Metrolink Arrow Service Review / Overview / Analysis | Stadler FLIRT | 5K Subs Thank You

I ride Metrolink's Arrow Service between University of Redlands and downtown San Bernardino and back. Lots of content in the this one. I'll give you a review of the service. We'll talk about the train that Arrow service uses, the Stadler FLIRT. I'll give you a brief history of Redlands, CA and San Bernardino, CA. We'll talk about each stop on the service, look at service and development potential in the future, and talk about possible expansion. We'll hear from my dad, Papa Stew, and the days when he worked in the area for Santa Fe Railway. We'll talk about the historic depot in Redlands and we'll also talk about the historic Santa Fe depot in San Bernardino. All this and more to say 'thank you!' for subscribing!
Topics:
California
Redlands
Papa Stew
Metrolink
Arrow Service
Santa Fe Railroad
Stadler
Salt Lake City
TexRail
Dallas Fort Worth
FLIRT H2
Redlands Loop
University of Redlands
Redlands Mall redevelopment
history of California
San Bernardino Valley
Inland Empire
Mentone
ESRI
San Bernardino
Mickey Rooney
Roy Rogers
Dale Evans
Norton Air Force Base
San Bernardino Transit Center
Omnitrans
San Bernardino Depot
Mission Revival architecture
California High Speed Rail
BNSF
Union Pacific
Amtrak Southwest Chief

[@RVail623]

Amtrak's Desert Wind also used to stop at San Bernardino, on the way between Ogden, UT, Las Vegas, NV & Los Angeles. The Southwest Limited (now called the Southwest Chief) also stopped in San Bernardino on it's route between Los Angeles and Chicago. The Desert Wind was an Amtrak long-distance passenger train that ran from 1979 to 1997. It operated from Chicago to Los Angeles as a section of the California Zephyr, with the section serving Los Angeles splitting off at Ogden, Utah, and later (after Amtrak took over the D&RGW route through Colorado) splitting off at Salt Lake City.

[@davidjackson7281]

Funny I just learned that today after reading Wikipedia.

[@KarateTeddy27]

Congrats on 5k :D

[@craftergin]

What a great video! You are so lucky to have your dad as a resource. What a great career he had. It's such a shame about San Bernadino being in such decline. Freeways are so damaging.

[@LucidStew]

Thank you. There is a lot to San Bernardino's story, but the way the freeway was constructed didn't help. That's I-215. What is now I-210 for many years was known as the "crosstown freeway". This was built where the Redlands Loop ROW was in north San Bernardino. It was the start of the current freeway, but the project stalled out for about 30 years and it sat as a 4-5 mile stub from nowhere to nowhere the entire time. One more example of the lack of proper vision in the area.

[@michaeljones7927]

Southern California would not exist without freeways.

[@davidjackson7281]

Congratulations on your 5000 subscribers. Wishing you 10k next. Actually I hope you soon have 50k subscribers for your excellent channel.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. I'm guessing 6-9 months on 10k, although I'll take 50k by then. :)

[@davidjackson7281]

@@LucidStew Passing CAHSR's channel at 20k would be impressive.

[@LucidStew]

@@davidjackson7281 that's a good one. I'll have to keep track of that.

[@davidjackson7281]

@@LucidStewNot to sound too much like a kissass (hopefully) but everyone I meet I tell them about your channel. I only wish i knew more people.

[@LucidStew]

@@davidjackson7281 I'll have to introduce you to my mom sometime. You have something in common. 😆

[@etbadaboum]

Congrats on your 5k! You deserve so much more, your videos are great.

[@LucidStew]

thank you!

[@bjturon]

Very much enjoyed this video, including your father's recollections on working for the Santa Fe in SoCal. A lot of redevelopment potential for the new line going forward into the future. Looking forward to your H2 review. One correction that I know has likely been stated, this is a "heavy rail" transit system as opposed to light rail, as it's using heavy rail compliant vechiles on what seems to be heavy rail trackage, likely its 115-lb rail. Still, it looks and operates like a light rail system. :D

[@LucidStew]

We have a local example of theoretical transit-led suburbanism-to-urbanism in miniature for me to examine. It will be interesting to see how it plays out from a ground level perspective.

[@bossco2001]

First time watching on of your videos. It was excellent. I very much enjoyed hearing your father talk. My father worked for ATSF in the 50's out of the San Bernardino shops. He was a fireman on the trains and most of his work was on locals to Victorville and back. The railroad museum at SB depot is fantastic also. When My father was alive, he still knew some of the volunteers at the museum and we would go down together to visit. Thanks again. Looking forward to more vids on Bightline West.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks for watching. Yeah, I especially enjoy stories like that from people in southern California since its changed so rapidly.

[@davidjackson7281]

Enjoyed hearing about Papa Stew's ATSF career depot experiences and your narration of the local history. Great editing. I have fond memories of my relatively brief SP career.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. The idea all came together when I was having lunch with my dad in Mentone across the street from the post office and he was telling me about how he used to walk there from the depot every day to drop off and pick up the mail. Not too long after that he took the Southwest Chief from the SB depot out to Flagstaff to visit my uncle and I went with him and my mom to drop him off. While waiting for the train with them I noticed one of the FLIRTs was on the far end of the yard (like in the picture in the video) and it all sort of clicked.

[@johnhblaubachea5156]

Nice overview. I remember attending a RailPac Meeting where the SB County Transportation Agency made a presentation about ARROW and Hydrogen powered train set to follow later. One thing to follow up on: I believe Metrolink operates one daily round trip departure from Redlands to LAUPT. If so, and since there isn't a layover facility in Redlands, the train set must then deadlhead back and forth to their yard next to the San Bernardino depot which is a waste of equipment utilization!

[@normbroel4633]

These train sets are beautiful. I rode them out to the end station. However, it would be nice if they would extend this line to the San Bernardino Depo, and then down south ending in Riverside.

[@LucidStew]

They're studying extending this service to Rancho 8th St! There will also be some double-tracking in the Rialto area that should facilitate the increased traffic. I agree. Nice cars, nice ride. Needs access to a few more places.

[@theexcaliburone5933]

Calling arrow light rail, and more so calling stadler trains lrv’s is definitely a stretch

[@LucidStew]

what would you call it?

[@AL5520]

@@LucidStew it's maybe on the lighter side but it's still heavy rail and serves as a regional train with speeds of 160kph/100mph-200kph/125mph. I agree that the 2 car units (there are longer FLIRT sets) does look a bit like light rail and this strange service the arrow provides is a more a light rail service and could easily work with an actual light rail, but that requires electrification so the the 2 cars FLIRT is used in a few places as a cheap light rail replacement but it's still a heavy rail vehicle.

[@theexcaliburone5933]

@@LucidStew Heavy rail, and I agree with the person above me

[@LucidStew]

@@theexcaliburone5933 okey doke

[@walrus4282]

Awesome video as always

[@AJtheRatty]

Good video. Loved the history and the commentary from Papa Stew. From the footage it seems like this train is just plain slooowww. Cool that it's an expansion of service for areas that haven't seen train traffic in a while though. Interesting that they're trying everything but electrification. 😅

[@LucidStew]

It gets up to about 60-65mph between Redlands ESRI and Tippecanoe and Tippecanoe and downtown SB. It is fairly slow within Redlands. Much more like light rail.

[@JohnGeorgeBauerBuis]

El Capitan was a separate coach train running on the same schedule as the Super Chief, due to the high passenger demand. Amtrak combined the two trains, and changed the name twice: first to the Southwest Limited due to a decline in amenities (as the Santa Fe still owned the rights to the name) and again to Southwest Chief later on after they improved.

[@clinton8421]

I would like to know what local Californians think of Mission Revival architecture. On one hand, I’m sure the Spanish missions are a loaded topic and quite controversial (we had missions in Australia and the way they treated our Aboriginal people was abhorrent). But, on the other hand, Goddamn that looks good. Can we seperate the art from the artists?

[@snoopyloopy]

The most interesting part of Mission Revival is how much it looks like architecture in Spain.

[@LucidStew]

Its so pervasive it doesn't get conflated. Arches and tile roofs in particular are pretty common in California. I used to live in Riverside which has probably the premier example of the style: The Mission Inn. Its the center of a gigantic Christmas celebration every year.

[@clinton8421]

​@@snoopyloopy That's why I liked it, to be honest. It has a Renaissance quality to it. It is probably just the novelty of it, though. In Australia, we only get English-flavoured colonial legacy.

[@PeterWarner-yz7tb]

Arrow also connects with Metrolink's Inland Empire Orange County Line. Which Operates between Downtown San Bernardino and Oceanside.

[@brucehain]

Looked at that Redlands station from the road in imagery from 10/22 and they are really doing a beautiful job. It's nice to see how CA politic appreciates their stations as against how amtrak treats most of theirs. My maternal grandfather was a station agent for the Santa Fe in several places: Grand Jct. Colorado and Apache, Okla. that I know of, all before I was born.

[@LucidStew]

I think the area will be quite different in 5 years and maybe they'll get a tenant into the restaurant space at the station. It's a beautiful station, but it feels a bit like a relic at the moment.

[@brucehain]

@@LucidStew I bet they will. Wonder about all those grade crossings though. Right by the stations they're hard to do away with.

[@LucidStew]

@@brucehain I was strongly rebuked for calling this "light rail", but that's really how it functions, so I doubt there will be any effort to remove those grade crossings.

[@brucehain]

@@LucidStew We started the Light Rail thing in the '90s - in Newark and Jersey City - with our fabled Princeton engineers - it opens up a lot of possibilities for grade crossings which they took fuller-than-necessary advantage of. I think there's a trespassing injury or fatality about once a month, and the things ride around with like one or 0 passengers. It's not so blame worthy if you're reviving a defunct line. IDK, there's a solution - just takes a lot of thinking to come up with. 60mph's pretty impressive. Your CAHSR-in-5-Years video got me thinking about how to connect to San Diago - sort of a CAHSR Phase One. There's two direct lines labeled as being SP in in the old topo map that gets generated on Google Earth - one would go through downtown Santa Ana, with a a station there, and the other to the big Santa Ana station, but you'd have to have grade separation there to make any of it work. Surprising they'd build a big new station like that with grade crossings all around. It's a nice looking station though. The northern of the two SP lines would open up a new underground set of platforms: "Santa Ana Annex". Noticing the 19-mile C-line doesn't look like it's used very much. (I have no facts to back that, just a feeling. Anyway, If you got just one of those fast SP lines connected up at Santa Ana it would take a lot of time off vs. going thru Anaheim I think, and would attract a lot of passengers, especially with a Union Station annex under Alemeda St. to make for through running. (Extending the the existing station tracks south is a fool's errand - they always choose the most complicated, conflictual alternative possible - but then I'm only going by things I see or hear - haven't studied their plans for extending to San Diego - just assume they're insane.) For points south I got an underground alignment with a station at U CAL San Diego that looks promising. Someone should just propose a "build/no build-only" alternative for LA-Sand Diego. Think of the money they'd save on dithering alone. Hire maybe some Russian or Indian company to come and open up shop. The Indians are good with rail, and they've come a long ways since the deathly Konkan tunnel building in the '90s. (I thought Konkan Line should be connected by a long cross-bay tunnel running south from Victoria and that other Mumbai station nearby, serving the Konkan and also a quick trip to Pune - but instead they're building this skewed subaqueous tunnel that runs east in order to serve the new HS line running north. Insane.) They're throwing out a lot of money on those Shinkansen plans for Mumbai-Ahmedabad. Boy that's ridiculous. I don't think it'll ever pay for itself, but it's half built now. The Japanese with this continuous-tunnel-Maglev, and now the Indians with their exorbitant Shinkansen. They've both fallen into the same trap. That leaves the Spanish, French and Italians - I think they're the only ones still standing. There will probably be efforts to get the French off on some tangent of an impractical project. Actually I thought the Japanese were immune due to language complications but guess not.

[@brucehain]

I see the Alameda St. Line with three tracks has no passenger traffic. But you could fit six tracks under there if push came to shove, spaced wide - and separate the freight with a 4'-thick wall if that's what the FRA wants. Eminent domain if they don't wanna cooperate. The two old SP lines diverge from that line about two miles apart. The connection to the upper one originally had a R=3000' curve. Was able to draw an R=2500' one at the lower one that would disturb no one probably. (a warehouse with a sign that says "For Rent - Cheap" would be affected. Anyway, if you had a station there (Watts, snicker, snicker) the 2500' radius would be the shorter one - then maybe a 2750 or 2875' radius for the inside curve - on another corner station with island platform - a high speed express stop - just what the doctor ordered. (The ones on the Las Vegas line have so-far a 4750' radius minimum - so it's sort of short. With 2500' the platform distance at middle of an 85' foot car vs. the end of car is is just about 4". On a tangent the standard was three inches - so 3" vs. 7" - at the very corner or the very middle - isn't too bad. They load trains in Penn sta. on the 750' radius curve sometimes (tightest curve save one in the station - there are several 750' ones) Anyway the standard has lapsed for the gap at tangent platforms because, you know, trains suck.

[@michaeljones7927]

This informative and entertaining video demonstrates your ability to produce non-HSR content that involves other facets of rail transportation. Your father's experiences as a Santa Fe employee personalized the video in a really nice way. I guess your next step should be to buy a drone and learn to fly it over rail project sites you're focusing on in coming videos. Looking forward to the day when you expand your horizons to include Amtrak, commuter rail, and freight rail. The possibilities for fascinating rail videos are endless.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. Next step is a GoPro so I can take decent video at whatever site. Step after that would probably be a drone for the GoPro. I might be doing something like that in a year or so.

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

The station spacing on arrow is frustratingly inconsistent. univ, esri, and downtown are too close together. There probably should be a station at California. Tippecanoe is just as depressing as you make it seem. There could be a station between Tippecanoe and Downtown but it's also low density and warehouses. It is depressing that the Arrow terminates at SB downtown instead of continuing on to the depot. Maybe when they get more rolling stock they'll extend towards Rancho Cucamonga to connect to brightline. Most of the San Bernardino line before El Monte can be easily double tracked so the capacity can be increased. Maybe arrow will connect to LA Metro in Pomona? Thanks for a fun video.

[@clinton8421]

It sounds like San Bernardino has yet to discover the art of feeder bus services. With some consistent and reliable bus routes, you wouldn’t need as many train stations as riders could get to Redlands or Downtown S.B. very easily. I live in Perth, West Australia, and we’ve succeeded at this (I can get anywhere in the city quite easily as most bus routes feed passengers to the train stations). However, I personally wouldn’t get rid of the God-tier name that is Tippecanoe from my system map. The best station name on our system is Karrakatta.

[@LucidStew]

Yeah, its weird right now. If the Redlands Mall redevelopment happens as planned, that will probably start to change things as it will begin to provide impetus for using the thing. To be honest, when I bought the ticket I thought it did go all the way to the SB depot. It should. AFAIK there's no technical reason it couldn't. Hooking up to DT Rialto, DT Fontana, and RC 8th st. would be pretty cool.

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

@@LucidStew the arrow trains when out of service actually stop at the depot to turn around and make the return to their maintenance facility which is adjacent to the depot. The platform height is a mismatch between Metrolink and arrow but I think that's solvable, eventually.

[@davidjackson7281]

@@clinton8421Have you had a chance to look up the origin and historical meaning of Tippecanoe (and Tyler too)?

[@davidjackson7281]

@@clinton8421What does God-tier mean?

[@jg-7780]

Tippecanoe could be useful if yiu have a bike, I suppose. It will be interesting to see what ridership is like in 5 years when peiple have had time to adapt travel patterns to its existence.

[@LucidStew]

That area and San Bernardino are going to need a massive turn around. If I had the choice to go back and do what I did to get the footage around there, I'd take a pass. ...and all I did was walk 2 blocks from a gas station...