Pacific Railroad Society is participating in an excursion run by Chris Skow’s Trains Unlimited Tours that is taking two private dome cars (Silver Lariat and Plaza Santa Fe) from Los Angeles to Oakland and return, and the same two cars plus open platform business car Tamalpais from Emeryville to Sparks and return, attached to Amtrak’s Coast Starlight and California Zephyr, respectively. We have signed up for this trip through PRS.
This morning, we drive up to Los Angeles Union Station, park in our usual spot under the MTA Tower on the east side of the station, and walk through the tunnel to the station concourse. We’re there by just after 8 am, so we actually get there before Bob and Laura Drenk’s Metrolink train from San Bernardino arrives. When they arrive, they tell us to take our suitcase over to the Amtrak baggage claim area, where it will be tagged and sent as checked baggage to Oakland. Bob will have all of the baggage claim checks. About 9:25, we walk out to track 10, where the trainset is just arriving. We board the private cars at the (only) vestibule at the rear of Silver Lariat, and secure seats in the dome of that car on the ocean side. I then take the opportunity to get down on the station platform again, walk to the front of the train and collect the consist information. While at the end of the platform, I observe Amtrak 453 leaving with Pacific Surfliner 772, at 9:40 am. I’m back on board in plenty of time prior to our on-time departure.
Between the PRS folks and those who booked directly with Trains Unlimited Tours, we have 54 or 55 people spread between the two cars, leaving Los Angeles, with four more boarding at Glendale and two at Simi Valley. Service aboard these cars is provided by a crew assembled by Burt Hermey, owner of Silver Lariat, led by steward Paul Clements, and including Lela, Sharolyn, William, George and others, with two cooks working the kitchen. Meals will be served in the dome and both downstairs sections of Silver Lariat, plus the Turquoise Room (and a table in the lounge area) in Plaza Santa Fe. We’re encouraged to move from one location to another over the course of the four days, so as to experience all of these locations, as well as others on offer on Sunday and Monday between Emeryville and Sparks.
Silver Lariat is an original 1948 Budd-built California Zephyr car, originally a dome coach, now set up as groups of paired facing seats with tables between them, for dining purposes. In the dome, the tables when we board are slim and allow reasonable room for maneuvering in and out, but before lunch larger table-tops are laid over the top of these before table cloths are laid. These severely restrict maneuvering in and out, but remain installed for the rest of the trip.
Sitting at the dome table on the other side of the aisle from us are three policemen, two from Los Altos, in the Bay Area, and one from Los Angeles. By the time we notice them, they’re interacting as if they’ve known each other all their lives, but while the two from up north are brothers, the one from down south has never met them before. Another passenger is Charlie, a profoundly deaf young man from Connecticut (although brought up in the Bay Area), who has a quite remarkable facility for lip-reading, and who is intent on videotaping everything that happens on his multi-week trip, of which this is a segment. During these four days, he will fill upwards of twenty of the tapes used by his camera. Sitting at the table with, us, at least through lunch, are two women from Denver, one of whom doesn’t eat because she has had a medical problem that has left her unable to swallow.
[consist]
P42 118
P42 116
Baggage 1164
Transition 39009
Sleeper 32117 Wisconsin
Sleeper 32086 Louisiana
Sleeper 32071 Arizona
Lounge 33011 (as Pacific Parlor)
Diner 38042
Lounge 33025
Coach 34109
Coach 34508
Coach 34116
Dome Plaza Santa Fe 800392
Dome Silver Lariat 800390
Train 14, 10-12-2002 |
Schedule |
Actual |
|
Los Angeles |
10:00am |
10:00am |
|
Glendale |
10:18 |
10:11/18 |
|
Simi Valley |
11:08 |
11:00/08 |
|
Oxnard |
11:42 |
11:37/42 |
|
Santa Barbara |
12:46pm |
12:43/56 |
|
San Luis Obispo |
3:43 |
3:34/47 |
|
Paso Robles |
4:45 |
4:50/57 |
|
Salinas |
|
6:52 |
|
San Jose |
8:42 |
9:03/13 |
|
Oakland arr. |
9:35pm |
10:15pm |
Coast Starlight Route Description
At Hasson siding, just west of Santa Susana Pass tunnel, we execute the timetabled meet with southbound Pacific Surfliner 776 with minimum delay (10:51-56).
At Santa Barbara, we get the first Traffic Warrant of the day, to allow us to run beyond the end of CTC at Goleta, and pass Amtrak 452 on a Surfliner in the other track in the station here. We’re served lunch as the train passes along the coast through Santa Barbara. At the end of lunch, we all sing Happy Birthday to Ann Gread, who seems embarrassed by the affair. West of Santa Barbara, at 1:00, we stop and proceed at an “improperly displayed red signal”. At Goleta, we reach the end of the CTC-controlled section from Los Angeles, and enter onto track controlled by Track Warrants issued to the crew by the UP dispatcher in Omaha. Here, we pass northbound UP 5012, a freight that has been causing us to receive restricting signals all the way from Seacliff. The coast line is controlled in this manner from Goleta to San Luis Obispo, and from Santa Margarita almost all the way into San Jose.
At San Luis Obispo, our train is held out of the station from 3:23 to 3:33 pm so that southbound train 11, CDTX 2012 and 2 P42s with 11 revenue cars and two deadheads, can make its station stop (from 3:22 to 3:32 pm) before we enter the station. Although there are two platforms at San Luis Obispo, there is no means of crossing the track except at grade level, which would have safety implications if passengers detrained from our train on the outer platform as the train on the inner platform was departing. Train 11 is set to meet UP 5012 north at Callender. We meet UP 5703 south at Bradley, at 5:20 pm. from 6:03 to 6:09, we slow through King City.
Darkness has fallen by the time we reach Salinas. We’ve spent some of the afternoon talking to Burt Hermey about the current state of AAPRCO (he has also dropped his membership), and private car operations in general, with the current shaky state of affairs at Amtrak. Burt is optimistic that a nationwide train service will be maintained once the political discussions are concluded and necessary appropriations voted upon. Dinner is served starting in the Salinas area. At our table for this meal is a man who wants to ‘discuss” religion in general, and Catholicism in particular. He seems quite unperturbed on receiving my atheistic, but informed, responses about the problems I see with religion in general, and his in particular. Our fourth table companion, one of the PRS folks, does his best to ignore the conversation. Just north of Gilroy, the scanner announces that a vehicle is on the tracks between us and San Jose, and that we will have to stop at the next signal until the vehicle has been removed and the track inspected. We’re stopped at that signal for 33 minutes (8:11-8:44 pm) before it turns green again. After dinner, Burt Hermey and the policemen swap dog stories. John, the older of the brothers, is a K-9 officer, whose dog is Jerry. Burt has a German Shepherd. Chris tells the story of our attack cat in Sierra Madre, original Freia, whom she caught in the air jumping at a plumber coming to repair damage in our apartment after the 1971 earthquake.
Instead of the normal straight route on the Mulford Line, today we turn east at Newark (9:38 pm) onto the Niles subdivision, then north again at Niles Junction (9:47 pm) onto the Centerville line (the route used by Amtrak’s Capitol service).At Jack London Square, Amtrak locomotive 505 is waiting to remove the two private cars from the rear of the train and take them to West Oakland Yard for servicing and to spend the night. San Joaquin 717 arrives at Jack London Square while we’re walking beside train 14. Its passengers will have to cross through an open vestibule in car 10 of train 124 to reach the depot from the outside platform.
We arrive at JLS about 40 minutes late, detrain, and walk the two blocks north to the Jack London Inn, where we collect our room key. A little while later, the bags are brought up from the station, where Trains Unlimited leader Chris Skow had collected them, and made available to their owners. It’s now after 11 pm, so we go directly to bed, anticipating an early departure in the morning.
We’re up before 7 am, leave the suitcase outside the room door, and are on the rented school bus that will take us the eight miles to Emeryville by eight. We can’t ride those eight miles, because of the arrangements for removing private cars from one train and adding them to another, in this area. The weather is bright and sunny today (all day, as it turns out).Our private cars, now three in number, have been added to the consist of the California Zephyr in West Oakland Yard, prior to that consist moving forward to Emeryville for boarding. When we arrive at Emeryville, about 8:35 am, the southbound Coast Starlight is in the station. Later, northbound Capitol 724, with CDTX 2004, arrives from JLS and departs northward at 9:02 am (late), before our train arrives from the yard. When it does so, I note the consist as it passes, we board at the rear of Silver Lariat again (Tamalpais is now behind that car), and get seats in the dome of Silver Lariat again. The three policemen are at the same seats as on Saturday.
[consist]
P42 123
P42 182
P42 183
Baggage 1160
Transition 39028
Coach 34086
Coach 34000
Coach-Smoker 31502
Lounge 33044
Diner 38005
Sleeper 32109
Sleeper 32038
Box Car 71065
Box Car 74072
Box Car 74086
Box Car 71117
Box Car 71217
Box Car 71068
Box Car 70015
Dome Plaza Santa Fe 800392
Dome Silver Lariat 800390
Business Tamalpais 800233
Train 6, 10-13-2002 |
Schedule |
Actual |
|
Emeryville |
9:35am |
9:37am |
|
Martinez |
10:16 |
10:14/19 |
|
Davis |
10:59 |
11:07/09 |
|
Sacramento |
11:35 |
11:27/38 |
|
Roseville |
12:09pm |
12:05/09 |
|
Colfax |
12:55 |
1:15/19 |
|
Truckee |
3:11 |
3:49/54 |
|
Reno |
4:15 |
4:48/56 |
|
Sparks arr. |
4:47pm |
5:04pm |
California Zephyr Route Description
Richmond is passed at 9:45 am. We stop briefly (9:48-50 am) at Pinole, after we trigger the dragging equipment detector there with a dragging air hose on the locomotives.
A man named Charlie who is a volunteer at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, and who regularly acts as a guide over Donner Pass on the main California Zephyr has joined the tour, and has agreed to provide his normal speech to the tour participants. He does so from the front of our dome. His information is at a lesser level of detail than the route and location descriptions included here! The observable traffic on the Oakland to Sacramento line (particularly west of Martinez) is dominated, at least during the day, by passenger trains, with nine Capitols each way covering the entire route to Sacramento, as well as four San Joaquins west of Martinez. Between Emeryville and Sacramento, we see three westbound Capitols (727, 729, 733) and one westbound san Joaquin (711, just west of Martinez). From Sacramento to Roseville, where there is another vast marshalling yard and locomotive maintenance facilities, the line is again in an urban area. In 2001, Amtrak's Coast Starlight takes the former WP route to Binney Junction, instead of the line through Roseville. The junction with the single-track line north to Redding and the Shasta Route is immediately east of Roseville. Elvas Tower is still standing, where the line to Stockton diverges to the south. From 11:45 to 11:51 am, we slow to a crawl east of Elvas before resuming speed near Antelope.
We’re served lunch at the table in the dome as the train starts to climb the grade, on eastbound track 2. Two folks who joined the tour in Sacramento (and live near Yosemite, on highway 49) share our table this time out.
From 12:30 to 12:52 pm, the train crawls at 10 mph or so, from Newcastle through Auburn. Track 2 is a nice steady grade, with gentle curves, sometimes in cuttings, sometimes on fill. From 1:23 to 2:02 pm, we’re again going very slowly through the whole area from Colfax to east of Cape Horn.
Emigrant Gap is reached at 2:34 pm, (Snow)Shed 10, at MP 179 (2:48 pm), Tamarack (MP 183), where there is Maintenance of Way equipment on track 1 at 3:02 pm, and Soda Springs at 3:12 pm. The train crawls through Shed 47 and all the way to the signals at the entrance to tunnel 41, reached at 3:43 pm. Norden is reached at 3:19 pm, Tunnel 41 at 3:27 pm,
Crossing the Nevada State line at 4:20 pm, a side river is crossed by a through truss on the south track and a deck truss on the north track. At 4:24 pm, we meet UP 9223 west, a train of empty autoracks heading for the transshipment facilities in the Bay Area to receive a shipment of Japanese vehicles. WE passt Verdi, MP 231, at 4:31 pm. In Sparks, we detrain, and the private cars are removed from the rear of the train. We walk over to the adjacent Nugget hotel, where there is some confusion before our group can be checked in. (The hotel wants to see the group leader, but Chris Skow is nowhere in sight. He lives in nearby Portola, so may not be coming to the hotel this evening.) When we get to our assigned room, it is immediately obvious that this is a “smoking” room. We complain, and are moved to a different room, many floors higher in the building, with a view over the yard, below. We eat at a café in the hotel, tonight.
I spend part of the time we’re in this room, observing the yard operations and the train traffic through this area. During the evening, one westbound train arrives and switches blocks of cars in the yard, then departs. Two eastbounds, including a BNSF trackage-rights train, also pass through. In the morning, one westbound passes through while we’re getting dressed, and another passes through as we’re heading to the station. Taken together with the observations of the freight traffic we saw from the train (on both days), the level of freight traffic over Donner Pass on these two days is scarcely greater than that on the Coast Route (certainly less than double), and is substantially lower than on either the Sunset Route or the former Santa Fe Transcontinental line from Southern California.
We sleep in until 9 am, today. After packing, we take the suitcase down to the lobby with us, only to discover that (a) the arrangements have been changed, and (b) because we had changed our room, we neither were informed nor could participate in the trucking of the bags, so will have to take ours on the train. Ann and Joel Gread have the same problem, because they had had no assigned room at all, the previous evening. So, after I acquire some coffee, we walk over to the depot taking our suitcase with us. (Fortunately, it has wheels, which helps a little.) When the train arrives from the east, ahead of time, our private cars are plucked from the yard and deposited on the rear end. Once they are fully hooked up, and the brakes have been tested correctly (which takes three attempts), the train moves forward so that we can board. Today, I’m the second person on at the rear of Tamalpais, which means we can ride in the nine-seat rear observation lounge (or standing on the rear platform) for this leg of the journey. We also make sure that we get to eat in the exquisite dining room (with only eight seats) of Tamalpais when lunch is served. When Chris boards, she brings our suitcase with her, and then hands it to Chris Skow for storage during today’s trip.
[consist]
P42 21
P42 139
P42 124
Baggage 1265
Transition 39015
Sleeper 32069
Sleeper 32058
Diner 38040
Lounge 33020
Coach-Smoker 31513
Coach 34088
Coach 34045
Coach-Bagg. 31028
MHV 1403
MHV 1419
Box Car 71060
Box Car 71019
Dome Plaza Santa Fe 800392
Dome Silver Lariat 800390
Business Tamalpais 800233
Train 5, 10-12-2002 |
Schedule |
Actual |
|
10-14-2002 |
|
|
|
Sparks |
10:25/35 |
10:17/58 |
|
Reno |
10:49am |
11:03/15 |
|
Truckee |
11:50 |
12:09/15 |
|
Colfax |
1:50pm |
2:42pm |
|
Roseville |
3:09 |
4:18 |
|
Sacramento |
4:25 |
4:42/50 |
|
Davis |
4:44 |
5:11 |
|
Martinez |
5:25 |
5:54/57 |
|
Emeryville arr. |
6:30pm |
6:35pm |
Tamalpais is a heavyweight business car, built for Santa Fe in 1923. It has been updated mechanically, for comfort and safety reasons, but retains its elegant interior of oak paneling as well as its open rear platform. We can enjoy the latter, because the weather is again bright and sunny, although still chilly at 10 am, at this 5000 ft. altitude. At 12:28 pm, we meet UP 4021 east with loaded autoracks in Cold Stream Canyon. From 12:35 to 12:45 pm, I stand on the rear platform as we pass through Tunnel 41 and Norden. Emigrant gap is passed at 1:20 pm. Today being Monday, the salvage crews are working on the derailed lumber cars, with one track out of service so that the various pieces of maintenance and salvage equipment can use it, as we pass that location today at 1:38 pm. We meet Amtrak train 6 at 2:01 pm near MP 150. At 2:13 pm, we meet UP 4250 east, and from 2:15 to 18, stop for signals at MP 148.8. (While we’re stopped, someone gets down to restart the generator on Silver Lariat.) Passing through the tunnels instead of around Cape Horn, we pass UP 5767east on the grade below the latter from 2:36 to 2:38 pm.
A man from the Bay Area has taken a seat in the lounge area of Tamalpais, and is bemoaning the mid-1990s removal of the second track at the two single-track segments over Donner Pass. I point out that the track was used to double some of the operationally difficult segments of the Sunset Route, which had (and have) far more traffic these days than does Donner Pass. This starts a lengthy discussion of the relative traffic levels of the routes from the Bay Area versus those from Los Angeles, which leads to a discussion of the future of railroading in general, and then transportation economics as a whole. Charlie, the CSRM volunteer, chimes in with Donner-specific information when appropriate. The other Charlie, the man with the ever-present video camera, records the whole discussion on videotape! Later, another tour participant stops me to tell me that he ‘had to leave the area because he was getting annoyed by what the man who had started the discussion was saying’. I respond that it’s always interesting when someone who ‘knows everything’ gets into discussion with someone who knows things the first person does not!
On arrival at Emeryville, the exits from the private cars are off the end of the platform, but we go ahead and detrain anyway. Chris grabs our suitcase from the room in Tamalpais where it and several others had been stored during the day, and we walk forward to the station building (which is all the way at the other end of the platform), pass through it and head for the rented schoolbus. Chris stows the bags in the compartment under the bus, and we board. A lengthy delay ensues, while Chris Skow deals with the two women from Denver, whose luggage should have been delivered here (since they are leaving the tour here to go over to San Francisco and spend some time with one woman’s sister), but has, it transpires, been taken to the hotel in Oakland. While we’re waiting, a fire engine and a paramedic ambulance appear to deal with a medical problem among the arriving Amtrak passengers.
At Jack London Square, after passing over the new freeway segment (replacing the one that collapsed in 1989, the last time the San Francisco Giants were in the World Series) through the former location of Desert Yard, we get our room, watch the end of the National League Championship Series, and go across the street to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant.
Arising at 7:15 am, we have the bag outside the room by 7:30, and walk down to the station a little after eight to wait for the arrival of our train. Chris Skow brings the ‘checked’ luggage down to the station in his van, and piles it up where he expects the private car vestibule to be. When the train arrives, after a Capitol has arrived from the same direction and departed for San Jose, it comes in to the platform still going quite quickly, and surprises us by how far south the end of the train is when it stops. Our private cars are delivered by Amtrak switcher 505 (a ‘Pepsi-can’ GE P32) and attached to the rear of the train. Meanwhile, the baggage has been moved to where the vestibule is, and is loaded on the cars first. We then board. Chris goes ahead to secure us seats in the dome of Plaza Santa Fe, the one car we have not yet ridden in on this trip. We have swiveling seats on either side of the aisle, allowing photographic access to both sides of the train when required. Plaza Santa Fe was built by Pullman-Standard in 1950 for the Santa Fe Super Chief, and includes the Pleasure Dome, Starlight Lounge and Turquoise Room (for private dining). The dome features a number of single parlor-style swivel seats. The weather today is overcast, and quite chilly early on.
[consist]
P42 118
P42 116
Baggage 1164
Transition 39009
Sleeper 32117 Wisconsin
Sleeper 32086 Louisiana
Sleeper 32071 Arizona
Lounge 33011 (as Pacific Parlor)
Diner 38042
Lounge 33025
Coach 34109
Coach 34508
Coach 34116
Dome Plaza Santa Fe 800392
Dome Silver Lariat 800390
Baggage 1264 (from San Jose)
Train 11, 10-14-2002 |
Schedule |
Actual |
|
10-15-2002 |
|
|
|
Oakland |
8:30/45 |
8:35/58 |
|
San Jose |
9:50am |
10:09am |
|
Salinas |
|
11:55 |
|
Paso Robles |
1:36pm |
2:14/17 |
|
San Luis Obispo |
3:10 |
3:29/42 |
|
Santa Barbara |
6:17 |
6:02/17 |
|
Oxnard |
7:08 |
7:00/08 |
|
Simi Valley |
7:46 |
7:41/43 |
|
Glendale |
8:23 |
8:26/29 |
|
Los Angeles arr. |
9:05 |
8:40 |
We again travel via the Centerville and Newark Lines, instead of the Mulford Line. We pass Niles Junction between 9:26 and 9;28 am, reach Newark at 9:36 am, and pass the southbound UP local freight there. There is a 30 mph speed limit at MP 23.9. We reach Santa Clara Tower at 9:53 am. Between Santa Clara and San Jose we pass the Altamont Commuter Express trainsets on their midday layover, along the west side of the track. Adjacent to the former Lenzen Avenue locomotive facilities, where a number of RDC cars in Caltrain paint are stored, we stop for a red signal from 9:56 to 10:05 am. A southbound Caltrain passes us at 10:03 am and enters San Jose station. Then we get the green light and move ahead. After a northbound Caltrain has passed, at 10:08 am, we see that only the two easternmost tracks through San Jose Diridon station are open, the space normally occupied by the others being excavated for the new line of the San Jose light rail system to pass under the tracks east of its interchange station in front of the depot building. An empty baggage car is added by Caltrain loco. 515 during the San Jose stop.
The train crawls south from San Jose to CP Lick, and is through Tamien, where the midday Caltrain services terminate at 10:28 am. A track gang is working between MP 55 and MP 65. Approaching the former, we still don’t have permission from foreman 883 to enter his work area, so stop from 10:37 to 10:40 until that permission is secured. At 11:01, we’re through Gilroy, we meet a northbound UP freight at 11:05, and cross the San Andreas Fault by the Pajaro River at 11:15 am. We pass Watsonville Junction at 11:28 am, stopping from 11:28-30 to copy a Track Warrant from Salinas to King City. (When there is only one person in the locomotive cab, a train must stop in order to copy a Track Warrant safely.) There is a 25 mph speed restriction at MP 102.5, passed at 11:43 am.
We have to move to Silver Lariat to eat meals, today, since with the smaller number of participants the crew is not serving in Plaza Santa Fe. We eat lunch between 11:50 am and 1:05 pm in the rear lower level segment of Silver Lariat, starting as we leave Salinas to head up the Salinas Valley. Our tablemates are an older couple whose son has married a Welsh girl, quite recently. The conversation is about English cooking, which the woman her is now learning, just as Chris learned 33 years ago.
We stop from 12:33-35 pm to copy a Track Warrant from King City to Bradley. In the Salinas Valley, the sky is clear and the sun is shining, but the coastal mountains are hazy. At 1:21 pm, we pass the “oil cans” in the siding where they are loaded, at Wunpost. From 1:23-28, we stop to copy a Track Warrant from San Ardo to Santa Margarita. As we stop, the HEP coming from the Amtrak locomotives goes out, and owner Wayne Yetter rushes to start the generator in Plaza Santa Fe. When we start again, the HEP comes back and Wayne stops the generator. The same thing occurs at the next several stops, before an Amtrak conductor informs the engineer. We stop again from 1:42 to 1:46 pm for no evident reason. At 1:51 pm, we pass UP 1375 south at Bradley.
South of Paso Robles, between 2:17 and 2:31, the train stops to receive a track warrant that astonishes the railfan sitting in front of me, since it is for only a three mile segment of track. It transpires that this is the warrant for the western platform line in San Luis Obispo, which is just about three miles long. Since the line over Santa Margarita Pass, and down Cuesta grade is CTC, and since we change crews in San Luis Obispo, the train has to have a warrant starting at the north end of SLO to allow the train to enter the station, but can’t be given authority beyond the next switch because of the crew change! Thus, the apparent anomaly.
At 2:40 pm, there is a 15-mph speed restriction at MP 225.4. Between 2:56 and 2:58, we stop to copy an “unforeseen” speed restriction (10 MPH at MP 248.4, just north of the San Luis Obispo station). We crest Santa Margarita Pass at 3:00 pm, and pass the Cuesta horseshoe curve at 3:18. Amtrak 14, in the station at San Luis Obispo before we arrive and after we leave, has P42s 22 and 207. At 4:26 pm, we make a momentary stop heading west towards the ocean north of Vandenberg. Approaching the coast at Vandenberg, the sky is overcast. At 4:47 pm, we meet UP 4022 north at Surf. South of Surf, the coast is alternately in sunlight and shadow, with the cliff faces shimmering when the light is upon them. At 5:12 pm, we turn east at Point Conception, with the bright sun descending towards the west. We pass Gaviota at 5;36 pm, and meet Surfliner 775, with Amtrak 465, at 5:50 pm at Goleta.
We eat dinner in the dome of Silver Lariat between Santa Barbara and Moorpark, as darkness falls over the ocean. Our table is shared with Charlie, the videographer, and Jed Hughes, a longtime Southern California rail and trolley fan who lives in Long Beach. We stop at Hasson from 7:50-55, to meet westbound Surfliner 783. Burbank Junction is passed at 8:20 pm. and I note that a number of warehouse-type buildings have been built on the former Lockheed land that had been under environmental cleanup for so long.
On arrival in Los Angeles, 25 minutes early (due to the schedule padding), we retrieve our suitcase from those unloaded onto the platform, and head directly to the MTA garage without ever entering the main depot at LAUS. We retrieve our car and drive home, getting there before 9:30 pm. This has been a wonderful trip, and I feel that I have really come to grips with Donner Pass for the first time.