Western Railroad Discussion > New Year at Santa Barbara

With my wife’s desire to see the Rose Parade in person, we found ourselves visiting the LA area for the New Year’s Weekend. We enjoyed the parade even though we were somewhat soaked. Afterwards we headed north along the coast to visit Santa Barbara, CA. This was not a train trip but on our walk back from an excellent bbq tri-tip steak sandwich at Shalhoob’s Funk Zone Patio, we noticed a crowd at the Santa Barbara train station. A quick check of the Amtrak tracker showed that a slightly late southbound #11 Coast Starlight was close along with a southbound and northbound Surfliner. My wife and one kid headed for the hotel while the other one and I stayed at the station.

First up at 7:00 pm was #11 which exchanged a decent number of passengers before heading south where it stopped at the east end of the siding. Per the tracker, the northbound Surfliner #779 was already west of Carpinteria while the southbound #794 was past Goleta setting up a three-way meet at Santa Barbara.

At 7:21 pm, #794 rolled to a stop at the station on the same track as #11. Again a decent number of passengers on and off the train.

The headlights of #779 appeared at 7:25 pm and by 7:26 pm #794 was rolling south and cleared the station as #779 arrived at 7:29 pm.

Not a bad way to end New Year’s Day.

Spent the morning of 1/2 exploring Santa Barbara some more. Before we headed to see the Santa Barbara Mission, we were to see northbound #14 arriving in decent sunlight. By the time we finished the mission tour the sun had disappeared. We managed a sidetrip up San Marcos Pass for lunch at the historic Cold Spring Tavern (Awesome bison flank steak sandwich!) before the rains returned.

Enjoy the video!

Posted from iPhone



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/26 13:00 by kevink.

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Nice set of videos, looks like the rain had left the area by the time you got there.
Robert in Island City Oregon 

Santa Barbara is a special place!  B

You guys did it right! Born and raised in Goleta (and still thankfully here) you couldn’t have picked two better spots for your carnivore grub down. Cold Springs is my absolute favorite, I had my 50th birthday party there. The bison sounds really good, on the weekends they have amazing tri-tip sandwiches served outside with live music. Highly recommended to anyone that’s passing through.