UP Stack train Jack London Square 11/18/07

The kids and I took the ferry over to San Francisco from Jack London Square on a Sunday a few weekends ago.

At the end of our outing, we went for a coffee at Borders (or is it Barnes & Noble, same difference) at Jack London Square. The cafe is on the second floor and one end of it overlooks the Embarcadero where UP has two active tracks in the street. There are actually three tracks in the roadway but only two are in service. It is not uncommon to have a train in motion on each track in either direction. Both meets and passes occur here.

The cafe is a nice place to watch trains and enjoy a cup of coffee in comfortable surroundings. And, if you like the sound of train horns, this is the place for you. Several dozen times a day, trains make their way down the center of the street, blowing every block for grade crossings which hold back traffic from the side streets.

Here’s a clip of a UP stack train heading to the Oakland Intermodal terminal. Bear in mind that we are inside a cafe shooting through the window. The kids make a cameo appearance in the video, but to be fair, they had kept it together all day and were hungry and tired by this point and just wanted to go home. Watching trains is the LAST thing Natalie (8 years old) wanted to do!

It always surprises me to see the speed of these huge trains do when running down the center of a street along side cars and buses.

The dispatcher seems to time movements to occur together to minimize the overall disruption. So if it’s been quiet and you see a train here, there may be one or two more to come. An Amtrak train did come by within a few minutes but the kids basically rioted so the clip is unpostable!