New fifth rack with old design! All is good.
Courtesy: Brad Simeral
For those not following - Dr Shirley figured out that Caltrain could put in fullsized racks after all. Brad saw one Tuesday AM. My hope is that this is part of the rollout to all trains as I saw the original short rack this AM.
I also saw this.
The 2 bike cars sign. I am not sure if I would see this sign before I saw the 2nd mirror hanging off the actual 2nd bike car... too small and too low.
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267 today had 2 Gallery bike cars and no yellow sign. No biggie: a cyclist was spotted down the platform and it was anticipated Twitter-intelligence was at play. A mirror spotting confirmed, and the second-car-stampede began.
the yellow sign is apparently only deployed as a "pilot program". Amusing that they would need to test this one out, after they rolled out the "BIKE ENTRY"/"BIKE EXIT" signs on all Bombadier cars without testing or any input. Of course those signs have been completely ignored.
The 2 bike car sign looks like it probably would cost $10, of course for Caltrain it's probably more like $100 so they test one, then deploy. Of course, I would argue that they aren't really "testing" it - certainly they have not asked for feedback.
I've gone to full on gambling with 267/275/277/383. I just line up at the 2nd bike car and pray. I'm sure the stampede is bad at Paly, at MV it is sheer madness as the handicapped ramp, the shelter/ticket kiosk, and the passengers boarding car #2 are all bundled up in the same spot - you pretty much cannot breach this until the passengers have finished boarding car #2. Anyway, so far Caltrain has managed to have 2 cars as promised every time, though I heard 275 only had one today.
Of course, if you line up at bike car #2 and there isn't one, you are now last in the queue and will almost certainly get bumped. Solution? 2 bike cars on all trains. I'd even settle for "no spare bike cars" and have the occasional one bike car consist with an apology from the conductor - such that Caltrain would not end up running a 3 bike car consist.
Thank you, sir, for posting that photo.
I've yet to see the 2nd bike car sign on 2 bike car Gallery consists (I've looked).
Springtime is obviously here - my morning trains have been standing room only out of San Jose, which is unusual.
Today on my train I finally saw the *short* rack. So the taller rack Brad saw is not a replacement of the short rack, it is a new rack in a new train.
Hopefully what this means is that Caltrain is busy installing the new racks and within a couple of weeks all the gallery cars will have 40 spaces.
When they went from 24-32 spaces early this decade, there was no fanfare, just one day I showed up for the train and there were 32 spaces. I still saw 24 slot cars, but over a couple of weeks all the trains were converted.
The 2 bike car was on train 138 this morning, seen in the yard at 4/K as I was boarding an earlier train.
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