This is my last column written in Burbank, as we are relocating to the central coast, specifically Pacific Grove in Monterey County. The Southern Pacific used to run close by on the way to a gravel quarry at Asilomar, now long gone. The right of way is now the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail from Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, via Cannery Row and across the municipal golf course all the way to where the former right of way ends at Pebble Beach, and to prove its provenance a stranded caboose resides alongside the trail one block from Cannery Row. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a return of trains to Monterey on the old route from Castroville, so the nearest rail service, freight or passenger, is at Salinas. From my house there is an hourly local bus to the Monterey Transit Plaza and thence a half-hourly limited stop bus to Salinas. The Transit Center at Salinas is not at the Amtrak station, which is about a quarter of a mile away. You can hardly blame them with only one train a day.
We have reported for many years in Steel Wheels the desire of TAMC (Transportation Agency for Monterey County) to extend rail service from San Jose and Gilroy to Salinas on the Union Pacific line. Like a number of similar schemes, Coachella Valley for example, we have been writing about them for many years and seem doomed to continue. In the case of Salinas there are two plans; to extend Caltrain and to extend the Capitol Corridor (CapCor) (see map.) TAMC has committed staff and funding to environmental work for the station and infrastructure at Pajaro-Watsonville. A proposed station at Castroville awaits funding. The route suffers from the same geographic burden as the line segment between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, viz. that it is slow and circuitous compared to the parallel highway 101, but perhaps will often be quicker given the congestion on the highway.
https://www.tamcmonterey.org/files/2fdb32dd1/2025+MCRE+Map.pdf
Caltrain has Stadler working on a battery electric train to replace the diesel locomotive hauled commuter cars on the non-electrified segment of Caltrain between San Jose (Tamien) and Gilroy. There is a question whether such a train will have the range to go the additional 37 miles to Salinas with two intermediate stops. Caltrain has 48.9 miles electrified plus 28 miles to Gilroy, so to Salinas 57% of the route would be non-electrified.
With completion of Caltrain electrification I have a hard time figuring the logic of a Caltrain extension from the operating and rolling stock viewpoint, but I’ve no doubt there is demand for service to Silicon Valley and all the way to San Francisco. However, the original study was based on a traditional am/pm commuter pattern which Covid made obsolete. Equally, there is demand to east bay cities and to Sacramento. As far as extending CapCor is concerned Caltrans is pushing for an extension from San Jose to Salinas with a single round trip using a train set that has a long layover at San Jose. CapCor itself is fully committed with capacity projects to look beyond their legislatively set boundary at San Jose, and indeed they have problems running their existing timetable. The issue for both of these options is the lack of available rolling stock other than the existing Caltrain commuter cars, which do not provide a competitive level of comfort for up to 114 mile journeys!
If we look in detail at the TAMC projects we can see that there are multiple agencies involved in trying to accomplish any progress. These include Union Pacific, Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Transit Administration, California PUC, Caltrans Division of Rail, CapCor JPA , Caltrain JPA, TAMC, and the individual cities wanting stations, including Watsonville/Pajaro, Castroville and Salinas. The original Caltrain extension study was done in 2000. What will it take to translate the plans into construction and train service? Could it be that there are simply too many agencies getting in each other’s way? Watch for regular updates as soon as I get my feet under the table in Monterey County.
“Stealing from the next generation”
“Time to stop pretending that discontinuous electrification is a clever innovation when it is actually a millstone around the neck of the next generation.”
Ian Walmsley, Modern Railways (UK), March 2026
I am a regular reader of Ian’s iconoclastic column. Ian is a strong proponent of electrification but he is concerned that the idea of wiring up the easy bits of railroad and leaving gaps to be bridged by battery power, hydrogen or diesel looks deceptively easy, inexpensive and convenient but has a long-term cost which is not being counted by its proponents. Bi-mode trains are becoming common but that doesn’t make them the right choice. The trains are heavier (track wear), more complex to maintain, more expensive, performance is reduced, and turn time is increased by pausing for charging. If a diesel generator is added to extend the range or to “get you home” that’s an added cost and complexity. Complexity means higher maintenance cost and higher failure rate.
With battery bi-modes the power system must be robust enough to provide power to the train and to charge the batteries to cover the unwired sections. In the event of a grid failure removing power from a wired section there will be no way to feed it from either side as happens with a fully wired railroad. Batteries need to be charged at each end of the route requiring expensive charging facilities and preferably an automated means to connect them. Fast charging from the overhead is not possible as it would melt the wire. And batteries have a finite life, meaning expensive replacements over time.
We proponents of electrification tout the reliability of electric trains, and the performance which provides faster acceleration and shorter journeys. These advantages are compromised by discontinuous electrification (“DE”). While there may be a case on lightly used routes for a bi-mode train to serve a branch line from an electrified main, as soon as there is any increase in frequency the higher cost of the trains is more than the capital cost of electrification. MBTA in the Boston area seems to be going down this path, with heavy, inefficient bi-mode trains hauling batteries or diesel generators under wires for 80% of the route.
As Walmsley puts it, “how will young engineers of today feel when they retire leaving behind a dog’s breakfast of disjointed wiring while their kids scour the globe looking for more lithium?”
