[PRCo] More of YouTube Links

Thu Dec 4 15:58:35 EST 2008

Sorry guys but I pushed send before I should have....

Here is the rest of Los Angeles ...

The dedication film of the Blue Line to Long Beach
July 14, 1990.   Some great aerial views.   This one
was professionally made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scqwa--KhJU

This view at Vernon Avenue shows the cars after
repainting.  By the way, this was part of the Pacific
Electric four-tracks between LA and Watts.  LATL
Western-Vernon line crossed here.   You may have
seen pictures of PCCs on LATL crossing in front of
PE cars here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh-YB5G4pgw&feature=related

This right-of-way includes not only the LACMTA Blue Line
but also the UP mainline to the Los Angles Harbor.  The
railroad was previously the SP Harbor Branch, and before
that it was Pacific Electric.   This light rail line hauls about
75,000 people a day ... probably more than twice what PE
was moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD6DctMgTiQ&feature=related

This one at Del Amo station is classic because it shows
that California has, as Russ Jackson once said, different
laws of physics than anywhere else, so they don't need
guard rails on elevated structures!   Maybe after the first
train derails?????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCVOGBwXSlc&feature=related

The Green line runs from Norwalk to the airport to Redondo.
The best picture of all would show the statue of the paper
airplane with a light rail car in the distance but no one did
it.  The line goes through "ethnic" neighborhoods in South
Central L. A., crossing the Blue Line at right angles and passing
next to Los Angeles International Airport.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-rOAitko4I&feature=related

Nothing spectacular but this shows the Gold Line from Highland
Park to Mission Station.  The high bridge crosses the Pasadena
Freeway, built as the Aroyo Seco Freeway back in the late 1930s,
it was the first of the California freeways and contemporary with
the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the Pulasky Skyway and some of the
other limited access highways in the New York area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRiz2TOge1A

This shows the line as it enters Union Station

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fvovb56X8c&feature=related

The Gold line ends in a freeway east of Pasadena now with plans
to extend it farther east into the suburbs.   The other end is being
extended east of Union Station into the barrios of East Los Angeles.
Construction on that is ahead of schedule.  It should open next June.

One other line is under construction in the nations second largest
city ... a recreation of the Pacific Electric's Santa Monica Air Line
as far as Culver City.   I have no firm opening date.

Los Angeles also now has a huge network of commuter railroad
lines under the name Metrolink.   Sadly if you look on YouTube under
Metrolink, you get all sorts of ugly films on the recent Chatsworth
accident.   One of these will show you why, if you work as an engineer
long enough, you will run over an idiot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtG1lE38e0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSkvi_L1VfA&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cAcPqYLj8E&feature=related

I found one YouTube post of the one-year-old Orange Line bus way
in the San Fernando Valley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMMxL-wqwVo&feature=related

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The north end of the Baltimore Light Rail opened in 1983.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z140LpqipM4

This is the junction into Penn Station with a car on the branch.
The short branch opened in December 1997.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skf8igtMqbg&NR=1

The subway was proposed when I was editing Headlights in the early  
1970s but
didn't open to Reistertown until 1983.  It wasn't complete to Johns  
Hopkins
University until 1993.   They claim 80,000+ riders a day and I don't  
buy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PKjfx9-Hx4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr7XwYnt5dc&feature=related
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Atlanta began to build when I was editing Headlights back in the
1970s.   The MARTA heavy rail system was progressively opened between
1979 and 2000.   I've always been impressed that Atlanta was probably a
city was a huge black middle class.   Atlanta is about 68% black with a
per capita income of almost $29,000 (that's per man, woman and child).
That means the average city family has an income of about $67,000.
It has caused the wags to say that MARTA means MOVING AFRICANS
RAPIDLY THROUGH ATLANTA.  My personal opinion holds that it is
different from Philadelphia.

The all white paint scheme is original.   John Swindler and I were told
when they opened that someone told them that was a bad idea to paint
equipment white because they would have to wash it.   The MARTA
response was, "We plant to keep the cars and buses clean."   The black
stripe is new ... within the last year or so.

Like Baltimore, MARTA has made a rule that photograph is illegal.  You
surrender your first amendment rights when you go there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXJKthvX8Fs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaoqPTUhfHE&feature=related
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We were told Californians wouldn't ride trains, were we not?   BART
(Bay Area Rapid Transit District) was a bold experiment when it opened
from Richmond to Hayward in 1972.   On November 5th, 2008, they
hauled 374,949 passengers over 104 miles of track in four counties.
If I can count correctly, that makes their rail passenger volume sixth
in the U. S. behind New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago and
Philadelphia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv-PbRgV438&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljqKlGNAtpk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbxe8_QoT6Q&feature=related

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Nothing really good on Miami's Metrorail but you can see that the
cars are identical to the Baltimore Budd cars.   They were built at
the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTB6SC-__o4

And the Metromover is a downtown connector people-mover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB5HwpRn8SA

And at the other end of the state of Florida, Jacksonville has its
"Skyway" people mover.   These pictures are professional.
After you see this, then you have lunch or dinner with Mark
McGuire and Jerry Matsick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMmSJraA6qM

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What'd I miss.   Oh, yes.   Dallas.   DART.  Dallas Area Rapid
Transit's first line opened in 1996 and their active construction
schedule goes through 2018.

The first tape is video is a really neat file of a DART train, a
Trinity Railway Express Commuter train to Fort Worth and a
freight train at Union Station.   Guys, old is remembering calling
my parents as a kid from a pay phone in that station when I was
in the army and bewildering them about why I would hitchhike to
Big D just because the sun was shining on Sunday.  Hell's bells,
it was only 160 miles from Fort Hood.    In those days the Santa Fe,
the Texas and Pacific, the Rock Island, the Katy, the Frisco, the
Southern Pacific (T&NO), the Cotton Belt all had passenger trains
into Dallas Union Station.   And the station itself had a neat little
oil fired 0-6-0 to shift cars around.   That was 1959.

Today there is one daily Amtrak train and the commuter service
to Fort Worth.

Then there was 30 miles of farm country between Fort Worth and
Dallas.   Today Roy King regales me about how you can spend
two hours stuck in traffic in the even rush hour between those two
two cities.   I know what he's saying.  There is no open farmland
left.   I've been there as recently as 2005.   Maybe I'll go back this
year to look at the Orange and Green line construction.  And its
pretty solidly built up to the Oklahoma border.

Today Dallas city is home to 1.2 million people and Fort Worth contains
625,000.   Wikipedia claims the entire metropolitan area is the 4th most
populous in the U. S. A. with 6.4 million people.

DART reported 61,200 average weekday passengers in 2007.   The
current system has 45 miles of route.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Area_Rapid_Transit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZruycDuHpzs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llcEHVOXpTY

The McKinney Avenue Transit Authority in Dallas used collect fares.
Today they accept donations and DART makes up any losses.
Ed Lybarger and I have been given a chance to run cars on this line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki4NneruodQ
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St. Louis has a great new light rail system but the city was one of  
those
places that we used to make jokes about.   You know the kind ... first
prize was a week's vacation in Camden, second prize was a week in East
St. Louis, third prize was a week in St. Louis, fourth was a week in  
Gary.
I'm pretty sure that economy was steel based like Pittsburgh.     
Was.   There
is a Chrysler plant southwest of Shewsbury ... I don't think it's  
long for this
world right now either.

In 1940 St. Louis was the 8th largest city in the United States with  
819,000
people.   It isn't even in the top 20 today.   The city only has  
353,000 people.
The flight to the suburbs was astronomical.   St Louis County grew by  
over
500,000 in that same period and is now shrinking as people move even
farther out.   Seems like it's the American dream to get as far as  
possible
from people to whom we feel superior.   We must own a newer house.

The light rail passenger counts increased from 44,000 a day in 2006 to
74,000 a day in 2007 just because they opened the St. Louis County
branch into Shrewsbury?   I think not.   I always thought their  
counts were
high, perhaps because of an abnormally low fare.  When you charge only
$1.00 for a 37 mile ride from St. Louis airport through city and 16  
miles
out into Illinois, you will get an artificially high number of  
riders.  But did
an 8 mile branch in the suburbs give us the addition 30,000 riders?
That line ends next to I-44 but when I looked at it two years ago, the
parking lot has one-third empty.   DOES NOT COMPUTE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3HXB7dElCU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2lp_r-vX0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN9olnv-TW8&feature=related

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Vancouver, British Columbia's fixed guideway rail system is called
Skytrain.   It used linear induction technology from UTDC / Bombardier
identical to the line in Scarborough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1gE4aoJRw0

And Vancouver is working on a light rail line to the south.
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And there are a lot of little heritage lines ... some run by railfans  
even ...
that operate in my mind for the community good, hauling passengers on
public streets or rights-of-way as tourist attractions.   They are  
just a little
bit beyond the concept of museums.

I could not find anything on line for my favorite, the Fort Collins  
Birney.

But how about the ex Cleveland, Ohio wood car in Nelson, BC.   Mostly
its on private right-of-way along the inlet.   But the paving you see  
is the
car running through the local Wal*Mart parking lot.   By the way, Nelson
is easier to get to from the U. S. than from the highway between Calgary
and Vancouver simply because of where it sits in the mountains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV4H-tarDwY

Or a Japanese car in Tucson, Arizona.   I have a pretty strong hunch  
this
will morph into a light rail line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYF3z6YgsDM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RG-MC420gE&feature=related