I planned to ride both the LA Metro Expo Line and Gold Line extension myself, but when I mentioned this to the monthly gathering of the Train Travel Meetup Group, several members expressed interest so arrangements were made and since I had been on tours of both lines earlier this year, decided not to photograph the journeys as much as I normally would.
The day before the trip, my car had a flat tire and AAA put on the spare but since I had to get the tire taken care of, was only able to participate in half the day's events. So that morning, I drove to the Santa Ana station, parked and bought my Metrolink Saturday Day Pass.
Pacific Surfliner 562 arrived and I chose a seat in the Superliner coach for my ride to Oceanside. The train stopped at Irvine and San Juan Capistrano before meeting Pacific Surfliner 763 who was tucked away in the siding. The beach-running was foggy with small waves until County Line where their sizes increased and the surfers were having a good time. We ran straight to Oceanside and took the siding as was the norm when Pacific Surfliner 565 was running late, as was the case this morning.
The rear of Pacific Surfliner 562.
Pacific Surfliner 562 now departed on time for San Diego.
Pacific Surfliner 565 arrived.
Pacific Surfliner 565 also departing on time bound for the same destination.
Metrolink 661 arrived and my friend AC Adam soon joined me.
The author as photographed by AC Adam. We stopped at San Clemente Pier, North Beach, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Niguel, Irvine, Tustin, Santa Ana, Orange, Anaheim, Fullerton, Buena Park and Norwalk before we arrived at LAUPT at 10:13 AM. We walked around the front of the train and found a surprise.
Observation car "Federal", built by Pullman in 1911, was on the rear of the Coast Starlight this morning. We walked to the fish tank at the east entrance of the station and found first Brian and a few minutes later Shirley, who would be joining us on this trip. We walked down to the subway, tapping our tickets to catch the next train to the 7th and Metro then at the third stop, we went upstairs and tapped our tickets again before waiting for our Expo Line train.
Our Expo Line train arrived and soon we were off to Santa Monica, riding in one of Metro's newest light rail cars. Its GPS was way off but we all enjoyed the ride. Brian and I had already ridden this route but it was new rail mileage for AC and Shirley.
Our group on the way to Santa Monica on a standing room-only train.
Once there, we went to the food court at Santa Monica Place where each of us went to our restaurant of choice; mine was Johnny Rockets. We then walked back over to the Downtown Santa Monica Metro station and tapped our tickets again.
Our mode of transport to 7th/Metro arrived.
A pre-departure group photo. We had a good ride to 7th/Metro where we tapped our tickets before going downstairs to catch the next subway train back to LAUPT.
A Red Line subway train arrived and once at our destination, I walked the group to the Gold Line station before making my way to Metrolink 664 for home.
This train had BNSF 5624 on the rear pushing our train south and we departed on time.
Metrolink 664 leaving Santa Ana for Oceanside led by Rosen Beaudin Leasing F59PH 18520, nee GO Transit 520, built by Electro-Motive Division in 1988. I took care of the car tire, which ended another rail adventure.
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