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Southern California Railfanning: Visiting Torrey Pines State Beach
  After a quick breakfast at a nearby McDonald's, I hopped in the rental car and drove to nearby Torrey Pines State Beach in Del Mar, CA. The credit card kiosks were not working so I had to pay to park via filling out an envelope and including $10.00 in it, dropping it in a drop box and leaving the stub on top of the dashboard of the car. I grabbed my camera bag and started doing a serious amount of walking to get various photo angles. Included here are photos taken at this beautiful state beach, enjoy!!!
Looking north from North Torrey Pines Rd. is the first train of the day, Train #768 heading for San Diego.
 
 
Next up, also from North Torrey Pines Rd. is northbound Train #775 heading for San Luis Obispo.
 
Now walking along the beach trail, we see Train #577 heading for Los Angeles.
 
Southbound Train #572 heading for San Diego is next up.
 
I would so love to have a winter home here! What a view from that house!!!
 
Surfliner trains operate in "push-pull" mode so a cab control car is located on one end of the train. To
illustrate this, here we have Train #583 heading north towards Los Angeles. The train is being
"pushed" from behind and controlled by the engineer in the cab control car.
 
The same train as above, this time with a view of the locomotive "pushing" the train.
 
The beach trail.
 
What a beautiful place to live, surf, and railfan!!! This area is part of the City of Del Mar as the state
beach ended somewhere south of here. Yes, I had walked a fair distance by now!
 
OK, we have some railfans (not quite) waving to Train #578 as it heads south through Del Mar!
 
Finally, Train #785 heads north through Del Mar.
 
  I would have stayed longer here but the sky was getting rather cloudy and it was getting close to sunset. Couple that with the fact that Torrey Pines beach officially closed at 6pm and not wanting to risk issues with the rental car being parked there after the park closed, I decided to start walking back to the park. After a very long walk back to the car, I drove to the hotel and eventually would go to the McDonald's near the hotel for dinner, only to find it's dining room was closed at 8pm!!! That is absolutely ludicrous! I know the place was located in a business park and it was a quiet Sunday night but this was a free-standing building, not a food court! Oh well, I ended up getting an overpriced panini and some Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream at the hotel and watched one of my favorite shows "Undercover Boss" in my room. I would be checking out of the hotel tomorrow morning and head back to Orange County. And so ends today. Tomorrow, I would do a little railfanning up in Fullerton and meet up with a local group of railfans in the area as well. Check the link below to see some views from Fullerton!