An historic day in pictures, beginning in Napa Junction where the SMART pilot trainset, consisting of SMRT 101 and 102, had spent the past week getting worked up after their journey from Illinois.

Cal Northern's yard job went about it's business, spotting some hoppers to the interchange change for NWP

The NWP showed up around 1 or so with empties from customers in Petaluma.

The SMART crew and and some of Nippon Sharyo's people marshalled outside the cars for a while before the move

Around 3:30 they left Napa Junction and headed for the Brazos bridge. I was there chatting with a few railfans and decided I'd try for a shot a few crossings down the line at Skaggs Island Rd.

and I only had a few minutes to wait

to see the trainset come trundling aroud the corner through vineyards...

Then I headed down to the Burndale Rd. crossing to watch them cruise through and got this going away shot

Then at Schellville there were numerous folks waiting for the train, which I couldn't capture with my telefoto unfortunately

I waited at Fairville area for them but they didn't show as folks drove past honking at me. Concerned I missed them I headed down the road a piece. Sear's Point/Hwy 37 crossing





Then it was over to Black Point where amazing was happening in the form of the widely viewed youtube video of the historic arrival to Marin of the SMART train.

Then down to the crossing off 37 where perhaps one day this trainset will provide service to points east.



When they got to Ignacio wye they stopped at the xing at the wye vehicle entrance. I wonder if they were waiting for the dispatcher to them onto the main. After 5 minutes they started moving and I took these pics of them touching the SMART main for the first time



and then running north around the corner at Hanna Ranch Slough bridge.

I entered the traffic at the Novato Narrows and thought for sure the train would overtake me but I just beat it to Burdell



and here it is heading north from the Sanitary Landfill Rd. xing

Here is Hopper St. in Petaluma and some point prior to here a different engineer took the driver's seat:



and heading north toward D street where the most recent track work is in it's closing stages. I think the only old track left now is the stuff around Haystack which isn't going to be rebuilt but replaced with a new ROW to the east

At Penngrove I stopped in the convenience store and gave a headsup to the cashier and almost immediately the bells started clanging and I just had enough time to get across the street to grab this lucky picture.

Here they are in Cotati where they spent maybe half an hour testing the crossing signals, running through the crossing several times

Here SMART GM Farhad Mansourian surveys the scene.

One of the very first soutbound movements of the DMUs. Of course, everything was a first on this dday.