Railfanning Via Princessa - 1/18/19

In conclusion and after railfanning at Sun Valley, Sylmar / San Fernando, Newhall, and Santa Clarita in that order earlier in the day, I headed over to the Via Princessa Metrolink Station to wrap up my day and conclude my trip out along Metrolink's Antelope Valley Line. Via Princessa serves as one of the three Metrolink stations within the City of Santa Clarita, with the others being Santa Clarita and Newhall; and is also the last station within the Los Angeles area before ascending toward the High Desert. The Via Princessa Station originally was built as a supplemental station to the surge of ridership following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, but has since seen permeant station structures and facilities constructed following continued ridership growth. The station interestingly still retains the basic paved platform and parking lot, with minimal upgrades since its inception in 1994, although it does provide passengers with decent station amenities. Additionally, this station also functions as an intermediate terminus along the Antelope Valley Line for trains running to and from Los Angeles, but not the entire distance to Lancaster. This allows for more regionalized trains for riders closer to the Los Angeles metropolitan area while also supplementing trains running the entire distance destined for Lancaster. Thus, for trains that do terminate here, they are usually turned around within a half or one hour at most after disembarking passengers. Please note however that due in part to this station's topography and minimal camera angles at track level, I decided to film from the hillside for the majority of the trains for better shots while sacrificing audio, so I do apologize for the excessive street noise. In the end though, this trip turned out to be an amazing and successful railfanning outing, including the awesome crews, horn action, and discovering new stations, but particularly that I amazingly managed to film at five stations consecutively all in one day.

Train 1 : Metrolink #220 with CabCar #693 & MP36PH-3C #888. Nice engineer on #888 !

Train 2 : Metrolink #213 with MP36PH-3C #894 & CabCar #678. This train will conclude and terminate here at Via Princessa, where it will go into the siding just east of the station (Humphrey's Siding) and be turned around as Metrolink #222. Good horn action from the engineer ! Definitely not afraid to blow the horn nice and loud !

Train 3 : Metrolink #222 with CabCar #678 & MP36PH-3C #894. After briefly laying over and setting up the PTC for the run south, the crew proceeds into the station to begin their trip back to Los Angeles. Same engineer from before, but certainly still laying on the horn for sure ! After this train, I called it an awesome and successful day of railfanning and headed for home.

Thanks for Watching !