Late last week, Caltrain and the Biden/Harris Administration announced that Caltrain will transfer 90 gallery cars and 19 F40 locomotives to Lima, Peru, to start a new commuter rail service to address the city’s increasing traffic congestion.

In late September, Caltrain introduced all-electric service between San Francisco and San Jose with new Stadler-built electric multiple units. The new trains reduced travel time, resulting in a significant boost in ridership post-pandemic. During the switchover, Caltrain retired its gallery cars and 1980s-built F40 locomotives. Caltrain will keep Bombardier cars and newer diesel locomotives to support Gilroy service.

The gallery cars were introduced in 1985 when Caltrans, the state department of transportation, was overseeing the service. These stainless steel cars replaced the previous Southern Pacific-owned rolling stock, which included 1950s gallery cars and 1920s single-deck cars. The new gallery cars enabled push-pull operation, allowing the train engineer to operate from a cab car so trains could change direction without moving the locomotive. With the old SP equipment, locomotives always led the train, requiring larger terminals and resulting in infrequent off-peak service due to the time-consuming need to reposition. At the time, Caltrans was considering either extending Caltrain to the Transbay Terminal or changing the route to terminate at Daly City BART, neither of which was expected to have as large a terminal as 4th & King Street.

Throughout nearly 40 years on Caltrain, there have been major changes in operations and modifications to the rolling stock. Seats have been gradually removed in cab cars and other trailer cars to install bike racks as demand for bike capacity grew (up to 80 bike spots per gallery trainset). Seats have also been removed in the second car (from the north) to accommodate riders in wheelchairs. The contract operator changed from SP to Amtrak, and later from Amtrak to TransitAmerica/Herzog. Although the interior design of the gallery cars allows conductors to see all passengers on both levels in one pass-through to facilitate ticket sales, Caltrain discontinued onboard ticket sales in 2003.

In 1998, Caltrain ordered 20 additional gallery cars equipped with onboard wheelchair lifts and accessible restrooms. Some rail advocates believed Caltrain should have ordered cars of a different design, but only one builder submitted a bid. In 2000, Caltrain sent the original gallery cars for a mid-life rehab, which modernized the interior and replaced the seats.

Of the 1980s F40 locomotives, none originally had a separate head-end power engine for providing electrical power to passenger cars. All of them operated off the main engine, which ran at a fixed RPM whether the train was accelerating or idling. As a result, they were always loud. During the 2000 mid-life rehab, Caltrain upgraded the brakes on all the original locomotives and added a separate engine to 15 of the 20 locomotives. These modified locomotives have a slightly longer body and significantly reduced noise.

After SamTrans hired Mike Scanlon as the agency’s general manager (and Caltrain’s executive director) in 1999, Caltrain purchased Bombardier cars for its Baby Bullet program. The decision was partly due to availability and also because these cars offered more efficient operations with lower floors and two doors. The agency stopped acquiring gallery cars since then.

I’ve ridden the gallery cars for more than a quarter of a century. I can navigate them by muscle memory, and I remember the door closing chime. Unfortunately, the gallery cars at Caltrain always felt bumpy to ride. Initially, the agency blamed the jointed rails throughout the corridor, but the improvement was only marginal when the rails were replaced. The Bombardier cars and the new Stadler cars feel much better. However, those gallery cars had an advantage: they allowed riders to stand at the front and look out the window at the track ahead. That’s how many of those Caltrain cab view videos were made.

I had the opportunity to ride on the last revenue gallery + F40 train out of San Francisco. On September 20, I had an engagement in the city and wasn’t planning to take the so-called “official last train,” scheduled to depart around 7:30 p.m. Instead, I took the midnight train, which might have had Bombardier cars. However, that last train featured an F40 hauling gallery cars, so I got onboard along with others leaving a Green Day concert at Oracle Park.

One benefit of the F40 + gallery trainsets is that these trains enable a “quick build” of a passenger line. Stations can be constructed with simple, low-level asphalt platforms. This type of equipment allowed for experiments such as “CalTrain,” which operated between Oxnard and Los Angeles for six months in 1982, many years before Metrolink. Nowadays, due to corporate consolidation in the railroad industry along with safety and accessibility concerns, new commuter railroads are much more costly to start in the United States. New requirements include PTC and high platforms for level boarding, in addition to other demands imposed by host railroads, such as dedicated tracks. However, that quick build could happen in Peru.

The gallery cars and F40 locomotives were iconic for Caltrain, serving many memorable moments in the Bay Area, such as the Giants winning three World Series. I’m unsure if I would travel to Peru to ride on a gallery car again, but plenty are still in operation on Chicago’s Metra.