Crossing
the Los Angeles River is the recently completed MTA Gold Line from
Union Station to Pasadena. The bridge pictured above preceeded
completion of the line be many years. Below the Gold Line you can
see stored trains and the maintenance building. Metrolink
dispatch told us that we had to
wait for one train.Soon he appeared and
disappeared into the Taylor
yard complex.
When I noticed
our red signal start blinking, I told the crew and we again moved
across
another set of diamond track crossings and into Taylor
yard.Prior to the inception of Metrolink,
Taylor
yard was a large
Southern Pacific Railroad classification yard.Union Pacific still maintains a locomotive maintenance facility
there,
although I have heard rumors that it is to be closed.There was a container train on the north side
of Taylor
that was stopped.He would meet us later
on.The Operation Lifesaver train was
stopped and
conductor Corbett disembarked to line switch.
The rest of the train was cut off from UP 6003 and pulled away.Bob lined the switch and the O.L. train was
shoved past UP 6003.The switch was
relined to allow our escape and we backed up out of Taylor
yard towards “the
shops” across the river from downtown LA.
Conductor Corbett was stationed on the rear platform for this
reverse
movement.The autorack train from
earlier was just getting out of the area as he had stalled.We crossed East Diamonds and through Pasadena
Junction and stopped in a curve behind a parked train.From our temporary parking place, Amtrak was busy across the
river. The crew tried to contact shops tower who
conveniently failed to hear the call.The container train that had been parked on the mainline outside
Taylor
yard was now coming
towards us.The shops tower finally
called us and gave instructions which included waiting for the
container train
to enter the shops yard.
We followed him
in and had to wait some more while the container train was shoved on a
track,
broken apart and the remainder shoved onto another track.
Finally
we got instructions to park the 6003
on stub track 13.Everybody gathered up
their gear and the crew again graciously gave me a ride across the
river to Union
Station. I had a 45 minute wait for
Metrolink train 404
back to City of Industry. During my wait I walked over to the Garden
Track area north of the Post Office.I
wanted to see if the Silver Lariat had been returned there but I could
not spot
it.I could see many other private
passenger cars including the “Overland
Trail”
which is well known
to many riders and railfans on the Amtrak Surfliner route.
The ride back to
Los
Angeles
with the Operation
Lifesaver train was interesting for me as I got a glimpse into the
daily life
of a train crew.The UP crew was very
professional in their work.On other
levels, they are regular consumers with everyday concerns like the
price of
gasoline and cellular phone company problems.At least we can take our phone numbers with us now.The three of them explained how train crews
are assigned and how crew bases have been shifted recently and that has
caused
problems.I have always been mystified
by crew assignment procedures, but conductor Bob Corbett explained that
there
has been a change from seniority based assignments to point based
assignments.On the basis of how long it
took from the time we cut off the train at Metrolink Taylor yard to the
time we
tied up the single UP 6003, it must drive the crews crazy in terms of
idle
time.The reality of railroading is that
sometimes other trains have priority over yours even when it makes no
sense…to
the layman.
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