Caltrain Baby Bullet: San Francisco to San Jose in 1 HOUR 

I worked on that electrification project back in 2017. I was on a crew that drilled for geotechnical soil samples where the poles will be to hang the wires. Kinda cool to see the work done now!

I’m glad you mentioned that it doesn’t seem that quick hah. I’ve lived in this area for 20 years and getting between those areas in an hour is typical or slow when going by car, unless you’re driving during a high traffic time.

I just finished my first semester at SJSU and this was my commute to school for the last few months. I’m so happy you guys got to ride on a Bullet!

As someone who uses the Caltrain service for commuting to work and school. It is very exciting that after all the modified schedules and weekend shutdowns. That the Bay Area and the United States will have a new electrified corridor! Great video!

I live in San Jose and used to go to San Francisco all the time on the weekends on the Baby Bullet, but they stopped running it on the weekends. I miss having express trains on the weekends

San Jose Diridon station is named after former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod Diridon Sr. After he chaired the successful 1976 campaign for the first half-cent sales tax for a transit district in California, Diridon became known as the father of modern transit service in Silicon Valley. This tax funded, among other projects, the VTA light rail system! He served as chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority from 2001 to 2003. During his tenure as chair, the state legislature authorized a ballot measure for bond funding of the high-speed rail project, Proposition 1A, which was approved by voters in 2008. Redwood City was incorporated in 1867, the first city in San Mateo County to do so. It has remained the county seat since the county's formation in 1856! In 1907, Japanese immigrants Eikichi and Sadakusi Enomoto grew the first commercially grown chrysanthemums in the US in Redwood City. In 1926, the chamber of commerce proclaimed the city the "Chrysanthemum Center of the World". However, the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1941 would contribute to the end of flower growing in the city.

Mom, can we have bullet train? No kid, we have bullet train at home. Bullet train at home:

The whole setup of this video flowed so smoothly! It was a real journey and a story of caltrain at the same time! Wonderful concept

Great video, too bad you got stuck on a Gallery train. BTW, there is a car set up for people with luggage on each Gallery consist. Green sticker by the door. You can see it towards the end of the video when you're on the platform in San Jose.

Caltrain is actually pretty nice. The best feature isn't the Baby Bullet service though, it's that there's all day service which is the most important thing to have for regional rail. 40ish mph is still kinda slow though, especially for an express train. Semifast services on Thameslink in the UK down the midland main line do a similar speed despite having a lot more stops. I think the new EMUs will have the largest impact on local trains since those have stop-start running.

7:30 that grey piece in the middle which kind of looks like it might be the ceiling (it isn't) is actually a place for baggage between the two upper walkways, you can only access it from the top though. Can't wait for the electrified trains to come online, while I don't do a lot of Caltrain riding, I think it will be a major boost for the system. I really hope the whole work from home movement that seems to be going on in the area doesn't hurt transit options too much.

At 7:33, the baggage rack is above the corridor, accessible from the upper level only. The builders plates of the Nippon Sharyo gallery cars are above the doors. At 8:33, you’ll see the Bombardier Bi-Level kept their old Metrolink livery from SoCal. Caltrain also has ex-Seattle Sounder Bi-Levels, but those got repainted to Caltrain colors, as well as a minority of their own original Bi-Levels from 2008. The Caltrain local service is incredibly slow, especially on weekends, and BART + VTA’s Rapid 500 connector bus is often faster (and more frequent) than Caltrain to get between SF and SJ on the weekends, especially given the first Caltrain leaving SF at 8am on weekends doesn’t reach SJ until 10am! With electrification, the local service will be bumped up to half hourly service (up from hourly today) and the total trip time will be reduced to 75 min, down from 100 min today. A 25 min time savings just from switching to electric will be revolutionary.

In Spanish, Palo Alto means tall stick! Why is the city called that? Because of a tree! El Palo Alto, a historic 110 ft/34 m tall coast redwood on the banks of the San Francisquito Creek! El Palo Alto germinated around 940 AD, when the Ohlone people lived there! The area of what's now Palo Alto was first recorded by the 1769 expedition of Gaspar de Portolá. When he made it to the area in November 1769, his expedition camped by the tall coast redwood! The tree is now along Caltrain's tracks! When the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad was built right next to it, the soot led to the tree to decline in health. However, thanks to Caltrain electrification, this eliminates the impact of smoke. And the reason College Park station has been served on weekdays is for the Bellarmine College Preparatory school there! College Park didn't get its name from Bellarmine College Preparatory but rather University of the Pacific as they built a campus there in 1871. The University remained there until 1923 when they moved to Stockton. When they did, Bellarmine College Preparatory moved in! Founded in 1851, it is the oldest secondary school in California and the second-oldest west of the Mississippi.

Caltrain also uses double deck Bombardier passenger train cars (seen whipping by at the 9 minute mark in your video), but I never was able to figure out which cars they assign to which train. I used to take the baby bullet regularly from Palo Alto to SF for work

Yes! Thanks for making a video of Caltrain. Cant wait to see more!

I remember when tickets could be purchased on board. That’s probably the reason we the center area is open because the conductor would pass your change and ticket up to the passengers on the second level.

You know what would have been nice for you to showcase while you were in the area? The VTA light rail, and the Sonoma Marin area rail transit (smart) which is only accessible after leaving Embarcadero station by taking the Golden Gate ferry to Larkspur, where smart will meet to take you to Santa Rosa airport.

I've lived near a Caltrain station for 25 years, and I still learned something new from this video. Thanks!

thank you for all this super cool and interesting info about the caltrain! i've gained a new appreciation for it and can't wait for it to keep growing

Millbrae is named after Darius Ogden Mills! The brae part of Millbrae is a Lowland Scots word that means "hill slope". He is originally from Westchester County, NY as he was born there in 1825 but moved to Buffalo at age 21 before moving to California in 1848 at age 22 because of the gold rush. He ended up founding a bank to help the gold rush miners and for some time, he was California's wealthiest citizen! Darius purchased the land of what is now Millbrae in the 1860s from José de la Cruz Sánchez and family of Rancho Buri Buri to build a country estate. Darius deeded land to the railroad in exchange for a station to allow guests to visit his estate. The station opened in 1864. Millbrae was finally incorporated in 1948. San Jose is named after the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe which was its predecessor. Its predecessor was officially founded in November 1777, and it was the first civilian settlement in California. It took its name from Saint Joseph and from the Guadalupe River. The river was named by Juan Bautista de Anza in 1776 after the virgin. When California was conquered by the US, San Jose became the capital of the unorganized territory of California. When it was admitted to the Union in September 1850, San Jose became the state's first capital, but they stopped meeting there in 1851. After San Jose, the legislature met in Vallejo, Beneficia, before finally Sacramento in 1854.

Yeah I remember hearing about the electrification of the Caltrain line from a friend of mine. I guess you're right they started doing that about 2017. I guess it's supposed to run so often you don't need a schedule according to him. Maybe like every 10 minutes or 15 minutes?

the old gallery style trains have a power socket at one specific seat on the upper level, presumably for the janitors to plug vacuum cleaners into, and when i took caltrain daily i knew exactly which one that was.

I llive in the area so youtube showed me these, I subscribed and am hooked. Thanks for your great history lessons and commentary on rail units both here and in other areas I am now learning about. You are awesome!

Thom, Congratulations on the FASTEST CORRECTION on a RU-vid video that I've watched in 10 years! Thanks for the effort, it really does show your interest in providing accurate and correct information in your videos. (I also hope you get credit for the viewing hours since I watched it a second time today... lol)

Your videos are so informing and beautifully edited - thanks for sharing!!

Great video as usual, Thom and Lindsey! I had never ridden the Baby Bullet, and always wanted to. So thank you for giving me a lift! By the way, there might be as many people commuting from San Francisco to Silicon Valley as there are commuting from the suburbs on the Penisula into work in the City. Back in the heyday of Southern Pacific's Peninsula Commute service there was a train every three minutes at the peak of evening rush hour. The first train ran nonstop from San Francisco to somewhere like Sunnyvale. Rush hour trains were made up mostly of arch-roof coaches from the 1920s, although the SP augmented their fleet some in the 1960s with gallery cars. All were painted battleship gray, which I thought was a rather depressing shade. They were pulled by Trainmasters or Geeps. Thanks again for a great ride!

Super good Video Thumbs Up!!! 👍 Greetings 😊

Very well done. Enjoyable and informative.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing, have a good day/evening

Cool video! It brought back memories of when I used to ride Caltrain from SF to SJ! I remember the days when i used to ride in the old Harriman cars being pulled by SP diesels!

I enjoyed that video👍👍

Caltrain used to have uncoordinated stops because it was strictly two track and trains could not pass. Expresses were made by delaying locals to create bubbles. I stopped riding just as they finished passing tracks so now expresses can interweave with locals and run any time. I was one of the early bicycles on Caltrain. There were no bicycle racks. Up to four bicycles in the cab car were stowed in the corridor next to the door as Caltrain judged popularity. Then four seats were taken out to allow a bicycle rack on either side near the door. Then they sacrificed more seats for bicycle racks. Getting on and off the cars was a bit dicey. I almost fell a couple of times, but I trained myself long ago to always hold a railing on stairs.

I'd love it if Caltrain operated more than every 90 minutes on the weekend. That's literally the equivalent of the commuter train in Kuala Lumpur.

Informative as usual. Yuletide greetings to you and your viewers !

I grew up in the Bay Area and rode on that train as early as 1982. I've never heard it called the Peninsula Commute but we did call it the Peninsula Train.

I'd love to see more about the "CalTrain" in SoCal!

One thing i like about your videos is how you make it a point not to antagonize the US, that's the only way in which we improve upon our current system, rather than 'hur dur Japan and switzerland have better trains USA sucks!'

You guys are making me so nostalgic for these trains, stations, and cities. It's great that you featured that line, although to get to the Pacific Northwest, taking Amtrak from Oakland up to Davis to change trains would have been in the right direction (although, with an Amtrak provided bus ride over the Bay Bridge, as Amtrak only runs east of the Bay).

Amazing vid! You always provide the right information to make the video interesting for anyone, even if they are already fairly familiar with the topic. And your presentation is always top notch! As always, can't wait for the next vid :)

Yes thanks so much!!!!!

I worked at TTCI in Pueblo, where they tested the new CalTrain (and the new Acela -Those Alstom's are really nice too) and it is an impressive train and a huge upgrade to the current CalTrain. I took it everyday back in the 90s when I lived in Palo Alto and liked it but it was way overdue for an upgrade.. Part of the team that worked on qualifying the new CalTrain also worked that that new Arrow train in Redlands, CA.

Awesome!

So you’ve been on Metra, Metra East (aka Virginia Railway Express) and now Metra West (aka CalTrain)!

Have you Seen the SMART Commuter Rail

The upstairs on the bicycle gallery car were always my first choice when I'd head to SF from San Jose once a week. I'm now in Oakland, but looking forward to the electric trains to get to the new women's league team's soccer games.

I'll have to try Caltrain to San Jose next time I'm connecting to the Coast Starlight.... I usually take Amtrak's bus to Emeryville. Unrelated: I never could figure out how to use the luggage rack in the Metra gallery cars. My suitcase was always too big and it always seemed it would be precariously perched where it could fall on someone.

I used to take Caltrain to work every day (just a short trip from Mountain View to Palo Alto)... I miss it! I don't take it any more because I live further away from the station now and can either drive 10 minutes to the Caltrain station or 20 minutes to work, so it doesn't really make sense to drive to the station then wait for the train.

12:40 I worked on these a little bit in high school, workers have to get up at 3 AM to work on these.

The seats on VRE's Gallery cars are very comfortable as well. I doze off on my commute to work/home

There are baggage racks on the first floor of designated cars. Example: 6:18. Although I understand not wanting to walk the train to find them, and unlike other stations, you didn't have the chance to have the train pass by you and spot the right car to begin with. Safe travels and glad you enjoyed SF!

I understand that gallery cars are outmoded, but I will miss them when they're gone. I'm not alone in jonesing for a second-level single seat!

I think it would be cool if CalTrain used the AEM-7 toasters on the baby bullet with gallery cars.

I used to live on bluxome right by 4th and king. I would watch them test the new electric trains and power supply from my apartment. So many memories. The folks at subway and the hotdog vendor in front of the safeway would feed the homeless

Great Video. I always wanted to see how those old "Toasters" were making out in the west coast. I am also not a fan of the gallery cars too. So glad MARC does not use them as as opposed to Virginia Railway Express. Also at 12:50 on the video saw an old Budd Metroliner like car attached to an old Metrolink double decker. It's been many years since I was in the bay area and see they are very serious about transportation. Since a lot of Software Companies are in the area the tax base is increased and can afford this transportation up grade. Great video Thanks Cheers!!

Thanks for making a video about cal train. I was very excited to watch it as a person from chicago, I wanted to see how cal train and metra compare. Great Video as always! As you asked if all of your viewers if we would like to see a video on the caltrain that used to be in Los Angeles, I would definetly want to see that video! Excited to see caltrain electrify, though sad to see all the train sets that are in service go as I grew up on them (metra chicago) and have known them for a long time. Anyway looking forward to future videos! 😁

I'd love to see a video about the LA caltrain!

Outstanding video! By the way, the CalTrain route was also the northern end of the Southern Pacific LA to SF Daylight and Lark passenger lines.

Thre is a luggage car. Also the squeaking breaks are so loud! I'm excited for the electrification it will bring peace and quiet to riders and the communities.

excited for electrification! when they start running the new electric trains, travel times will go down (100m for local train travel time down to 70m they say) and they'll actually go up in train frequency as well (currently 1 train per hour on weekends, going up to 2 trains per hour).

Why does caltrain use both the kisse and the old amtrack equipment with bi-level cars too

Awesome review on CalTrain. I love that CalTrain electrified their route between San Francisco and San Jose, I would love for Metrolink and Coatser in SoCal and any other commuter that has not electrified yet to do the same. I would also love for commuter rails while having some electrified routes, but having other routes that are not electric yet is to electrify those routes that have not been electrified yet.

Thanks for this very informative look at Caltrain. I'm super excited to see them electrify with modern European rolling stock like the Stadler KISS. And I'm glad to see them having pretty decent frequencies in the cards for when the electrification opens. Will you be back out there for that?

Thank you very much for this most enjoyable video. As you know I really like the Gallery type cars, and agree they are now getting old in concept, and there are more convenient bi-level types available. Cal trains do have some Bombardier built bi-level cars, and I thought they were supposed to be used on the Baby Bullet services ! Enjoy the Coast Starlight, a truly wonderful ride !

The South Shore Line in Indiana also owns and operates Gallery Cars- the same type the Metra Electric Line uses. In fact, South Shore Line agreed to lease additional Gallery cars from Metra to operate on their new West Lake Corridor line that opens in 2025.

Yes please to CalTrain LA video

Uh oh. Back to Portland in mid-May. Not sure if you missed the rains or not. Hopefully, yes. I remember one Portland video you put up and it was raining. A lot. We have wonderful summer weather, and the views in the PacNW are hard to beat. I guess we will find out in a coming video.

That was such an awesome baby bullet train!!! What a great way to get to San Jose!!! Now on to the Coast Starlight-awesome!!!

Did you ride VTA light rail (in addition to filming)? I am glad you get to ride on the Caltrain gallery cars! There is luggage rack on one of the cars with green sticker, in addition, there is a charging outlet on the upper level underneath one of the seats. Off topic: Speaking of charging outlets, SF Muni Breda light rail vehicles have them, while the new Siemens don't.

Another fantastic video! Are you going to ride the Amtrak trains from Portland to Seattle too? Just rode that earlier this year and it was really nice although crowded

2:51 what the heck, why don’t that have level boarding?????

Would you consider uploading you Caltrain service patters map to Wikipedia (CC license). It would certainly a great addition to the article.

I'm a little surprised you didn't get a Baby Bullet with the Bombardier cars and the more streamlined MP36 locomotives, but of course the service doesn't need to be tied to those. I rode a gallery car on a trip from Mountain View and was getting motion sickness by the time I got to SF. Tracks were probably in worse shape then, but I was relieved that my ride back on a Bombardier car on a Baby Bullet was much smoother. I hope that mostly becomes moot with the Stadler trains, though I'm sure older equipment will need to stick around for a while yet

4:38 Thanks for the map. I call this the "Smart-Phone-Syndrome". Systems don't need to produce maps 'cause everything is on your phone! In Seattle, Sound Transit stopped printed maps and schedules in 2019; King County Metro stopped printing maps even earlier, but they still print individual bus route schedules. Oh, and I like window-smudge cleaning at 9:25. I do that too!

CalTrain uses Gallery cars just the VRE. VRE has bought 21 double-decker cars from Alstrom and in FY 2025 plans to add Saturday service

Once electric service is started, caltrain will be the westernmost electrified mainline rail service in the world.

The improvements to Caltrain are quite exciting! I wonder what that SPV car is doing here at 12:51?

12:50 does anyone else notice the SPV-2000 next to the KISS? lol

Did Caltrain get rid of the luggage car? I can't find information on the luggage cars on the website anymore

There is actually pace for luggage on top. The luggage rack is just higher up compared to chicago

I don’t know how soon enough I’ll be in any of those parts of California to ride the CalTrain the way it is before they all go electric. I want to ride in those gallery cars that are like Metra one day. I’m sure I’ll probably find the seats to be more comfortable as well.

hey! i took this train!

I’m from outside North America and it always surprise me how trains there (outside of metro systems) dont have a loading gauge that allows for raised platforms and level entry

You were NOT on a Baby Bullet car, that was the usual car. The Baby Bullet cars are a bit nicer. Don't know why they were using the older equipment for the express service. At 12:36 there's a real Baby Bullet passing outside the window. By the way, my favorite stretch of the Coast Starlight is between Gilroy and Salinas where the train passes through Elkhorn Slough. Beautiful.

The Coast Starlate... if it's anything like how I remember, it's usually about 12 hours late by the time you hit San Jose, 20 hours late by the time you reach Klamath Falls, 30 hours late by Portland and close to 50 hours late by the time you hit the end of the line.

Yes, I would love to see your video on the Southern California Caltrain!😊

That's surprisingly not that much faster than taking the BART to North San Jose and then taking the 500 Rapid Bus the rest of the way to Amtrak.

They did have a baby bullet some years ago And my understanding is they got rid of it because they didn't actually have enough passengers to justify the cost For the new electrified system, that is a possibility We really won't know until everything is in place. And they make a determination as to how they want to proceed

regarding the schedules, it will become even more simplified once electrification is complete. A local train will run every 30 minutes, all day every day, as well as 2 hourly express service patterns during rush hour. Honestly a pretty big improvement, 5 service patterns may not be that many, but for a first time user it is quite complex, and this will be a great improvement. Also worth noting that they will be adding additional stops to both express trains, so that they can serve more people with the same end-to-end travel time.

Where is the cal train station in

The schedule that you mentioned is a recent development. When I commuted via CalTrain years ago, local was every stop, bullet had 2 different service lines, but limited was dependent on the specific line. And local never ran during peak under normal conditions. Edit: Some of the gallery cars in CalTrain's fleet have the luggage racks on the top, and a luggage rack in the first floor-usually the first floor luggage rack is on the south side just after the stairs. There is a luggage car notification on the door for thr first floor rack, but I'm not sure it applies to the 2nd floor.

VRE has only 1 express train in the morning - Fredericksburg Train 300

What, no mention of the SP FM Trainmasters in commuter service ?

Yes, please tell us all about the SoCal Caltrain story.

I wonder how long it'd take a Japanese Bullet Train to cover the equivalent distance of the Baby Bullet's hours trip? Probably 15 minutes or so?! Regarding express trains i favour a clockface time table say as follows;on the hour :slow stopping train,20 past the hour : express,40 past the hour:semi fast.These are easy for people to remember.

Great coverage Thom on my local (Mountain View) line. I did not know there had been a Caltrain line in the south and would be interested in a video on that if you do one.

Anyone catch the SPV-2000 at 12:51? Must be an FRA or CalDOT car of some sort.

WOW ////.........!!!!! I,,M ------- HAPPY .........!!!!! HEART -------❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

Love the extra stop for Stanford football games! Saw CalTrain but only rode BART while in the area.

I never got to travel on Caltrain during my two visits to San Francisco but, during my 1989 visit, visited the 4th Street Terminal to photograph the afternoon peak services lined up on several tracks. I note you had one of the old F40PH units as your train loco on arrival at San Jose Diridon. I passed through Diridon on the north bound Coast Starlight on one of two trips on this train that year. Looking forward to your video on that part of your visit. Just in case I get caught up with seasonal celebrations over the next couple of weeks, I'll wish you, Lindsey and extended families a warm, safe and peaceful Christmas now.🙂🙂🙂

I filmed your train.