Union Pacific's 8-car Costa Mesa Local, which hasn't served Costa Mesa in decades, heads south on Metrolink's Orange Sub, on which it has trackage rights from Control Point (CP) College (na... (more)

Metrolink Orange County Line train 625 (Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo to Los Angeles) departs the station in Orange under a vivid sunset with Hyundai-Rotem-built cab car 660 leading, and MP36PH-3C 8... (more)

Not Your Typical Surfliner!

Amtrak Pacific Surfliner 572, making its way from San Diego to Los Angeles, is radically different than the usual Surfliners: (A... (more)

Winter Solstice: Worst Day to Railfan?

The winter solstice, or hibernal solstice, occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This yea... (more)

About 124 miles into its 216-mile trip from Barstow to San Diego, BNSF train H-BARSDG1-13A is already 16 hours behind schedule. Sadly, that's no longer an aberration on today's railroads. And wi... (more)

Passing through the campus of Chapman University is BNSF Railway freight train H-BARSDG1-22A, with the first half of the train having just transitioned to Metrolink's Orange Sub after traveling do... (more)

Metrolink train 608 used to arrive in Orange at 19:20 (7:20 pm), but starting three days earlier, on October 21, it now arrives there at 9:30, essentially ten hours earlier, thanks to radically ne... (more)

THIS is a Pacific Surfliner"?!?

Leading Amtrak Pacific Surfliner 765 (San Diego to Goleta) is a visitor from northern California: California Dep... (more)

Making its way from San Diego to the Santa Barbara suburb of Goleta is Amtrak train 765. This six-car train has a pair of California Department of Transportation (CDTX) Siemens "Chargers&quo... (more)

On a hot afternoon (92º F / 33.333ºC, with 58% humidity) storm clouds have built up over the San Gabriel Mountains. The problem, of course, is lightning, which could possibly start new fires in... (more)

North Meets South … Train 800 Meets Train 600 … 907 Meets 935 … (OK, that last one is more than a bit lame … Sorry about that …)

Meeting at the Metrolink station... (more)

Held up a bit by a pair of late passenger trains (Amtrak 769 running 10 minutes late, and Metrolink 859 running 8 minutes behind because it had to wait for AMTK 769), BNSF High Priority Freight H-... (more)

Decked out if Metrolink's least attractive paint scheme, 32-year-old F59PH 868, one of only two F59PHs still operating on the system, pushes Orange County Line train 609 (Oceanside to Los Angeles)... (more)

Departing the station in Orange, and about to diverge from Metrolink's Orange Sub to their Olive Sub (and then onto BNSF’s San Bernardino Sub) is train 802. This train, consisting of F125 931 a... (more)

Four-month-old Metrolink MP36PH-3C 894 leads Orange County Line train 689, which originated in Irvine and is heading to Los Angeles. At this point, SCAX 894 still has the roadnumbers with which i... (more)