Amtrak

I took the Amtrak bus to the Los Angeles Union Station and then boarded Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner #775. I was going to get off at Santa Barbara. The first part of the trip was fine, until the train pulled into Van Nuys. Then, I noticed the train was stopped at the station for 15 minutes. The 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, when the conductor made an announcement. The announcement was not clear, so another conductor told her to repeat it, using the loudspeaker in a different car. She said that a Metrolink train has hit a person farther north, and she also said the train may be stopped at the station for a really long time. The train could have gone a bit farther north, but the engineer decided to wait at the Van Nuys station. It was raining a liitle, so when the rain stopped for a minute, I went outside and took videos with my Android phone. (The whole video was taken with an Android). Finally, when the train departed, it was dark outside. The train continued service until it had to stop on the tracks AGAIN to wait for a southbound Amtrak train, which was more late and also had to stop because of the Metrolink accident. The conductor then made an announcement and said that someone was smoking on the train, and if were caught again, he would be kicked off the train. She also said there was many drunk people aboard the train, so they stopped selling alcohol in the Cafe car. It was a long, boring train trip, but we arrived at Santa Barbara at 8:00 at night.

The first part of the video shows aboard the train in the Superliner car before the accident. The next scene is the train at Van Nuys station, and the last part was after we departed Van Nuys.

What a way to end 2009.