Passenger Trains > Caught the Thanksgiving Coast Starlight on today's bike ride

Got in an early morning bike ride this morning in anticipation of a large Thanksgiving meal.  I noticed that the Starlight was running about 40 minutes late and I could probably catch it in Emeryville CA, and here's the result.  Looked like a pretty good load onboard today.

---

Looks like you had a nice bike ride.

Nathan

Great picture and it looks like your ride was great! Last month, I got a couple of shots from that same exact spot where you captured 11. That's a wonderful spot for photographing action on the Capitol Corridor route.

Looks like they had the coaches up front.

They have the wrong unit on the point.

I met that train in Tacoma on Wednesday.  Yes, they have flipped the Coast Starlight consist again and added a third regular sleeper in place of the trans-dorm.  I wondered where they got all the trans dorms for the Texas Eagle and Sunset.  Interestingly, the Charger was providing the train's head end power in Tacoma.  Usually the rear unit, in this case P42 158, would have been doing that.  So I assume the P42's HEP was bad-ordered.

Is that train approaching a station or yard?  There appear to be 9 tracks (or more?)on the near side of the bridge and
only 3 or 4 on the far side??

Frank30 (Boston)

Frank30 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is that train approaching a station or yard? 
> There appear to be 9 tracks (or more?)on the near
> side of the bridge and
> only 3 or 4 on the far side??
>
> Frank30 (Boston)

Seems to be rolling through a yard that's partly UP and partly Amtrak...there's an Amtrak Commisary on the property. 

Not sure if I would call that spot a yard, even though there are so many tracks there, many of which aren’t mainline tracks. The actual yards, one for Amtrak and the other for UP trains that serve the Port of Oakland, is extremely close by to the south. Amtrak’s Emeryville Station is located almost 1/2 a mile to the north of this vantage point.

Posted from iPhone

There are about 4 tracks there, and I believe it is known as Emeryville Yard.  I haven't seen any freight cars on those close tracks for at least 4-5 years now.  The north end of the yard  is also the location of the former Shellmound Junction, where the SP's IER electric trains branched off for downtown Berkeley. 

Previous land uses: on the right, geo east, was Sherwin-Williams paint factory.  On the left, geo west, was Judson Steel. 

AMTRAK either needs to rebuild those GENESIS units, or order new GE's, because they're going to need them.  The CHARGERS won't last.  They're already having lots of problems with lots of parts, and that's directly from an AMTRAK engineer.  Add to it they use a high RPM engine, vs. the older EMD / GE lower RPM engines, and it's more trouble waiting to happen.

The trend in diesel trucks is to design engines with LOWER rpm's, not higher.  Why AMTRAK went the other way boggles my mind.  Higher rpm's = more wear and tear = more maintenance = less reliability.

Whats the distance from yoiur hlouse ti EMY?