A Californian Spring Break – the first stop: Salt Lake City

Well, I realize that its now almost two months since I’ve updated this website and there are a variety of reasons for that firstly my computer has been done for the past couple of weeks, secondly I have been extremely busy, 10 days of which were taken up by a Spring Break Trip out to California, I took this trip without my computer but here’s a bit of a summery of it, I’ve included a picture of each type of mass transit vehicle I road. On this trip I photographed Salt Lake City’s TRAX and FrontRunner, the Sacromento Light Rail, BART, San Francisco MUNI, Caltrain, the VTA Light Rail (San Jose), and the LA Metro, as well as some Amtrak inbetween. I am looking forward to uploading my photos from this trip over the coming months
March 11, 2010: FREX to Denver

This trip started off with me taking the 3:00 FREX bus up to Denver. I got on at a bus stop whose advertisement made national news because of the Musical Avenue Q that was coming to town. (LA Times Article) The original ad that the producers wanted that was a close up of Lucy the Slut’s Cleavage was rejected as being too controversial.
The bus (as I expected, it’s basically simply a repositioning run) was extremely empty with only about three other passengers. I got to Elwich Gardens (a little far from downtown, but I had never ridden FREX to the end of the line and was curious where it went) at 4:55.

In Elwich gardens I noticed just across the Plate River inside Centennial Park this:

It’s the Platte Valley Trolley, Denver’s historic Non-electrified trolley route, they only have one trolley and it’s spending it’s winter behind a fence.
Just behind the Platte Valley Trolly is REI’s Denver Flagship Store, normally I wouldn’t include a mention of an REI in this blog, but this one is inside the building that was formerly used as the Denver Tramway Power Company’s Power Plant that powered the streetcar system:

I then walked through some more parkland, across the railroad tracks at Union Station, and too the Greyhound Station that luckily has luggage lockers so I spent the $4 to check my duffle bag for the evening as I went to a bookstore and bought a very appropriate book my trip, Mark Twain’s Roughing It-the days of Stagecoaches when you could only travel 12 miles a day! Ate dinner at a not-very good noodle place and read in Starbucks for a while before returning to the Greyhound Station.
If only this train still existed:

The Midnight (11:45p) Bus to Salt Lake City
I almost always avoid bus trips but the timing of the Zephyr leaving Denver at 8 AM and the fact I wanted to spend a day railfanning TRAX and FrontRunner in Salt Lake City meant this seemed like the most pratical option, so around 10:30 I returned to the Greyhound Station (the Starbucks I was in closed at 10pm) retrieved by duffle bag and plopped it in line. One huge pet peeve of mine is that Greyhound seats are first come first serve, even though your ticket says a departure on it, that trip is not guaranteed and I watched as about six very annoyed people were turned away from the 11:30 bus to St. Lewis and other points East (connections for New York were mentioned-that be something I’d never do, 41 hours on a bus, never! because it was full. 10 was bad enough! My bus was do to leave at 11:45 but didn’t leave until 12:15 because we were waiting for a late connection, I was getting hopeful I wouldn’t have a seat mate but an oddball, but not creepy man, I felt perfectly safe next to him (can’t say that of everyone on my bus) ended up joining me as the bus was mostly full. He was taking the bus almost as far as you can go within in the US, from Mobile, AB to Seattle, WA. I slept a bit but extremely poorly, bus seats are just not nearly as comfortable as Amtrak Seats, waking up for each of our stops, first in Ft. Collins , CO, than at a truck stop in Laramie, WY around 2AM, where I got off the bus to stretch my legs, again when we had gotten off the highway (but didn’t seem to actually stop) at Rawlins. Just before daybreak (around 5:00, I believe, I wasn’t keeping a log of this part of my trip) we randomly pulled into a Rest Area off I-80. Then it was breakfast stop between 6 and 7AM at a McDonalds in Rock Springs, WY, that was one depressing time-watching everyone buy their McD’s breakfasts. Next around 8AM was a stop in Evanston, WY at a Conoco (or some other, I can’t remember, gas station. The ride at least the portion in light wasn’t all that scenic, and definitely wouldn’t compare to taking the California Zephyr (or Driving I-70) through Colorado. I-80 did fallow railroad tracks for most of its route, so i assume that’s the historic transcontinental route, that Amtrak hasn’t used since the Pioneer was discontinued in 1997. We finally pulled into the Salt Lake Greyhound Station, located at Salt Lake City Central Station, at about 10:15. I was very happy to see luggage lockers here too, in the quite new and airy station, and found out the station was open until midnight so I didn’t have to worry about getting back after the station had closed. (I did take one picture of my greyhound bus, but it’s embarrassingly out-of-focus) so I won’t publish it.
Friday March 12, 2010: Making TRAX and FrontRunner in Salt Lake City
I started by spending $13 on a UTA group (it would have been valid for 4 people, but is the only pass valid on the Front Runner Commuter Rail) day pass that wasn’t checked once. I noticed there was a FrontRunner train leaving shortly (it’s the one of the most frequent commuter rail lines I know of, it runs every 1/2 hour-soon to be reduced to an hour-throughout middays), and thought I would start on a short ride of it. Almost all of the trains I saw consisted of a MPXpress (MP36PH-3C) fallowed by a single Ex-New Jersey Transit Comet I Coach, these coaches exteriors look gorgeous, rapped in UTA’s colorful red,white, and blue paint scheme, but interiors haven’t been touched, there are randomly missing rows of seats in the cars, and the windows are in terrable shape, and really should be replaced, I found the cars hard to even look outside of because of this. You could actually watch the scenery out of the fallowing two cars: a Bombardier BiLevel Coach, fallowed by a Bombardier BiLevel Cab Car. Each train is 3 cars long, motive power on the Ogden end. On this initial trip on FrontRunner I took it up one stop to Woods Cross and back down to SLC Central:

After that little trip it was time for a walk so I walked into downtown SLC fallowing the light rail line that takes a rather circuitous route as it makes its way from SL Central and through downtown. After that I railfanned and did a station to station of the University Line, that’s a real urban light rail line running mostly in the centers of Salt Lake City’s really wide streets (designed so a wagon team could turn around without “resorting to profanity.”). On this station to station I walked between many of the stations because there quite close together. After that it was time to do a station to station of the Sandy Line, this is a much higher speed light rail line that runs on its own right of way complete with crossing gates. The only stations I was able to walk in between were those in Sandy, the three at its southern end, and are connected by a bike path. The rest are just too far apart.
Here’s a small sampler of photos, It’s hard not to get snow capped mountains as the backdrop:

My original plan was to go back to FrontRunner and take the 4:27 train, one of two daily evening round trips all the way to the end of the line in Pleasant View, when I got back to SLC Central I saw that train pulling its way out. I then decided I would take the next trip at 4:57 this was relatively crowded, but I still had two seats in a BiLevel to myself I took it up to Layton, where I successfully doubled backed a stop south to Farmington, from here I got on the second daily round trip to Pleasant View and took that all the way up to the end of the line, (there only two morning, and two evening round trips because that’s all Union Pacific will allow, UTA uses its own tracks parallel to the quite busy UP right of way as far as Ogden, but north of there the train got quite a bit slower as we ran along actual shared trackage.) I got of the train briefly during its five minute layover for a few pictures and would have taken more except for being scared I would end up stranded in Pleasant View. The train completely empty, I think there was one other passenger doing the same thing I was doing. One person did get on the train though. I then took it south again and darkness had fallen (otherwise I would have gotten off at Ogden and Roy), I did an interesting night photo stop in Clearfield.

I than headed back into downtown Salt Lake and had a late dinner at Olive Garden of all places, it was definately not a first choice but it was one of the few places open. I returned around 10:30, retrieved my bag from the Greyhound Station and walked the short distance down to the small modular structure that is the Amtrak Station. It has now been ‘temporary’ for about ten years. It’s the one facility of the SLC Central Station that needs improvement.

Well that’s all for now, I’ll add another post for the next section of my trip, onboard the California Zephyr to Emeryville. I’ll link from this one once it happens.