Progress of Caltrain Electrification

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From the Mass Transit Magazine:

Stakeholders joined Caltrain to celebrate successfully completing all 3,092 foundations for the new overhead catenary system (OCS) that will support electrified Caltrain service.

The 51-mile Caltrain Electrification project will be the first 25KV OCS system on the west coast and will provide power to the new state-of-the-art electric trains that will start arriving on the corridor in spring 2022.

......
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Caltrain celebrates installation of final foundation for electrification project
 
Pretty exciting! Ive been driving up and down the peninsula recently and a lot of the catenary looks finished.

There was also movement on the DTX downtown extension that will eventually carry the electrified trains into downtown SF's transbay terminal, it was announced the project entered the FTA capital investment grants funding program
 
So... this happened. Apparently, electrification crew were on the tracks while trains were still running.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2...icle-causes-huge-fire-on-tracks-in-san-bruno/

FNglU1DVUAEvuE8
 
Somebody messed up. Who, only time will tell? Dispatch., engineer, construction crew, equipment failure causing a sudden fouling, (blown tire for examples), distraction, signal failure of new installation, or another item.
 
This would have been a completely different situation if the train had been northbound. These trains are push-pull with the engine on the south end. If northbound it would have been with a coach leading and with that the near certainty of multiple fatalities in the leading car, probably including the engineer. My thought when riding this service, which I did regularly several years ago, is that if you see the engineer coming out of the cab and running down the aisle, don't ask, just get up and do likewise, because we are probably about to hit something.

I will make no guesses as to who and what was wrong here. It is certain that there will be an NTSB investigation. We may get some reasonably good and maybe even right answers earlier, but when the NTSB gets through every rock has been overturned.
 
Hopefully Caltrain has some spare poles in the replacement pipeline.
We have assumed that the delay is because of parts but is that really the problem?
The oil shortages are going to cause many persons to ride transit. IMO the oil shortages are not going to change in the next several years. Although not much gasoline will be saved but everyone who can use transit is maybe a 5-gallon not used.

Parts and spare parts are needed. Maybe time for the president to invoke the production act to speed up parts for transit and Amtrak?
 
AmtrakMaineiac said:
The writer of that article seems to be obsessed about "belchy" Diesels. I guess she doesn't consider the fact that one train pulled by a "belchy" Diesel takes a few hundred cars off the road.
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He has a point about concentrations of diesel locomotives in commuter service. When I started riding MARC in 2000, nearly all of the locomotives except for some AEM-7s on the Penn Line were Tier 0 (or Tier less than zero, i.e. "unregulated") diesels. The trainshed at Washington Union Sation was a smoky, smelly inferno, especially on a warm day. Going from the gate to the train was like running a gauntlet. I would somehow try to breath as little as possible while walking as fast as I could to get in front of everybody to snag a good seat. If I rode a train pulled by a diesel and the wind was right, I could see clouds of black smoke blowing by the window (which was fortunately sealed.) Occasionally in the B&P tunnel, you'd get the whiff of diesel inside the coaches.

Fortunately, as EPA tightened diesel emissions requirements and they got rid of the older locomotives, there have been great improvements on this front. The Chargers are particularly nice, having both diesel particulate emissions filters and SCR to get rid of the NOx. Unfortunately, even on the Penn Line, everything is diesel, I think there's only 1 or 2 MARC electric locomotives left.
 
Probably a dumb question but what will happened to Bombadier bilevel cars? Gallery cars they can retire for sure, but bilevel cars seems too young to retire.

Any chance they get electric locomotives (used from other agencies like NJ Transit or SEPTA)?
 
Shawn Ryu said:
Probably a dumb question but what will happened to Bombadier bilevel cars? Gallery cars they can retire for sure, but bilevel cars seems too young to retire.

Any chance they get electric locomotives (used from other agencies like NJ Transit or SEPTA)?
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I thought they were going to keep some of them for their Gilroy service, and get rid of the Gallery Cars.

Of course I am sure any surplus bi-levels can be palmed off to TriRail or Sunrail in Florida as they grow too. We are talking a total of 41 cars all told.
 
jis said:
I thought they were going to keep some of them for their Gilroy service, and get rid of the Gallery Cars.

Of course I am sure any surplus bi-levels can be palmed off to TriRail or Sunrail in Florida as they grow too. We are talking a total of 41 cars all told.
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Ah so they are only electrifying to San Jose.
 
Update on progress with EMUs

Caltrain’s first electric trainset underwent clearance testing this past weekend along the corridor between Santa Clara and Tamien Stations.

The test is to ensure that the trains meet all clearance requirements to operate safely along the corridor.
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Caltrain electric train clearance testing
 
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GDRRiley said:
Happy to see this project is coming to a close. I still find it odd they didn't want to increase top speeds to 90mph as that would help express trains more.
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Let's assume that 30 mile of the distance could be run at 90 mph instead of 80 mph. It is highly unlikely that much more of the distance could be speeded up sufficiently for the higher speed to be practical:

30 miles at 80 mph = 22.5 minutes
30 miles at 90 mph = 20.0 minutes.

That is to say, the time saving is so small as to not be worthwhile.

Assuming the current train control system means the speed must be limited to less than 80 mph - 79 mph:
30 miles at 79 mph = 22 minutes 47 seconds
So, still for the distance involved, 2 minutes 47 seconds time savings not really worth the effort.
 
George Harris said:
Let's assume that 30 mile of the distance could be run at 90 mph instead of 80 mph. It is highly unlikely that much more of the distance could be speeded up sufficiently for the higher speed to be practical:

30 miles at 80 mph = 22.5 minutes
30 miles at 90 mph = 20.0 minutes.

That is to say, the time saving is so small as to not be worthwhile.

Assuming the current train control system means the speed must be limited to less than 80 mph - 79 mph:
30 miles at 79 mph = 22 minutes 47 seconds
So, still for the distance involved, 2 minutes 47 seconds time savings not really worth the effort.
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Every minute counts!
 
George Harris said:
Assuming the current train control system means the speed must be limited to less than 80 mph - 79 mph:
30 miles at 79 mph = 22 minutes 47 seconds
So, still for the distance involved, 2 minutes 47 seconds time savings not really worth the effort.
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its close to 60mi, and yes it would only save a few minutes but also the steps needed are incredibly small.
 

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