Introduction:
The biggest thing on my list to do while in the Bay Area is to ride the California Comets. These cars are ex-NJT Comaro Cars, that are now on basically their third lives after the state of California bought them to try and alleviate a massive car shortage their currently having. These cars run on the San Joaquin on the first northbound trip from Bakersfield to Oakland returning on the last southbound evening trip of the day. In an ideal world I would have ridden the Com-Arrow set, rebuilt with modern long-distance, reclining, regular Amtrak seats all the way down to Los Angeles where I need to be by tomorrow night where I’m catching the Sunset Limited out to Tucson to visit friends. The problem with this southbound schedule is that I would arrive in Los Angeles at 2:20am that just isn’t a feasible hour. Instead I realized the best way to get a ride on the Com-Arrow would be to take the early morning, 6:40am train from Sacramento to Stockton/ACE Station, walk across town (with about an hour, hopefully finding breakfast) and then take the ComArrow set (scheduled for 9:00am), getting me there at 11:00am. In the Bay Area I also have a relatively small list of places I want to visit, a few on BART but mainly in San Jose. I also want an afternoon in Los Angeles. I was dithering on where to spend the night, including considering San Luis Obispo that has a decent youth hostel but the last Coast bus (other than the 8 hour overnight Coastal trips, I’m not taking one) leaves San Jose at 3:18. I thought about staying in San Francisco for the night but the 4:10pm, instead of 2:30pm arrival time of the first San Joaquin from San Francisco would really minimize time for trying to finish the few things on Metrolink that are feasible on a Sunday. I then found out about the Amtrak Capital Corridor’s 50% off on weekends sale. This would reduce the large fare of $40 from San Jose to Sacramento down to $20 and I decided to just spend two nights in Sacramento and not have to worry about my luggage on my slightly ridiculous day trip running around the Bay Area.
Riding the San Joaquin Com-Arrows, running an hour late!
I don’t sleep well, there is a guy who’s a ridiculous snorer sleeping on the bunk under mine. I walk into the station at 6:05. The Coast Starlight has arrived, my train already has track 4E posted on the boards. I stop at the ticket office and ask if the 6:40 San Joaquin has already boarded, I’m told yes. I then walk past the abandoned original platforms next to the station, out down the long walkway and then through the modern overpass tunnel out to the new platforms. I intentionally go up the west ramp (the wrong way for photos). The Coast Starlight is on an opposite track across the platform. Two trains (normal California trainsets) are being stored (overnight) across the platform from mine that is at the eastern end of the platforms. I ask the conductor which car for Stockton and am told only the front car will open. I walk the length of the platform to the same end that the Zephyr and Starlight use to arrive from the east.
I board a whopping 24 minutes before departure at 6:40. The usual Do Not Pass Flag
The engineer waring a T-shirt arrives at 6:27 to enter his cab, past the red flag, this is the car I’m sitting in.
- 6:33 – A loud welcome aboard announcement, listing all the stops ending with “Bus connections throughout Southern California. He refers to the train having a “Full Service lounge car”
- 6:39 – “All Aboard Train 702, doors are closing” We leave to a double toot on time and slowly curve south off the rest of the line, passing a factory and power plant. The conductor comes. I get a seat check for SKN, not quite right that’s the code for the station. This is the code I’m walking to, served by SF-bound trains. I’m going to the SKT ex-UP downtown station.
I see the sunrise off in the distance as we curve south passing what is clearly a neighborhood of small homes. The moon hovers overhead, the glare from the California cars is ruff.
- 6:51 – gaining speed and under the light rail.
- 6:53 – Smoke stacks of industry are the perfect back-drop.
- 7:02 – I see the sun over the Sierra foothills and a refinery is off in the distance,
- 7:03 – We’ve left Elk Grove the conductor is nearby, I hear the detectors.
- 7:06 – See cows then a solar farm.
- 7:08 – Start seeing houses again as we go through Galt then it’s back to fields.
- 7:15 – Slow down as we pass fields
The train comes into Lodi for our first station stop passing the modern parking lot and the doors open at 7:17. We stop in front of some grape line buses
My stop, Stockton/ACE is in just 15 minutes and the doors of two cars will open.
- 7:20 – Someone behind me has boarded and the conductor asks “Where are you going from Bakersfield” She says the destination and he says bus number six.
We go by fields with little trees. I see the sun. There are also houses off in the distance
- 7:24 – See the first Stockton subdivision then more houses and some industry. The houses becomes more numerous.
- 7:26 – Cross a stream with a tired looking bike path.
We arrive 7 minutes early at 7:28 onto the middle track at the Stockton ACE Station–(14 Photos) as the crew opens up three doors (on in the first car, two in the second) for the station stop. A man with his bike, whom the conductor knows is clearly on his way home from the night shift. Most of the passengers getting on are waiting on the platform watched over by a security guard. I take a few less photos then I might of the train leaving with the security guard saying “Getting some good shots?” My reply is yes and I walk away.
This is my fifth time in Stockton (not a city I recommend) I have a quiet walk down the streets wondering if I’ll find breakfast. I spot the first open Restaurant I see (there isn’t much) it’s Mexican and enjoy a surprisingly expensive $9 breakfast of eggs, beans, potatoes, tortillas and coffee.
Around 8:40 I finish my walk and enter the quite crowded Stockton-San Joaquin Street–(25 Photos) station finding out my train to Oakland is 20 minutes down. The station is quite crowded with the first trains of the morning going in each direction, a women strumming her guitar while she waits. I stop at the Quik-Trak machine and if barely prints my ticket (I have to pull it out) and the display changes to out of service.
At 9:00 nearly every seat is taken when I decide to head outside. The scheduled departure time. The displays say my train number 711 is delayed due to a freight train hitting a trespasser incident. Our train keeps getting later, eventually the BFD train becomes the first to arrive. I notice the signals and realize the BFD train will be on the platform track, my train on the outer hold out track.
At 9:20 the first announcement for the Bakersfield train occurs. It arrives at 9:22 in push mode. There is one bag for the baggage car, a few bikes get off. A couple keeps kissing waiting for the doors to close. The train leaves at 9:27 and the stops again for some reason, the grade crossing going up and then down. The train has two locomotives for some reason, a new followed by an old. The platform doesn’t feel less crowded, lots of people going to the Bay Area for the day.
There isn’t any sign of our train as we keep waiting they announce its half-way from Modesto but waiting to pass the southbound.
9:45 – “I’ve just talked to the conductor on train 711, it was held by the Santa Fe dispatcher at the halfway point to wait for the southbound Amtrak train, it should be here in 5 to 7 minutes.
San Joaquin Train #711 using the ex-NJT Comaro all now named after historical trains trains of California arrives at 9:48, just two sets of doors are opened, one on each side of the Horizon Dinette in the middle of the train, now painted a strange NJT black line, complete with NJT logos. I guess its not that different than the NJT Comet IIs and IIIs that are of the same design (except with automatic vestibule doors instead of end doors) as the Horizon Cars. All the cars are named after historical (and now discontinued) named trains that once served the state of California. I get photos of the cab car before running up to the front of the train and walking up to the nearly empty front car <i>The Del Monte</i> #5007 through a much more crowded second car through the opening doors. I get plenty of photos from the platform seeing how many passengers are getting on and off all having to funnel through and up and down the steps of just two doors. They announce lots of passengers are getting on and to please make all seats available.
First the current builders plaque, the good old St. Louis Car Company. They don’t mention the rebuild into their middle lives as NJT Comet IBs:
The interiors are extremely strange and contrasting, you have the normal Amtrak seats but the original, simple metal luggage racks from the New Jersey days have stayed giving the cars a much more open feeling and making these cars the only Amtrak Coaches in the system (I’m fairly sure) that don’t have reading lights. The windows are of-course oval and small but California has decided to put curtains in making them look even more unusual. In the middle of the car are four sets of seats with conference tables. One end has the single restroom with a wide ADA securement area across from it. The other end has a normal luggage rack and large trash/recycling center. The cars have a capacity of just 64 seats with tons of legroom.
I look in the seat pocket and see a safety card and separate safety instructions entirely in Braille.
The conductor comes faintly on. The PA system works but is clearly not up to normal, new car snuff. We slowly finally leave Stockton at 10:10, exactly an hour late.
The conductor comes to collect my ticket. We head out along the water as I use the bathroom that feels like a standard Amtrak long distance one that is nice and big except with a hand dryer, tissues (and TP) but no towels. I notice the glass in my window is new.
I eventually walk up to a totally unremarkable Horizon Cafe car it’s received some work but doesn’t look any different. I think the serving area has a few differences and I notice a toaster that I don’t think the Horizon Dinettes in the midwest have. I watch a woman struggling to open the door into the Horizon car not realizing its push release. The California Comet Single-level Coach Cars have their original doors that open in, latch, and automatically close when the train is in motion. Half the car is people sitting, the other half is taken up by the conductors with four tables. I ask about bus transfers and the response from one is to ask the other conductor who says they are no longer issued on the San Joaquin, just the Capital Corridor.
The Consist of San Joaquin Train #711:
- F59PHI Locomotive #2010 – Normal Amtrak California locomotive with new CT-Amtrak California and rePower 710 eco globe logos
- California Comet Car (ex-NJT #5230) #5007 – The Del Monte
- California Comet Car (ex-NJT #5230) #5013 – The Citrus Belt Limited
- California Comet Car (ex-NJT #5230) #5008 – The Redwood
- Horizon Dinette #53509 – Pacific Horizon – leased to California, in new exterior paint scheme, few interior differences from normal Horizon cars
- California Comet Car (ex-NJT #5230) #5014 – The Spirit of California (this was the name of the California state supported ill fated overnight train between Sacramento and Los Angeles via the coast that included sleepers and ran between 1981 and 1983)
- California Comet Car (ex-NJT #5166) #5009 – The Valley Flyer
- Cabbage (Ex-F40) #90218 – Oakland, leased from Amtrak – accepting baggage and bicycles (with bikes accepted only at stations that have checked baggage service)
We get to Antioch at 10:29 as two people roll luggage through the car to get off. Two sets of doors are opened again. We leave at 10:32.
The conductor announces that if your catching a bus not to worry, they will still be waiting for you when we get there. The conductor comes back and tells me transfers are no longer on the San Joaquin’s, just the Capital Corridor.
- 10:35 – We pass Pittsburg Glass and then subdivisions.
- 10:47 – We pass a couple of petroleum plants along the delta.
We pass the bridge used by the Capital Corridor main line and a train passes us as we get the announcement for Martinez, I see a Railfan with a camera in the middle of the platform at the grade crossing. My car stops way beyond the end of the platform at 10:50. It’s a long stop, we finally leave at 10:57.
We leave and follow the bay, along its banks with various piers.
- 11:05-Through the C&H plant and under the bridges.
- 11:07-Pass a track gang.
- 11:19-Come to a stop at Wake/San Pablo as I take a nap, a northbound soon passes.
The train gathers speed passing a double-stack. We arrive into Richmond with what I think are new signs at 11:26 and it’s again a long stop getting everyone off two doors. We finally leave at 11:33.
It’s 9 minutes to Emeryville as we pass a BNSF double-stack.
11:39 – Bypass Berkeley, the only stop I’ll probably skip all day.
We come to a stop in Emeryville at 11:41 and finally leave at 11:47. The manual doors still automatically swinging closed as we leave.
I see the former Oakland station and the we pass the train yard with the second California Horizon Car attached to a California Coach. There is also a random Surfliner Car.We then head down the Embarcadero.
We arrive into Oakland-Jack London Square–(30 Images) at 11:55, 55 minutes late. They announce were stopping a bit beyond the station today (on track 1 that is the side platform) to allow passengers to access a train on the island platform where a California Trainset already is. This train will be #732 to Sacramento.
I have specifically gotten off in Oakland today and am not connecting to a bus across the new Bay Bridge span (that I’m curious to ride over, but will have to wait until my next visit) in order to get photos of the California Comaro Train going back to the Oakland Yard down the Embarcadero, the street trains go right down the middle of to get to and from the Jack London Square Station. I get some photos of the train in the station before I notice the lights are on and jog up to the first grade crossing beyond the station. It starts leaving at 12:05 to deadhead back to the Oakland yard, just 10 minutes after arriving and discharging its passengers.
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