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USA DOT Secretary Ray Lahood says the DesertXpress train project, between Las Vegas and Victorville, will soon get underway. Groundbreaking is said to be about a year away. It will not be going to Los Angeles because of the enormous cost of trackage through the Cajon Pass. People in Barstow are upset because the train would bypass that town.
The DesertXpress would like to eventually add on an extension to Palmdale to connect with Calif. High Speed Rail.
If it goes to Victorville, could that mean a pssible connection with the Southwest Chief?. The Chief gets into Victorville at 9:10 PM, eastbound, and at 4:18 AM westbound to LA. I don't know what timetable(s) the Xpress will be on, but those hours may make a good connection not practical. If it eventually goes to Palmdale, I wish they would extend to Oxnard for a link with the Coast Starlight. I'm very sceptical as to whether we will ever see Calif. HSR running its originally planned route.
Richard
Posts: 1909 | From: Santa Rosa | Registered: Jan 2004
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When I first heard about this train my first thought was gee if I have driven all the way to Victorville then I guess I'm driving the rest of the way.
Posts: 229 | From: Long Beach CA | Registered: Jan 2007
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I recall it takes about 1.5hrs to drive from SFV or maybe OC to Victorville, and then 2.5hrs from there, assuming no jams. So yes, by the time you've parked up at Victorville and waited for the train, you probably only save half an hour to an hour.
-------------------- Geoff M. Posts: 2426 | From: Apple Valley, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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So, where are the Las Vegas trains? The XTrain, which was going to operate a party train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas using UP tracks has moved its train to New Mexico. XTrain ran into difficulty negotiating access to UP tracks (surprise!) and finding a place to terminate the train in Las Vegas, so the plan to run a party train between LA and LV has been put on hold. Instead, the XTrain company has moved its train to New Mexico where they are running a dinner train on the tracks that were used to film the TV show Breaking Bad.
Desert Xpress rebranded itself as XPress West, but they ran into trouble when they applied for a $5.5 billion federal loan guarantee. There also were questions about how to implement the Buy America provisions when no American company builds high speed rail equipment. XPress West hasn't scrapped their plans and Harry Reid says the loan request may resurface soon. Reid also spoke of talking with Jerry Brown about high speed trains. Here's what Reid had to say about high speed trains and Amtrak:
quote:“(California Gov.) Jerry Brown and I spoke recently about our trains,” Reid said. “We both have a vision of high-speed rail in America. Amtrak is not high-speed rail. It’s an antiquated system, and I’m glad we have it, but it’s not very good.”
quote:Originally posted by Vincent206: XTrain ran into difficulty negotiating access to UP tracks (surprise!)
Now I'm confused. I thought they (or maybe it was one of the other fly-by-night ops?) had access to the UP bit between Las Vegas and Barstow (since they do have plenty of capacity), but not BNSF from Barstow to Fullerton or wherever they were going to terminate? Or was it the other way around?
The planned equipment use was pretty horrible though: one or two round trips a week. Can't see how they'd make a decent living with such poor utilization of equipment and presumably crew. On a run like that, elsewhere in the world they'd be running two round trips per day 13 days out of 14 at least, for one set of equipment.
-------------------- Geoff M. Posts: 2426 | From: Apple Valley, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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