Had the opportunity to tour Metrolink’s Los Angeles shop this past Friday. Just like many other trains, you just don’t appreciate how big everything is until you’re right next to it.
[IMG]http://i73.photobucket.
Great photos; I drive by the yard just about every day?
How did you rate a tour?
Martin
Altadena, CA
Vendor relationship.
Here’s the Lynx shop in Charlotte.
One thing that impressed me about both shops is how CLEAN they are. While I will concede that some of the cleanliness was for the benefit of the tours, it’s still a major improvement over some of the places I worked in during my college days.
The Lynx facility is only a couple of years old, but they are big on cleanliness.
The building has a train wash bay. The trains are washed at the end of their shift.
I’ve had a few facility tours in my day. They ranged from organized railfan tours, open houses for the public, ask for permission to enter, and a long time ago when I was a kid I on occasion walked into the then Phildelphia Transportation Company Callowhill depot or carbarn I (I forget what the term was then, but I think SEPTA now calls them districts).
Some of the memorable ones:
Toronto, went to TTC headquarters to apply for an access pass, which apparently didn’t really grant any privileges, the piece of paper just essentially said that we went to the main office, and if we didn’t bother staff then the main office didn’t mind if we walked around the shop.
My buddy and I visited Russel carhouse, very friendly guy named Oliver gave us a wonderful show. Either he was just showing off, or we happened to get there when he had to shuffle a lot of equipment, so we got rides around in several PCC’s, and even one Peter Witt. Among the endearing things about Oliver, he said “You’re from the US, eh? A lot of you think we say ‘eh’ alot, eh. No, we don’t really, eh.”
After Russel carhouse we went to St. Clair, which was kind of disputed territory. At that time, late 1970’s or early 1980’s, Toronto was just starting to get their new equipment CLRV’s, to replace PCC’s, and the Urban Transportation Development Corporation used St Clair for their CLRV demo’s. So our TTC headquarters piece of paper probably mattered even less there than it had at Russel. Anyway the guy in the office did grant us permission to self tour the facility. As we left his office someone must have asked who we were, I heard him say “Oh, there just nuts, crazy people”. Yep, he pegged us just right.
Philadelphia, SEPTA, has had trolley fests a few times. These are public open houses. One of them, 1992 I think, they had a couple of hundred feet of track at Elmwood depot and allowed the public to operate a Kawasaki LRV. There was
Margaritaman:
Now, tell us the truth. Did you bribe some with a margarita to get into the shops?
Seriously, great job! Thanks for the photos.
K.P.