Happy New Year! Sacramento Regional Transit Light Rail Trains on different parts of the system mainly on the Gold Line in the month of December 2023 the end if the year. In the month of Dec 2023, SACRT also started testing their brand new Siemens S700 in their burn-in phase of testing using the whole system the Gold Line, Blue Line, and Green Line as its whole testing run through as each new train car needs 1000 miles of usage before being put into service. They mainly test up and down the Blue Line since it goes by the yard. The Siemens S700 cars will be Gold Line exclusive starting service in summer 2024 after the Glenn area of Folsom double tracking construction is complete which by that time, all Gold Line station conversions would also be done with phase 1. Blue Line station phase 1 conversions start in Fall 2024 and should be done by Summer 2025 which likely will be when the S700's will be able to also run on the Blue Line a year after entering service on the Gold Line.
A very brief part of the long term Jan 2, 2024 - July 2024 closure from Iron Point Station to Historic Folsom Station for double tracking on the Gold Line, From Jan 2, 2024 - Jan 4, 2023, the Gold Line will be short time out of service between Sunrise Station and Historic Folsom Station as SACRT needs the closer to shutdown and install a new wayside aspect signal system and crossing system at the Iron Point Station and Iron Point Rd and Natoma Station Dr crossings to have the crossings and aspect wayside block signals set to the new system which will allow the Iron Point Station to act as a turn around point last stop starting service again Jan 4 to get the crossings to function off of where a train is goign rather than just activating because a train is coming basically, the crossings will be behaving due to what aspect the train has on the Block signals meaning as Iron Point will be the last stop, Natoma Station Dr only needs to activate if a train has a clear aspect outbound/eastbound. This will enable the train to stop at the Iron Point Station in an outbound direction and keep an red aspect so it could stop without activating the Natoma Station Dr crossing since trains will not be going that way until July 2024. This sytem will also allow the Iron Point Rd crossing to activate automatically when a train turns around back inbound simluar to how the Historic Folsom Station acts as with trains turning around with the Sutter St crossing as also seen in this video. The crossings also will function of a new on call syatem at Iron Point Rd and Natoma Station Dr and has new manual control boxes also. Sercice will return Jan 4, 2024 tp Iron Point but not beyond Iron Point Station.
In the thumbnail of this video, I selected an Gold Line light rail train turning around at the Sunrise Station. Nothing special about this as this is the normal Gold Line outbound system run due to Foslom being single track, Outbound Gold Line trains are Folsom - Sunrise - Folsom - Sunrise so I decided to film both a Sunrise turn around train and an Folsom bound train. This is due to when the double tracking at Glenn is complete in July 2024, Sunrise turn around trains will be history as all Gold Line trains will run to Folsom and the Sunrise switch crossover will only be used for not in service train cars going into the 3rd rail tail track and service disruptions. After July 2024 meaning in less than a year, Also note the Sunrise Station is preparing to get its phase 1 low floor platform conversions built also.
Timestamps or Chapters
0:00 Normal Service
20:32 Gold Line Section Closed Jan 2, 2024 - Summer 2024 For Glenn Double Tracking/Normal Service
27:52 Normal Service
42:30 Sunrise Station Mid Turn Around/Normal Service
48:16 Normal Service
57:02 New Siemens S700 Test Train
59:18 Normal Service
Camera's
Sony Handycam FDR-AX53
Sony Cybershot RX10 IV
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra