Passenger Trains > CalTrain farewell to passenger equipment

Yesterday's report about CalTrain's special movement of decommissioned gallery cars reminded me of a similar "changing of the guard" some 40 years ago when CalTrain retired its fleet of Harriman Subs. To commemorate the retirement, CalTrain hosted an afternoon of "Farewell to the Harrimans" excusions on June 15, 1985 -- two round trips between San Jose and San Francisco. Each leg was led by an example of the different locomotive models in use at the time. 

Here are photos of each of the 4 consists that operated that afternoon
1: at South San Francisco behind 4450 and 4451
2: at 4th Street behind a pair of Torpedo Geeps
4: at Hayward Park behind 3207

WP17

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And the final leg led by 900, a new F40,  at Brisbane.

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Nice series! Too bad there wasn't a Trainmaster around for one of the runs....

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

Those Harriman subs were interesting to ride even though noisy with the normal clanging, banging and air sounds when the commutes got up to 65+ mph. The few times I rode those trains, I chose to ride in the gallery (bi-level) cars simply because if a sub was in the consist, it would be the smoking car. Perhaps that is now a thing of the past since smoking has, fortunately, become much more unpopular.

Super interesting, would have loved to have seen that as a 12 year old kid!  Unfortunately, no internet, and while my dad liked trains, we weren't up on the latest news at the time.

Nathan

Was the center siding still in service at Hayward Park?

Nice set of pics. I decided to chase those specials rather than ride, although 'chase' may not be the right word :-) I set up in different places during the afternoon runs. My last photo of the day was at the same location as the last of your series. I shot both b&w and color but thought I'ds share the b&w instead. Oh, I should pass this on. I too referred to these ancient commute coaches as Harrimans but evrery time I did I was told on more than one occasion that they were not Harrimans but called suburban coaches. I now use the latter term.

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