Home Again

[kevin_standlee]

I had a 5 PM Horizon Air flight from PDX to OAK this afternoon, rather than the later Alaska flight I've been usually taking from weekends in Oregon. Presumably because tomorrow is a holiday, the Horizon flight was not completely sold out for a change -- usually that Sunday evening job is completely full -- and I had the two seats in the last row to myself.

We were on time, my luggage rolled off the belt in a reasonable amount of time, the AirBART shuttle ran without incident, and the Capitol train was on time and got me home on time. Nice having everything work as planned.

When I got off the train in Fremont, I stood there to watch the train pull out. As is unfortunately all too common, one of the doors -- the one through which I'd exited -- wouldn't close. I trotted over and pulled on the stuck door, but it was badly stuck. Moreover, the train was starting to pull out of the station, and staying too close to a moving train is dangerous, so I backed off. I heard the engineer on the radio telling the conductor that a door hadn't closed, and as the train picked up speed, I saw the conductor heading back to try and get the door closed. From the radio chatter, they had quite a bit of trouble with it before finally forcing the door shut and locking it that way.

The Amtrak ticket is more expensive than a BART fare from Fremont to Coliseum, but I would have had to take a taxi home from the BART station because (a) I would have come back after the last bus of the night and (b) because I would have had to park for more than 24 hours on a weekday, I couldn't park in the BART lot. Factoring this into account, the Capitol ticket is a better deal. Besides, I get 300 Alaska air miles for the train ticket.

Comments

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that they don't have some kind of safety thing that would keep the train from starting if there are open doors.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There is not exactly an interlock that prevents the train from moving. (Such a thing could lead to a train being stuck if it malfunctioned with a false door open indication. I think they get a lot of false indications.) The engineer, however, can see on his board an indication of whether the doors are all reporting closed. The indicators don't prevent the train from starting.

Unfortunately, those Capitol trainsets were built on the cheap, and their doors have been notoriously balky.

[ashi.livejournal.com]

Wow, 300 Alaska miles on the Capitol. I think I'll start taking it when I head to parts of the East Bay... (still need a few thousand for Japan in 2007, though I can always purchase those if I need to).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The specific promotion is 150 miles per one-way trip. Note that you have to fill out a special card and turn it in to the conductor when he lifts your ticket. The train crews do not always know about this promotion, although I usually see copies of the cards in their supply of forms. I know there is a stack of the forms in the Fremont/Centerville station, so I usually carry a couple with me.

If you don't turn in the promotion card, then you have to write to Alaska's missed-credit address, which is a pain and risks being lost.