BayRail Alliance

Railcars have a maximum 60-year life, which can be reached with good maintenance and significant overhauls at regular intervals.

	Gallery car. Source: Nippon Sharyo, LTD

The gallery car (also called "galley" cars by railroaders) is a bi-level design with lower level seating and upper level seating on "galleries" suspended from the car sidewalks. All seats can be viewed for safety and fare collection from a central aisle on the lower level main floor. The first gallery cars were introduced on the Burlington Route (Chicago) in the early 1950's. The gallery car is used in Chicago, Montreal, and on Caltrain. Including 165 electric MU gallery cars on the former Illinois Central in Chicago, nearly 1000 cars of this design are in service. Former Chicago gallery cars were acquired by Virginia Railway Express to expand their service.

Q. Is Caltrain the same as light rail?

Q. What is standard rail?

Standard Rail - equipment types

Locomotive-hauled — this is what Caltrain, ACE, and the Amtrak Capitol Corridor uses today. A locomotive on one end of the train either pulls the unpowered passenger cars (from the front) or pushes them (from the back) to make them move. Locomotives vary in how powerful they are and how quickly they can accelerate. Some locomotives are powered by diesel fuel and others by electricity. They can pull a variety of types of passenger cars, to which they supply electricity for heating, lighting and ventilation →see our railcars page.

Trains are more energy-efficient and better for the environment

Building a high-speed passenger train between Los Angeles and San Francisco would result in saving the equivalent of 2 million barrels of oil in 2020.[1]

We have many different types of public transit, including buses, paratransit, shuttles, trolleys, light rail, subways and heavy rail, regional rail, and hopefully someday in California, a true high-speed rail service.