BART - Colma Station

[serotta1972]

We recently moved to our new apartment and check out the view outside our bedroom and balcony. It wasn’t intentional, I swear - we wanted to be near a transportation hub for my wife but to have a unit facing the station and overlooking part of the track before it goes underground was pure coincidence. Was able to get a pic of the legacy front unit and the new one. This just might be a train nut’s dream and the trains are fairly quiet.

[bill937ca]

How's the noise? What time is the last train?  I live within ear shot of the CP Rail Montreal-Toronto main line. On a cloudy night it sometimes sounds like a train is coming through the bedroom.

 

[cteno4]

Wow! And busses too! 
 

jeff

[marknewton]

Nice, but I don't think I'd like to walk that far to the station! 😂

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[serotta1972]

25 minutes ago, bill937ca said:

How's the noise? What time is the last train?  I live within ear shot of the CP Rail Montreal-Toronto main line. On a cloudy night it sometimes sounds like a train is coming through the bedroom.

 

It's not too bad, I came from living in the city so I'm used to some noise.  These are technically light rail vehicles so I hear the a hum of the motors and light rumbling of the wheels.  The older buses are actually louder.  I believe the last train is midnight.  

[serotta1972]

5 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Wow! And busses too! 
 

jeff

And the buses here are called Sam Trans - I have to find a model and send one to Sammy. 😁

[bill937ca]

SamTrans buses at Trans Bay Terminal on Mission Street in San Francisco in the late 1980s. Both the buses and BART end up in downtown San Francisco.  The Trans Bay Terminal was a former train terminal for interurbans crossing San Francisco Bay on the 1930s vintage Trans Bay Bridge.

Edited January 14, 2023 by bill937ca

[marknewton]

I wasn't being entirely serious, but having said that, this is the view from my kitchen window. It's Waterfall station, which is also the depot I work out of:

 

 

And guess who is often a few minutes late for work? 🙄

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[serotta1972]

30 minutes ago, bill937ca said:

SamTrans buses at Trans Bay Terminal on Mission Street in San Francisco in the late 1980s. Both the buses and BART end up in downtown San Francisco.  The Trans Bay Terminal was a former train terminal for interurbans crossing San Francisco Bay on the 1930s vintage Trans Bay Bridge.

I remember the old Trans Bay Terminal and there's a Railroad Museum near Fairfield that have one of those Interurban Trains that ran on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge.  Lots of great history here of the former intercity trains.  SamTrans had kept their colors - Muni has changed over the years.  They hold an annual event here in SF where they bring out some old buses and run all the trolleys that are not usually used often in service anymore.  

[serotta1972]

14 minutes ago, marknewton said:

I wasn't being entirely serious, but having said that, this is the view from my kitchen window. It's Waterfall station, which is also the depot I work out of:

 

 

And guess who is often a few minutes late for work? 🙄

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

Nice!  Haha, I see you don't have that far of a commute to work.  Do you a special entrance from your residence to the depot?

[marknewton]

1 hour ago, bill937ca said:

SamTrans buses at Trans Bay Terminal on Mission Street in San Francisco in the late 1980s. Both the buses and BART end up in downtown San Francisco.  The Trans Bay Terminal was a former train terminal for interurbans crossing San Francisco Bay on the 1930s vintage Trans Bay Bridge.

 
Is that where the Key System and Sacramento Northern trains ran from? 
 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[bill937ca]

1 minute ago, marknewton said:

 
Is that where the Key System and Sacramento Northern trains ran from? 

Yes, that is right.  Muni streetcars used the ramp behind the buses outside of the terminal. In later years it was used by AC Transit buses.

[marknewton]

42 minutes ago, serotta1972 said:

Nice!  Haha, I see you don't have that far of a commute to work.  Do you a special entrance from your residence to the depot?

I used to have a shortcut. I'd go out my back gate, cross the highway and use the boundary gate that accessed the walkway from the up yard to the platform. But since the construction work started on the new up stabling yard the walkway was removed, so now I have to walk an additional 30 seconds to the sign-on room! 😂

 

But I'll soon have my shortcut back, as part of the new stabling yard facilities is a footbridge from the end of the platform to the yard. You can probably see the stairs and piers in my photo. 
 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[bill937ca]

A couple more photos of the Trans Bay Terminal from November 1975. That was my first true vacation.  Muni PCC cars and a Muni bus on the ramp. Although there is an Amtrak sign there Amtrak trains never did not run into the terminal. Continental passengers were bused to and from Oakland. All Amtrak trains terminated in Oakland on the other side of the Bay.

[serotta1972]

It’s been raining since we moved here and today was the first day it was dry so my daughter and I explored the area around the apartment and primarily the BART Station. It’s pretty big - most of the SamTrans buses have a stop here, there’s a big parking structure and in the back is a small service yard. We just looked down from the parking structure. We’ll have to walk across a pedestrian bridge to get a closer look. 

[serotta1972]

They had a mix of cars in the service yard - some of those cars are 50 years old. If you want to ride the system - they have an excursion ticket, the catch is you enter and exit the same station. 

[serotta1972]

We are in the town of Colma where there are just over 1,600 living people and the town’s claim to fame is there are over 1.5 million dead people buried here. 

[railsquid]

45 minutes ago, serotta1972 said:

We are in the town of Colma where there are just over 1,600 living people and the town’s claim to fame is there are over 1.5 million dead people buried here.

 

I wonder why they feel the need to emphasize that the people who are buried are also dead? ;).

[chadbag]

Speaking of train noise my sister in law and her husband live about 40' from a Shinkansen line.  But I've almost never heard the train as it runs underground in a tunnel under the next street over.  I heard a slight rumble a few times this last trip and my daughter says she heard it but you have to be listening for it to notice it.

 

Big difference from living near a rail line in the US.

 

(Actually my MIL lived a few hundred feet from an above ground Shinkansen line and you almost never heard them there either -- if you were outside you would hear them but they weren't loud).

 

[bill937ca]

I think the big difference with Shinkansen is that they are electric.  Diesels are the true noise generators.

 

[serotta1972]

1 hour ago, chadbag said:

Speaking of train noise my sister in law and her husband live about 40' from a Shinkansen line.  But I've almost never heard the train as it runs underground in a tunnel under the next street over.  I heard a slight rumble a few times this last trip and my daughter says she heard it but you have to be listening for it to notice it.

 

Big difference from living near a rail line in the US.

 

(Actually my MIL lived a few hundred feet from an above ground Shinkansen line and you almost never heard them there either -- if you were outside you would hear them but they weren't loud).

 

Yeah, if you're watching TV or doing something you don't even notice the trains.  Actually the buses are louder when they decide to speed down the hill.  BART I was okay with but I wouldn't want to live near the CalTrain line with their diesel engines and bi-level cars - those rumble through the neighborhoods.  Although CalTrain is going through an electrification process which I've witnessed the building of the catenary system.  The trains are being assembled in Salt Lake City.  

 

https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification/electric-trains

[chadbag]

11 hours ago, bill937ca said:

I think the big difference with Shinkansen is that they are electric.  Diesels are the true noise generators.

 

 

True but the quality of the track layment is important for sound.  Lots of rocking back and forth or other things makes a lot of noise.  

 

I just found it interesting that it is literally in my SIL/BIL back yard (US size yards) or the next street over under the ground and you normally wouldn't know it.  Tunnel helps there of course.  But I suspect a US train in a tunnel in my back yard would be a bit louder...

[JR East]

I was 11 years old in 1976 when I ran the BART with my parents during holidays, travelling for the bicentenary of the USA. At that time there were frequent technical issues and service interruption. Anyway, for an 11 years-old boy, a train without train driver was incredible  ... 1976 ! 

[bill937ca]

Its a small world!  I was in San Francisco in May 1976.  Along the way I took a photo San Francisco Municipal Railway's red, white and blue GM bus 3210. A very identifiable symbol of the year.

[cteno4]

I remember riding BART the first public day as a kid. I grew up in Oakland until 1971 and we moved just down the coast to Monterey and we visited the Bay Area all the time, so got to watch a lot of the construction as it went up. Later lived in Berkeley and Oakland for many years so much bart riding. I loved the original sloped front cars, was a very look modern for us trains. When I would get bored on a visit to the Bay Area I use to just go and ride bart around for a few hours.

 

jeff