Just be glad that there are so many Surfliner trains--almost every hour during certain time periods--that you aren't stuck for that long a time.
That's not 100% true. There was a case where a surfiner or pacific surfliner broke down and passengers were stranded for HOURS while other trains of the same type just went by over and over. Someone dropped the ball in that case.
When was this? It's hard to understand as much of the line is single-track and trains could not simply run around a stalled consist.
It happened back in 2009. the pacific surfliner was stranded for 8 hours.
http://laist.com/2009/10/26/amtrak_leaves_passengers_stranded_o.php
Thanks for finding the posting in response to my question.
Although the posting is from a blog, not a media site, I won't act the petulant type, like some on this forum who pooh-pooh any story they don't like and go about trashing the media instead and ignoring the larger issue.
The incident, I believe, is a rare case of Amtrak/Caltrans obviously screwing up re the Surfliner. Hard to understand, but the fact that there are no postings anywhere to contradict the blog recital makes me think it indeed happened close to how it's described.
Perhaps in response to this and other engine breakdowns--I had to wait for the next train to push us along to San Diego when we broke down in Oceanside once--Amtrak now stations a spare locomotive in San Diego to speed up response times when for whatever reason the next train isn't an alternative. (Before, an engine had to be sent from LA no matter where the breakdown occurred.)