Your description of Los Angeles Union Station is similar to my experience during my stopover while on an Amtrak Southern Rail Experience circle tour this past summer. I did have better luck with the Gold Line and did well with Metrolink suburban trains with two consists doubled up on some tracks. Platform access was not a problem.
Friday, April 14. This was the first day after the completion of the trackwork on the Gold line, and I hoped service would be back to normal, which meant base headways of every 12 minutes, increased to 7 for rush hours--and it turned out operations were indeed trouble free on this beautiful day. After adding a new day ticket to my TAP card I followed the same itinerary that I tried two days earlier, and found myself at Union Station before 10:00. I boarded a two-car train of new Kinkisharyo cars and rode it all the way to the terminal just beyond Azusa (49 minutes), which gave me the opportunity to plan my photography of the extension from Sierra Madre. The ride was speedy and smooth, and gave me a full appreciation of the line's ambience. This side of the Gold line continues to be my favorite Metro light rail route for a number of reasons, but mostly because of its varied and attractive rights-of-way, which are now augmented by this extension. When I joined the hobby in the late 1950s and widened my horizons, I quickly learned that the electric streetcar (and its evolutionary followers) was the most flexible mode of transit, able to take advantage of all sorts of infrastructure, including streets, reservations in the center and side of roads, cross-country through fields and woods, elevated, underground, and so on, and able to share rights-of-way with motor traffic as well as full-sized railways, both alongside and even on the same tracks. Here is my attempt at describing this most interesting line. With its platform elevated at Union Station, the line climbs further on high concrete pillars to Chinatown station, whose architecture and decorations are styled accordingly, and which affords a panoramic view of the city. It then sinks to ground level, crosses the Los Angeles River and joins the former right-of-way of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad in a general northeastern direction. It's a curving right-of-way, which includes a section of Marmion Way, where the line runs for about half a mile in the center of a residential street with parking and sidewalks. Here the line's roadbed is paved and slightly raised above the street, with a fence separating the two tracks, so it's ostensibly on reservation. Motor traffic is allowed to briefly encroach, especially when backing out of driveways. On this section light rail cars are limited to speeds of 20 mph. I suspect that the previous AT&SF rails were on prw with narrow paved alleys on both sides. The Highland Park station is at the end of this short section, and then the line begins to run over a more traditional rail right-of-way, which takes it through beautiful Arroyo Seco Canyon, where it crosses the original Pasadena Freeway via an ex-AT&SF high trestle. It then continues to follow the route of the former Super Chief toward Pasadena, stopping in the heart of South Pasadena's attractive retail center. This is an upscale city that is the home of the line's original NIMBYs; both it and the Highland Park stop were once Santa Fe railroad stations, although almost all of the road's varnish made their first stop outside Los Angeles at Pasadena; this station has been preserved as a restaurant, La Grande Orange Cafe, just north of the Gold line's Del Mar stop. The line between South Pasadena and Pasadena is quite verdant and crosses under a number of bridges from which I took photos on previous trips. Pasadena is a diverse city with about 140,000 residents, most famous for the Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses parade, as well as the Norton Simon art museum and plenty of Victorian architecture. Notably, as the line cuts through this city, it runs through a building, as well as traversing a half-mile long subway (which includes the Memorial Park station) to end up in the center of the east-west I-210 Foothill Freeway; there are three stations here, the last being the original terminal, Sierra Madre Villa. The line up to this point is just under 14 miles long (from Union Station) and opened on July 26, 2003. Now onto the new line, the Foothill extension, which added 11.5 miles and 6 more stations when it opened on March 5, 2016. It runs in a predominantly east-west direction through the San Gabriel Valley on traditional railroad right-of-way just south of the mountain range, and for now ends in Azusa (although groundbreaking recently occurred for an extension of 12½ miles more along the same Santa Fe line to Montclair). After Sierra Madre, the Gold line leaves the Foothill Freeway via a bridge, and runs through Arcadia, Monrovia and Duarte, with a single station in each town. Its maintenance and storage yard is between Monrovia and Duarte stations. After Duarte, and just short of the next stop, Irwindale, the right-of-way widens significantly as it is joined by a third track and ancillary facilities used for freight service. The freight trackage extends eastward beyond the end of the current electric line and even its future extension to Montclair, as far as San Bernardino, where the BNSF mainline is reached. That line is now owned by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority (operator of Metrolink), and I'm not sure if trackage rights for freight service are held by Union Pacific or BNSF--or both. At Irwindale the freight trackage from San Bernardino turns south to Baldwin Park over what appears to have been Southern Pacific track and may still be owned by the Union Pacific (thereby providing a connection to the national railroad system at both ends). The light rail line has two further stations, Downtown Azusa and its terminal, APU/Citrus College. After Arcadia it operates parallel, but just south of the former Pacific Electric Glendora line, which was abandoned in 1951. Beyond the terminal APU/Citrus, the former Santa Fe becomes single track, but just before it reaches Claremont it widens to host the current Metrolink San Bernardino commuter line. Thus it appears that the forthcoming light rail extension to Montclair, the existing Metrolink line to San Bernardino and freight service will share the same right-of-way, which should be rather interesting. I should also point out that the Pacific Electric's San Bernardino interurban, abandoned in 1941, shared a short portion of its route with the Santa Fe for a few miles east of Claremont. Thus I consider it somewhat ironic that both parts of the entire 24-mile long Foothill extension will operate parallel to the abandoned PE lines to Glendora and San Bernardino. It's not the same as the Blue line to Long Beach mostly using the exact same Pacific Electric right-of-way, but pretty much similar to me. Please pardon the following sermon, which some may possibly consider subversive opinions and superfluous information. With current light rail fares being significantly less than those charged on Metrolink, and service on the traction line being considerably more frequent, there is already a controversy about the Gold line snatching passengers away from the commuter line, especially because they are operated by separate and competing agencies. Rightly so, as in my opinion, traditional steam/diesel commuter service is a quick and effective, but cheap and dirty, way to serve potential riders, and may well be too weak in corridors where there will be a high demand. If all day frequent service is needed, I believe that the interurban solution, now called light rail, is much more desirable. Thus I've always thought that in the days before the advent of massive subsidies for suburban rail service, it was a catastrophe that superior lines with excellent center city distribution, like the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin and the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee, fell victim to parallel unelectrified railroads. Back to the narrative. I arrived at the end of the line in Azusa at about 10:45, some 49 minutes and 18 stops after Union Station and began to take photographs, working my way westward back toward Los Angeles as the day proceeded. The photos below and their captions describe the remainder of my trip.
Two views at Azusa Station:
Above Breda inbound at Azusa, below KinkeSharo, brand new, outbound. The multi-retail Target store is a traffc generator. The wide RoW inlcudes a track for freight.
Duarte, location of a famous hotpital for concert treatment:
Old AT&AF stationi at Duarte, to becaome care, sign for conversion
Two views from the top of the garage ajacent ot Arcadia Station:
Outbound nearing South Pasadena
Dave, on your last post, your photos are icons that I can't open on Google. Your previous post's photos were fine.
When I reach a wide-band sever on Sunday or Monday, I will try and post the photoa from my hard drive via Imgur.
This posting is an experimeriment. If it works I may not need Imgur, but will require one posing for each picture.
Seems to have worked for me. Does it for you?
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.