Caltrain Breaks Ground on New Maintenance Facility

After years of planning and community input, Caltrain is breaking ground on a new facility that will allow the rail agency to maintain its locomotives and passenger cars in San Jose rather than sending them as far away as Roseville and Southern California for major repairs.

The groundbreaking will be held Monday, Nov. 8 at 10 a.m. at the future site located at Lenzen and Taylor streets on a former Southern Pacific rail yard, just north of Caltrain’s San Jose Diridon Station. Speakers will include San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, Caltrain Board Chair John McLemore, San Jose City Councilmembers Ken Yeager and Cindy Chavez, Caltrain Chief Operating Officer Chuck Harvey and Master of Ceremonies Mike Nevin, who also sits on Caltrain’s Board of Directors.

The $76 million facility will feature a repair shop to better accommodate workers and equipment, and a new indoor train washer, which will replace the portable machine currently in use.

Caltrain mechanics also will have access to new equipment that will allow them to install and maintain wheel sets without having to send them off site and will be able to replace locomotive traction motors using drop table machinery. Storage tracks with 480 volt electrical ground power will be available to power electrical trains in preparation for service. This allows Caltrain to power the locomotives without leaving the engines idling for long periods, significantly reducing noise and protecting the neighborhood’s air quality from the exhaust generated by engine idling.

Service tracks will allow for faster servicing of equipment, reducing overall turn-around time. CEMOF is expected to be operational by late 2006.

Currently routine maintenance is done at a small outdated Caltrain train yard in San Jose and at the San Francisco station. At the current facility, there is just enough space to work on one locomotive at a time. Neither place has an enclosed facility, a train-washer or the ability to fix a traction motor gone bad.

“We’re just so happy that we’ll be able to do the work that we’ve been shopping out for so long,” said Maintenance Shop Supervisor Ron Hoop.

“Caltrain is always looking for ways to increase customer satisfaction. We’ve added a successful express service, while streamlining the whole timetable,” said Caltrain’s Chief Operating Officer Chuck Harvey. “A new maintenance facility will improve Caltrain’s operating flexibility, help us maintain our 95-plus percent on-time performance and provide a better looking fleet for our customers.”

Earlier this year, Caltrain construction crews finished preparing the CEMOF site, which included demolition of unused buildings, relocation of existing tracks and the building of a community sound wall. In addition, crews relocated a fiber optic duct bank, a protective tube for major MCI fiber optic telecommunications lines, away from the construction site.

In September, the Caltrain board awarded an $11.6 million contract to Schimmick Construction of Hayward for the current phase, which marks the beginning of major construction. This phase began in late October and will result in the relocation of mainline tracks, necessary to make room for the maintenance shop, and the digging of a pedestrian tunnel for workers to move between the shop and the new operations building.

The final phase of CEMOF is the construction of a three-story operations building and a one-story control facility, which will accommodate train dispatchers and other key staff. This phase is scheduled to go to bid next spring depending on the availability of capital funding.

Caltrain is maintaining open communications with neighbors through an oversight committee comprised of local residents, San Jose city officials and Caltrain staff. A 24-hour hotline is available for questions and complaints at 1.877.433.0300.

Caltrain is a tri-county partnership of San Francisco Municipal Railway, San Mateo County Transit District and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. Caltrain operates 86 weekday trains between San Francisco and San Jose, with commute-hour service to Gilroy. A total of 62 trains offer service on weekends.

11/4/04