This Post I Pre-dated on February 22, 2012, the date I traveled:
When Amtrak first announced the detour via Tahachapi I was quite disappointed, it would run northbound only during the first week of February not when I was out in California. Then it was extended to four more dates the second week and I realized I could successfully ride it on its last day, February 19. I had spent the day before reading a trip report from a few days ago about the detour via Tahachapi and getting excited. My cousin Luke dropped me of at the Irvine Station with about 15 minutes to spare before the 8:37 Surfliner up to L.A, I go up to the Metrolink TVM. I get to the TVM and decide, having not eaten breakfast yet, that spending the $10 for business class with unlimited muffins and cinnamon rolls is a good idea. The train comes in on time and I get on in Business Class, am greeted by the attendant and take me seat and spend the uneventful ride up to LA with maybe two other passengers in the car. I eat three muffins and two cinnamon rolls (at least getting my fill compared to the snack car prices), end up got grapping my laptop and instead grab a copy of the U-T Sunday Tribune and read that the entire way up to LA realizing I haven’t read a newspaper in about two weeks. We pull in and I am informed the Coast Starlight will depart from the next track and go straight there to get on 35 minutes early. I sit down getting excited about the re-route and get assigned to seat 43 one of the bulkheads behind a staircase down. On an overnight trip I would gone and asked for a different seat assignment but knowing I’ll be spending most of the ride in the lounge car decide not two I get on and grab a route guide that I realize is totally meaningless today. The conductor comes and collects my ticket, I ask her about the Bay Bridge closed diversion and she tells me the crew boarding in San Luis Obispo will inform me of the instructions for San Francisco. I ask about the Tahachapi division and she informs me they ended it last night. I express my disappointment and she says she is to, only able to work the reroute once. Had I known about the change earlier I wouldn’t of made this trip. With my ticket collected and a hostel already reserved for the night in San Francisco there is no going back. The Pacific Parlor Car was bad ordered so a Cross-Country Cafe car has been substituted; good think I did not splurge for the sleepers just to ride in it.
We leave on time at 10:25 with a welcome aboard announcement and we slowly start pulling out of L.A. I just try and relax to enjoy my disappointing trip. At 10:31 we pass the gold line depot and start heading north, it is an uneventful ride until 11:38 when we are in Camarillo and stop to wait for track authority. I later learn from the conductor that this is where the major track work was taking place and they were unfortunately close enough to being done to let us through. We stop in Oxnard at 12:11, and start dreading what could be a late ride with the Bay Bridge closed. We keep going and at 12:24 reach the coast finally and get good weather. We arrive Santa barbara at 12:55 and I start taking a walk including getting a photo of the George M. Pullman, the only named Superliner Sleeper left since it was the last one delivered from the Pullman factory before it closed. I get the all aboard up by the sleepers the first attendant tells me no to walk back to the coaches but the second let’s me on and I walk through including walking through the dreaded CCC with lounge seats that face inwards. At 1:11 pass Goleta and get to the most scenic part of the host soon passing through Vandenburg AFB and I stand at the back window getting photos including of Surf Station, the one stop on the Surfliner I can’t justify pulling a photo stop at. The stop is located just at a desolate beach and I would be stuck there for about six hours, not worth it.
At 3:15 pull up short of SJC for the southbound starlight, running early from recovery time to leave we pull in right after at 3:22. The Amtrak app claims 3:18 so we sit there until we leave on time at 3:43, and start pulling up into the mountains on the spectacular horseshoe curve, at 3:53 pass the prison, and at 3:56 pass Chorro and enter tunnel 11. The dining car steward comes through to touch the back window where I am standing and decide to make a 5:30 dinner reservation as we slowly go up the mountains, an impressive piece of railroading that I had forgotten about. I go and sit in the lounge and start chatting with some other passengers and the conductor who says the bus connection will leave from Martinez, way north of San Francisco since the Bay Bridge is closed, a long ride for a very late night.
Dinner was a fun affair (unlike my last meal in Amtrak’s dining car) with a random older couple and Wyming, a Feng Shui master and consultant on his way to give a speech in San Francisco to recruit clients. He is coming from New Orleans and refuses to fly, traveling North America by train. I eat the lamb special which is perfectly okay like most Amtrak dinners. After dinner I go and sit in the lounge and start to try and get some website work done but agreeably failed, with Wyming sitting down next to me wanting to chat. The train eventually came into San Jose at 8:05, quite early and I decide to bail with Wyming and a few other passengers, we have just missed the 8:00 CalTrain and wait around for the 9:00, it is a long, local ride up to 4th and King Street arriving at 10:36. I walk up to Market Street with Wyming who goes his separate way and continue the two miles up to the Green Tourise where I am staying.