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Metrolink 2004 New Year Day Orange County Line Rose Parade Special 1/1/2004

What does the rose and the Metrolink train arriving in Santa Ana have in common? Well, Metrolink ran New Year's Day trains from San Bernardino and Oceanside again in 2004, but this year passengers could use the new Pasadena Gold Line to reach the Rose Parade and/or the Rose Bowl. I decided to ride this year's train, not to go to Pasadena but to be able to ride to Los Angeles to catch Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner 761, the 6:55 AM departure to Goleta. I would take this train to Carpinteria and lay over there until Pacific Surfliner 774 from San Luis Obispo would return me to Santa Ana.

I purchased my Amtrak tickets at Santa Ana and had to wait until New Year's Day to buy my Metrolink ticket from the machine in Santa Ana the morning of my departure.

I was up at 4:30 AM, showered and answered my e-mail prior to fixing breakfast. Not knowing what to expect at Santa Ana crowd-wise, I was there at 5:23 and purchased my off-peak Metrolink ticket from the old 1-2-3 Metrolink ticket machine then waited trackside and though the train would arrive 5:41 AM, which it did. This train had a consist of Metrolink cab car 637, coaches 110, 150, 191 and 135 along with F59PH 871 and I was greeted at the door of the cab car by the ever-friendly conductor Richard Albitre, who was in charge of this morning's special run.

The train departed on time and I walked through it to record the consist and we stopped at Orange and Anaheim while I was doing that. Proceeding through the New Year's Day morning darkness with 91 passengers aboard out of Anaheim, all except me riding in the last four cars. Other than our train curving into Fullerton, the world was still fast asleep this New Year's Day 2004. It really amazed me to see the normally-busy world of the Los Angeles Basin in such a peaceful state. We departed Norwalk with 115 passengers on the way to Los Angeles, with everyone except me taking the Gold Line to Pasadena and the Rose Parade activities.

Not only was the real world quiet, but the BNSF mainline was devoid of freight trains as they were on a New Year's shutdown of operations. As our train rode up and over the flyover across the Los Angeles River, the lit buildings of downtown Los Angeles stood out against the darkened morning sky. We arrived at Los Angeles Union Station at 6:30 AM, ten minutes early, just as the first glimmer of sunrise began in the eastern sky. The passengers quickly exited to a long line stretching from Track 2's tunnel all the way to Track 8's tunnel that leads to the platforms. It was going to be a busy day for the Pasadena Gold Line and an unofficial ridership report said that 45,000 may ride today.

With Metrolink arriving early, I reached Track 8 just after the combined trainsets of Pacific Surfliners 761 and 564 had been brought into LAUPT. The boarding call came at 6:45 AM and I entered a very nice warm Surfliner train on a very cold morning as I thought, "At least I'm not in Pasadena this morning". We departed for Goleta with just three paying passengers aboard: a man going to Chatsworth, myself for Carpinteria and another gentleman for Santa Barbara. Added to this trio was just a single dead-heading employee and that was our passenger load for the entire trip. It was a beautiful morning for a train ride, too bad no one else thought of joining us. The first light of the morning began to take hold as we neared Glendale.

Our consist was Surfliner cab car 9604, coaches 6412 and 6408, café-coach 6302 and business class 6800 with F59PHI 458 pushing the train north. Our arrival surprised the Amtrak agent there, who did not even know we were running this morning. We dropped off passenger number three at Chatsworth and then there was only two paying passengers left. The trip through the rocks and tunnels west of Chatsworth made me think that I was on the Southern Pacific's Morning Daylight run back in the 1940's as we were basically on the same schedule of that great train. Our train passed the beautifully-restored Santa Susana Depot before arriving in Simi Valley and the Chicago song "While The City Sleeps" was playing in my head this New Year morning.

At Moorpark, we met Pacific Surfliner 768 on its way to San Diego from Goleta. We made our way to Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura with not a single soul boarding our train. Now the trip's highlight. After we crossed the Ventura River, we started our shoreline running along the Pacific Ocean and all too quickly, we passed Seacliff siding then Rincon Point, arriving into Carpinteria on time at 9:05 AM, where this paying passenger detrained, leaving only one.

Following a thirty minute layover, I told stories of baseball stadiums and train rides to a train attendant and a waiting passenger going to Oceanside. Pacific Surfliner 774 arrived on time and I boarded, finding a train with people on it. I took an inland forward-facing seat for the relaxing trip back to Santa Ana, retracing my entire route and we met Pacific Surfliner 763 at the east end of Camarillo. Our train consisted of F59PHI 453, business class 6804, café/coach 6803, coach 6407, Superliner coach 31018 and cab car 6953. At Las Posos, we were greeted by a red signal from the Metrolink dispatcher. Bob Riskie, an outstanding Amtrak conductor, boarded in Simi Valley and rode into Los Angeles with me, telling me that the Coast Starlight did not arrive until 4:00 AM this morning but we would not be delayed by it. In fact, we met the Coast Starlight after we did our station work at Glendale.

We arrived at LAUPT at 11:49 AM for our layover, where I met Ken Ruben, the official caller of Let's Talk Trains, then after a crew change, departed on time. BNSF had returned to life as we passed Hobart Yard but our only meets to Fullerton was Pacifif Surfliner 573 at Buena Park and a BNSF stack train at Basta. We left Fullerton on time, followed by Anaheim and then Santa Ana, where I ended this New Year's Day 2004 adventure on both Metrolink and Amtrak.

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