Virtually no chance of new permanent passenger service, at present, through the Tehachipi Pass.....

Reason Number 1: No Capacity due to freight volumes on the Pass, and due to the segment's of single track railroading...... And thus, UP and BNSF would have a hissyfit! This issue alone would tie this up for years. There would need to be several hundrdeds of millions of dollars in investment just to begin to cure this problem.

Reason Number 2: No cars, Amtrak and Amtrak California have no car or engines to spare. This was described at the recent APTA conference as a national "crisis". The time to delivery is upto 4 years!!! If the Amtrak bill passes and is funded in the appropriations, then a lot of cars will be repaired, but still inadequate to current demand. Hopefully the Governor in California and legislation pending will release the Prop. 1B funds to buy cars and engines for intercity services, in 2 to 4 years??? These funds have been held up by some pretty half assed bureaucratic internal political bickering, meanwhile gas prices climb out of sight. Currently, California Intercity services are full, and standing room only on weekends, especially on the LOSSAN. So, priorities for new cars would be expansion of capacity on current services, additional service on those already successful routes, and the "new" Coast Daylight, expanding those same markets. Tehachipi isn't even on the waiting list.

So catch it while you can......

BOB2