Ride Into History

Started: 2024-04-22 21:08:25

Submitted: 2024-04-22 23:14:33

Visibility: World-readable

BART's legacy fleet rides into history, carrying trains crowded with fellow transit fans

I last rode BART's original fleet in scheduled revenue service in September; later that month the last legacy train was dispatched in regular service from Daly City to Richmond, and from there into history. BART kept several trainsets in operating condition to use them for irregular operation, until they certified enough new rolling stock that they could retire the historic fleet. BART announced that they'd hold a retirement party at MacArthur station on Saturday, the 20th of April; and run a series of legacy trainsets 24 miles down the East Bay trunk line to Fremont, matching the original service BART operated when it opened in 1972.

I drove to Berryessa/South San Jose station, the newest station in the BART network, which had the misfortune of opening during the pandemic. From there I rode north into Oakland, arriving at MacArthur after the retirement ceremony had started.

I heard someone from the Western Railway Museum talk about their plans to display three cars from the fleet, and a guy who's building a vacation house at an undisclosed location near Yosemite that will incorporate one of the old cars. Then they started a raffle for BART car numbers and I wandered around the plaza, stuck under the ramps of highway 24 on either side of the BART station, to look at the exhibits on the handful of tables. (I already have my own piece of BART history, from C-stock car #315, which is immortalized in a long scan of a nine-car BART train in 2017 on Wikipedia.)

I found a BART operator talking about a control panel installed in the fleet in a retrofit in the 1990s. Under normal operation the train runs entirely automatically, based on the train type and destination entered into the keypad. To run the train manually, the operator has to call BART operations control and ask for permission; then they can twist the control knob to put the train in "road manual" and use the manual control level to drive the train up to 25 miles per hour.

The blue rectangular button on the bottom of the control panel will keep the doors closed when entering a station, if requested by BART police. The black button below it is the regular electronic horn that beeps as the train barrels into a station at speed, to remind anyone who somehow forgot to notice that there was a train coming that it's here now. The red button to the left is the "angry BART" air horn, a loud obnoxious honk in case someone is standing on the yellow edge of the platform oblivious to the oncoming train. I've only heard angry BART a few times, and it's always startling.

There were people wearing all sorts of transit-related gear. One shirt was a technical drawing of the A-stock car that was being retired today. I wore my "old boy/new boy" shirt, with the outline of an A-stock and D-stock driving cab; and I saw a number of other people wearing the same shirt. There were people wearing MUNI apparel, and several Amtrak jackets. There was one guy wearing a red circle with a number one indicating the 1 Train (Broadway-7 Avenue Local) running the length of Manhattan. I saw one InterCity 125 t-shirt, which looked like it was honoring the train's imminent retirement after nearly a half-century of service in the UK.

Then the ceremony wrapped up and everyone started lining up to ride the trains to Fremont. The line had already extended out around the edge of the plaza and was stretching down the access road in front of the station, nestled between the highway 24 viaduct above us and the infill apartments built on BART land in front of us. It wasn't clear how long we'd have to wait; BART said they would be running "several" trains and they were intending to run the trains until everyone had a chance to ride. I wondered if we were going to experience crush loading not seen on BART since the Before Times commute to the East Bay.

The line moved fitfully at first, then picked up speed around the plaza. By the time I made it to the fare gates in front of the station the line was moving at a walking pace. I rode the escalator up to the platform, and the staff cut off the line right behind me, so I might have been the last person to board the second legacy train to depart MacArthur, 35 minutes after I started waiting in line.

I boarded the last car in the train, an A-stock car, #1203, with an aerodynamic fiberglass nose on the driving cab facing the back of the train. Inside the seats were configured in the standard 2/2 arrangement, optimizing seated capacity at the expense of standing capacity. The car was cozy, not crowded; almost all of the seats were full and there were a few people standing in the aisles.

We sat on the platform for a few minutes before beginning this train's last passenger-carrying run, marked on the displays above the platform as an "express to Fremont"; though the train made every stop so perhaps "special to Fremont" would have been more accurate.

The atmosphere inside the train was festive. Everyone on the train was there to celebrate the legacy fleet. People talked about train and transit development and about riding trains around the Bay Area. As we rode the train operator gave us some additional color about the experience driving these trains one last time, including the detail that one of the passengers had leaned against the call button, apparently by accident,

At the stations passengers stuck their heads out the doors to get pictures of the train on the platform. At every station I was worried that if I stepped too far out onto the platform the train might leave without me, though I knew the train operator was watching out for the transit fans on the platform in this special service.

As the train approached Fremont, I took one of the empty seats for the last time. I took care to frame my selfie so I didn't also photograph the person sitting in the seat behind me, who at that moment was narrating a video on their phone of the foam D-stock car on the windowsill.

And then we pulled into Fremont, the end of the line for this train. We disembarked and stood on the platform to get more pictures of the train. It seemed a bit anti-climatic to ride into this commuter station at the edge of Fremont, surrounded by parking lots, in the middle of a sunny spring afternoon.

I made the experience more real for me by touching the weathered aluminum shell of the rail car that had traveled a million miles back and forth across the Bay Area every day for the last 50 years.

Our train operator suggested that we might be able to catch the next train north from Fremont, then catch the last legacy train at Union City. The next train north arrived a few minutes later, and I joined the crowd to ride to Union City, then hurried down the stairs and under the station and up the opposite stairs to see the last train pull into the station. I watched it pass and let it depart without me. And then the train I had ridden pulled into Union City, heading back to Hayward Yard. I watched it dwell on the opposite platform before continuing north.

The legacy fleet had departed, for the last time, to ride into history.

I took more pictures of the BART legacy fleet riding into history, they're all at Photos on 2024-04-20.