Baby Bullet passes two trains at once!

Well, let's say the Tuesday commute was pretty bad. First my wife missed her bus (Samtrans NX to San Francisco), so I drove her to the bus stop #2 (Samtrans KX), but we missed the bus there. Stop #3 is a "freeway stop" @ 3rd Ave & 101 and we were stuck in traffic behind a bigrig. At this point, I had given up hope of catching the 8:47 limited out of San Carlos. So it was onto the airport where KX makes it last stop.

Traffic was horrible in both directions. We made it to the airport and caught the bus. So far I had driven an hour in traffic (a mere 10 miles)

So I decided to park at Millbrae (next to the airport) and take Caltrain from there. Thanks to BART, there's plenty of free parking at the station. Gotta get some benefit from all the tax dollars spent on that huge parking structure. So I ran and caught #230 train at 9:01 out of Millbrae.

This is where things got interesting. The #228 and #230 are a tandem "limited" The #228 travels "local stops" from San Francisco to Redwood City, and then makes limited (ie express) stops to San Jose. The #230 does the opposite, makes limited stop from San Francisco to Redwood City, and then local stops to San Jose. (why this is setup this way is a long discussion involving limited Caltrain budgets and resources)

Also I was going to take the #332 Baby Bullet (9:17) if I missed the #230 at 9:01.

Well, it turns out the #228 had some engine problems and was 'stuck' on the tracks. As you'll recall, Caltrain runs trains in both directions on both tracks, so you typically can't pass on the adjacent track. After #228 broken down like three times, the #228 hobbled its way into Redwood City dropped off all its passengers so that they could board my train, the #230.

By now, we were already 15 minutes behind schedule with the #330 coming up right behind us.

What happens next would make any operations engineer proud. The folks at Central Dispatching came up with a very good workaround. Right after Redwood City, there's a short "four track" segment at "Redwood Junction". This is where the future Dumbarton Rail will connect up.
However, it's too short to for baby bullets to pass moving trains. It was short of a 'we can put it here', but to make it a midline passing section would have a cost a hundreds of millions more. Given that the entire Baby Bullet projects was like $160M, ($120M for tracks and $40M for new cars) they didn't even do it.

I got off the #230 at Redwood City, and the boarded the #330 (which stops at Redwood City).

So they put the broken #228 on the same track, and the put the #230 train on the siding (track #4) right next to the #228. both were stopped.

Then we passed BOTH trains on track #2 (normally the Northbound track).
here's an ASCII picture:

1  2  3   4   Track
N  N  S   S   Normal direction
N  S  S   S   Temporary setup
  330 228 230 Train #
           

I was wondering why there was slight jolt on the Baby bullet train. These newer Baby Bullet cars are really smooth (think old Gallery cars==SUV with truck frames, new Bombadier Baby Bullet Cars == cross over vehicle with 'passenger' car frams) and should jolt around. Well, we were going across a high speed crossover, and hence the unexpected jolt. Normally the bullets never cross over as they are supposed to just go "straight as an arrow"

So I though about this, why did they put the broken #228 train on the same track? Why not put it on the siding first. Well I think it turns out that each time the "switch" needs to switch, there's some sort of lockout rule (no train around or approaching it), So moving the #228 would have cost extra time as the switch would need switch twice instead of once.

Right after we pulled past the two trains, we got back onto the normal side and then almost immediately a north bound train came up. That was really some well planned train movements.

The folks at Central Dispatching were really quick on their feet.
So I have to say, there are some smart people running Caltrain (Amtrak and Samtrans operational employees - Thank You!)
Also, kudos goes to the conductor on train #230, who explained very clearly (and much better than this blog) all the myriad options for people to get on/off and what stop.

I'm sure that no baby bullet has ever passed two trains at once. I guess I was part of Caltrain history

Of course, these trains are starting to break down to often, but that's another post to talk about the (soon to be no) lack of a maintainence facility for Caltrain.


And I was only 10 minutes late in Mountain View. Amazing what smart people can do.

what's in a name

Ok, you are probably asking why I choose the "Caltrain Reporter". I don't mean it in an investigative sense. Caltrain, as far as I can tell, is very well run and in recent years has had a very strong focus on customer service.

I borrowed the name " Reporter" from the "Robotech Reporter". Robotech is a 1985 American epic compilation of three Japanese Anime ("adult/teen" cartoons).
You can visit the site to find out more about Robotech. The company that created Robotech, Harmony Gold, wanted to have a sequel for Robotech's 20th aniversary in 2005. As with most projects, things didn't go as planned, and there was lots of speculation about the project. The "Robotech Reporter" was a place to talk about this and to find out information about the sequel, Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. It is now (finally!!) going to be released Feb 7, 2007. I'm planning on getting that.

Anyhow, I figured "Caltrain Reporter" would be appropriate because there isn't a place where riders can discuss Caltrain or other transit related issues. Oh yes, there are newsgroups like "ba.transportation" but that comes across as too chaotic for me.

Well, now that you know where "Caltrain Reporter" came from, I'll write about what I see while riding Caltrain

welcome

Well, I'm diving into the world of blogging today. My friends say that I talk a lot about transit, so I though I'd start to blog about my Caltrain commute. Boring topic? maybe we'll see where it goes.

Caltrain is a commuter rail service that spans about 77 miles from San Francisco to San Jose and Gilroy. Both San Francisco and San Jose are major employment centers with a number of 'minor' employment centers like Palo Alto (Stanford + HP), Mountain View (Google + Yahoo), Sunnyvale (Applied Materials/AMD) which means that both North and South bound commute trains tend to be fairly full. This is unusual for transit systems to have balanced ridership in both directions.

As an example, BART, a much larger regional system, is geared to bring people into downtown San Francisco and has very lopsided ridership.

Another key feature of Caltrain are there Baby Bullet trains. An interesting innovation, this is a variation of skip-stop service with passing tracks IN BOTH directions. Commute times are about an hour from SF to SJ on the bullets, which is faster than driving.

My commute is from San Carlos (about half way between SF and SJ) to Mountain View. I leave cars on both ends of the station, primarily because San Jose is really geared for cars.

Hope to see or hear from other Caltrain riders