Coast Starlight
The Coast Starlight is an Amtrak long-distance train that operates between Seattle and Los Angeles .
route
The length of the route is around 2,200 kilometers. Scenic highlights are the drive along the Pacific cliffs north of Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and the drive through the Oregon Coast Ranges .
history
The Coast Starlight was only created by AMTRAK, which was founded in 1971. Before that, there was no train that covered most of the west coast of the United States . The West Coast , which was operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad, ran from Los Angeles to Portland and carried a through car to Seattle, came closest to the concept . The West Coast drove through the San Joaquin Valley , while the Coast Starlight drives along the Pacific coast in this section , which offers passengers spectacular views.
AMTRAK summarized this connection as well as a number of other trains that traveled part of the route together in the Coast Starlight . This initially operated without a name from May 1, 1971 three times a week between Los Angeles and Seattle. On the remaining days, only the Los Angeles - Oakland , Los Angeles - San Diego and Portland - Seattle sections were used. With the timetable of November 14, 1971, the name Coast Starlight was introduced for the train to and from Seattle and its route was extended at the other end to San Diego, but this was only offered for a few months and then withdrawn. In the 1990s, a group of through cars was again offered between the two cities for a few years . Here, however, there are regular and relatively frequent connections with the regional train service of the Pacific Surfliner .
The offer of the Coast Starlight was expanded and the connection was offered daily. The route of the train was slightly changed several times. In the first half of 2008, the train did not operate for months due to landslides near Chemult , Oregon, which damaged the route. The train was notorious for the significant delays it regularly incurred. This earned him the nickname "Coast Starlate". From October 2005 to August 2006 he was 98 percent late, and delays of five to eleven hours were not uncommon. The reasons for this were controversial among those involved. After the Union Pacific Railroad gave the train priority over its own freight, punctuality has improved. Apart from a few routes on the east coast, Amtrak is a pure railway company ; the railway infrastructure it operates on belongs to companies that almost exclusively run freight trains on it.
Today's offer
In 2008 the train received revised rolling stock, which increased the number of passengers by 15 percent from 353,657 to 406,398 within a year. The Coast Starlight is made of double-deck passenger coaches ( coach class ), sleeping cars , each with a dining car , a dome car and a "Parlor Car". The "Parlor Cars" are particularly luxurious observation cars with a cinema in the basement. There are only four of these that were built for the Santa Fe Railroad and its El Capitan parade train in the 1950s. They were also refurbished in 2008 and now run exclusively in the four train sets that are used for the Coast Starlight . The "Parlor Cars" are reserved for sleeping car passengers.
The total travel time of the train is approximately 35 hours according to the schedule. The train uses the routes of three railway infrastructure companies :
- BNSF Railway between Seattle and Portland,
- Union Pacific Railroad between Portland and Moorpark (including the Pit River Bridge ) and
- Metro link between Moorpark and Los Angeles Union Station .
literature
in alphabetical order by authors / editors
- Amtrak: Amtrak System Timetable. Effective May 7, 2012 - October 1212 .
- Kevin McKinney: At the dawn of Amtrak . In: Trains Magazine, June 1991.
- NN: Coast Starlight . In: Klaus Viedebantt u. a .: Around the world on rails. The 55 best journeys by train . 2nd edition Bruckmann 2016. ISBN 978-3-7654-6793-6 , pp. 102f.
- Mike Schafer: Amtrak's atlas . In: Trains Magazine, June 1991.
- Karl Zimmermann: All Aboard! The Coast Starlight . In: Trains Magazine v. July 2, 2001.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The Official Guide of the Railways . The Railroad Journal. January 1947, p. 881, table 112.
- ^ Carlos A. Schwantes: Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest . University of Washington Press 1993, pp. 317f.
- ↑ Kimberly Geiger: Coast Starlight Losing Its Luster . In: San Francisco Chronicle v. August 8, 2006.
- ↑ Amtrak System Timetable, p. 97.
- ↑ Amtrak System Timetable, p. 87.