Passenger Trains > UP Passenger Special on the Coast

Union Pacific ran a passenger special up the coast today from West Colton to Oakland. UP 7968 was on the point. The train included former SP business cars Sunset and Stanford, and UP track inspection car Idaho.

Here's a shot of the special at Seacliff in Ventura County about 4 p.m. The train stooped to server dinner before sunset at Surf and departed north again about 20:15.

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Great shot!

Everyone loves the Coast line, even the UP Execs, except for hauling real freight trains.

I bet the Coast line is faster to LA than a Tehachapi routing...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/13 00:34 by coach.

coach Wrote:
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> Everyone loves the Coast line, even the UP Execs,
> except for hauling real freight trains.
>
> I bet the Coast line is faster to LA than a
> Tehachapi routing...


Running a special on the Coast avoids interfering with the freight traffic over Tehachapi; and it also
avoids Metrolink dispatch priority on the Soledad Canyon route (Amtrak detours sit in sidings for the
scheduled commuter trains).

GenePoon Wrote:
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>
> Running a special on the Coast avoids interfering
> with the freight traffic over Tehachapi; and it
> also
> avoids Metrolink dispatch priority on the Soledad
> Canyon route (Amtrak detours sit in sidings for
> the
> scheduled commuter trains).

Great but what is the work around when the Coast route is not available between San Jose and Salinas??

In the heydays of the "Daylight" it could do better from Townsend street in SFO to LAUPT than its SJ Valley counterpart from Oakland to LAUPT by a couple of hours.The run over the mountains between Bakersfield and Mojave slowed the Valley trains' time table a lot. In the early history of the SPRR coast trains used to go through Filmore and on in to Saugus and then into the San Fernando Valley adding about 2 hours more running time, but this was averted by drilling the three tunnels between Simi Valley and the San Fernando Valley circa late in the 1920s thus dealing with " that damn rock pile" as SP engineers called the Chatsworth Mountains then.

Phil Blommendahl
Getzville, NY