Passenger Trains > Caltrain's Colorful Little Gilroy Rockets

Caltrain now has three trainsets(nine cars) colorfully wrapped for its San Jose to Gilroy
South Bay Connector service(four rush hour roundtrips).  We can probably anticipate a fourth
set soon to equip all the trains with this look.

Yesterday three of the trains were made up of an MP36 and a wrapped consist with an F40PH-2C and
standard consist on the fourth.  The theme of the wraps are agriculture(grapes), palm trees &
sun, and sports.  Reference stevef's TO post from back in December:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,5963660,5963660#msg-5963660

Yesterday's train 814 with the 816 stacked in right benind it are seen on track seven at San Jose
Diridon.  In less than an hour electric connections 514 and 416 will pull in on track six for a
quick cross platform passenger transfer.

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Train 816 is seen leaving town on time at 17:01 while an hour later we see 820 with 927 departing 
from track two with another wrapped train.  Final shot is from last September(the 915 was in its
final week of operation) shows the cross platform transfer in progress on tracks six and seven.
The timetable allows for three minutes but the well-trained passengers can now do it in less than that.

Final note: Caltrain with nine active diesel locomotives and 41 Bombardier coaches has a huge equipment
surplus for these trains.  The 16 former Metrolink cars(built in 1997) in their tattered old blue colors
acquired by Caltrain in 2015 may have already seen their last revenue runs out of San Jose.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/25 08:05 by milepost20.

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They should trade NJT for some ALP-45's considering NJT is still making people change trains at Long Branch even with both trains having Dual Mode capability.

Had a chance to talk to one of Caltrain's engineers recently. He was stopped at Redwood City with and on board emergency. I asked how he liked the new equipment. He said it was nice being able to come to work and not get dirty. The cabs were very comfortable but he didn't feel this was "runnin". He missed the F40's. That was more like "runnin", not just asking the computer to do something.