car on trains to allow for any break downs. Only the Eagle to LAX has more miles and there are a couple standby cars available in San Antonia.

Going SAN <> SFO would require LAX to plan for replacement cars when needed.

Last time in SJC and SFO there was switch crews available at both locations . All SFO has to do is snatch the end SAN cars off end of a Caltrain and park them at one of Townsend's (SFP) bumper posts.

 

[Paulus]

I swear you guys are trying to set up a run that would make dispatchers go postal.

Look, Amtrak's suggestion to the coast rail coordinating council that the Daylight be San Jose to San Diego makes perfect sense. San Jose has overnight layover facilities, north of San Jose will be congested as hell with Caltrain and HSR and a slow accelerating diesel train will snarl things up, and San Jose-San Diego allows for regular maintenance as it cycles between Surfliner and Daylight. So can we stop with these bizarre suggestions already?

 

[jis]

Paulus, I completely agree with you. I was just trying to show how bizarre the suggestion was, only to get responses that were even more bizarre. So I finally threw up my hands and gave up.

 

[fairviewroad]

Paulus, I completely agree with you. I was just trying to show how bizarre the suggestion was, only to get responses that were even more bizarre.

Yes, but How Bizarre?

https://youtu.be/C2cMG33mWVY

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

I swear you guys are trying to set up a run that would make dispatchers go postal.

Look, Amtrak's suggestion to the coast rail coordinating council that the Daylight be San Jose to San Diego makes perfect sense. San Jose has overnight layover facilities, north of San Jose will be congested as hell with Caltrain and HSR and a slow accelerating diesel train will snarl things up, and San Jose-San Diego allows for regular maintenance as it cycles between Surfliner and Daylight. So can we stop with these bizarre suggestions already?

In one of my previous posts (http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/66425-extending-cz-to-oakland-san-jose/). you sounded like you were all saying San Jose didn't have layover facilities. If they actually do have overnight layover facilities in San Jose why can't the CZ be extended there?

Feel free to move this to the other thread if you wish.

 

[Eric S]

There are facilities in San Jose for corridor trains to layover (as Capitol Corridor does now and Coast Daylight could do).

There are not facilities to service long distance trains - those facilities are near Oakland (between Oakland and Emeryville).

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

Well, ok.

You could theoretically go through Mexico then through Campo and the Carrizo Gorge to El Centro, up to Niland then east on the UP/SP line, but improvements would have to be made.

 

[jis]

There are facilities in San Jose for corridor trains to layover (as Capitol Corridor does now and Coast Daylight could do).

There are not facilities to service long distance trains - those facilities are near Oakland (between Oakland and Emeryville).

Yeah, I doubt that any LD trains will be serviced at San Jose storage yard with minimal maintenance capability. The maintenance base for Capitol Corridor is Oakland and for Coast Daylight it will be Los Angeles. For similar reasons it is very unlikely that any LD train will serve San Diego either. It is just an out station with no maintenance facility. The maintenance base3 is Los Angeles.

The Coast Daylight will essentially be an extension of a San Louis Obispo turn of the LOSSAN North service, to San Francisco. it will presumably receive the sort of servicing it does today in San Louis Obispo, and not much more. It being a push-pull service already, there will be no need to turn the train in San Francisco. Its primary maintenance base will be Los Angeles. I gathered all this from reading the Appendix C Service Development Plan of the EIS available from FRA.

There is mention of a second overnight frequency. If you look at its cost analysis, it appears that it is based on the same 5 staff per train as the daytime train, which suggests that it will be yet another extension of a LOSSAN North service to San Francisco. This suggests that at least at present no Sleeper service is planned for it, but of course such could change, changing the whole cost analysis of it.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but isn't the whole point of the Coast Starlight from SJC to LAX, and then the Pacific Surfliner to San Diego, to ride along the ocean in daylight? If I ever travel all the way across the country to ride a train along the Pacific Coast, I would want to see that coast!

 

[jis]

Nobody is changing anything as far as the Coast Starlight goes. it will continue to serve as the tourist train. Coast Daylight is going to be a milk run stopping at many more places serving the local travel needs of the residents along the Los Angeles - San Francisco coastal corridor. It will essentially be a standard LOSSAN regional train that runs all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco along the coast. Such service already exists from Los Angeles to San Louis Obispo in addition to the Coast Starlight.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Oh, I see. Thanks, jis.

Just as long as I get to see the Pacific Ocean in daylight, I'm certainly fine with the locals having a train with more stops at whatever time they want. (After all, living in NJ, I've seen the Atlantic Ocean so much that sometimes if I go down the Shore I just take it for granted .)

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

If the border paranoia ever died down, the first international route to Mexico City should be Mexico City - San Luis Potosi - Monterrey - Laredo-San Antonio-Austin-DFW

Second should be Mexico City - Torreon-Chihuahua-Juarez-El Paso-Albuquerque.

Considering that there are packed "express" buses from the Midwest to Mexico, I think a train would be a reasonable success and far more comfortable.

 

[jis]

Oh, I see. Thanks, jis.

Just as long as I get to see the Pacific Ocean in daylight, I'm certainly fine with the locals having a train with more stops at whatever time they want. (After all, living in NJ, I've seen the Atlantic Ocean so much that sometimes if I go down the Shore I just take it for granted .)

The first Daylight service is slated to run during the day light hours arriving San Fran at 6:32pm and departing San Fran at 7:07am, running ahead of the Coast Starlight in both directions. The second service in the future will be an overnight service, roughly 12 hours removed from the first service.

 

[Paulus]

Oh, I see. Thanks, jis.

Just as long as I get to see the Pacific Ocean in daylight, I'm certainly fine with the locals having a train with more stops at whatever time they want. (After all, living in NJ, I've seen the Atlantic Ocean so much that sometimes if I go down the Shore I just take it for granted .)

The first Daylight service is slated to run during the day light hours arriving San Fran at 6:32pm and departing San Fran at 7:07am, running ahead of the Coast Starlight in both directions. The second service in the future will be an overnight service, roughly 12 hours removed from the first service.

Here's the latest on Daylight planning from the LOSSAN Business Plan

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

San Diego's at 4 am though. But I assume it would be better to just leave the schedule as is and start the train at Los Angeles. SD to SF people can ride the Coast Starlight or go up the San Joaquin (surprisingly faster than the CS). If they really want to ride this train, an existing early morning Metrolink (4:37am Oceanside to 6:40am Los Angeles) could be used to connect to 761.

Would more stops be added between SLO and SJC? Like Atascadero or King City?

 

[jis]

The San Joaquins will be even faster once they start running on the segment of HSR in the valley that they can use.

 

[TiBike]

Would more stops be added between SLO and SJC? Like Atascadero or King City?

The state's rail plan calls for upgraded stations in King City and Soledad to support the Coast Daylight. That would put pretty much everyone in the Salinas Valley (at least from San Lucas north) within about 10 miles of a station. The Capitol Corridor extension would add stations in Castroville and Pajaro/Watsonville, so those might be on the route too. The existing Caltrain stations in Gilroy and Morgan Hill are obvious candidates.

No mention of Atascadero. That would be nice, though.

 

[seat38a]

For all that have never been to SD. Here is Amtrak's maintenance plan and facility for San Diego. If it breaks down along the way, they send this out to go get it and take it back to LA. Even the Coaster does not have a maintenance facility in downtown, just storage. They don't even restock the cafe cars in SD. If its sold out, there is nothing until they get back to LAUS.

IMG_0647 by B H, on Flickr