Patrick, great photos of the bridge in its holiday trim and the history is very interesting.
The sun decided to show up this morning after a long rainy, windy, and cloudy week, so Happy Friday!
Since it is so nice I stopped at the Santa Clara Train Station in Silicon valley and went for a brief stroll around the station and surrounding area. What caught my eye is a small Union Pacific consist of tank cars and TTX boxcars parked next to the SC train station. Not typical, UP usually parks freight further down the sidings. The SC passenger platform is at the beginning of the San Jose UP yard and I'm looking south towards San Jose. The 3 tracks on the left are in the yard, the track next to the platform is UP mainline. Both Amtrak and Caltrans use the UP mainline and stop at this location.
While I was taking this photo I turned around and a southbound Caltrain (different operator than Caltrans) was rolling in, so I switched to video. I panned the Santa Clara train depot building with a restored Pullman private passenger car parked out front in between Caltrain coming and going. The train included #918 F40PH-2-CAT pulling Nippon Sharyo Gallery passenger set. If all goes well, by the end of 2025 most of these old F40's, Nippon Sharyo, and Bombardier cars will be gone, replaced by brand new Stadler KISS EMU passenger sets. In the video you can see the new overhead power. Currently the Stadler's are still under test, so Caltrain only runs them at night between actual passenger hours. The electrification infrastructure is not yet complete in the north, mostly in San Francisco.
