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Coaster V8

Coaster is a commuter rail service in California, which - as we all know - is in the United States of America. The service started in February 1995, and has been a popular means of transportation ever since. It operates entirely in San Diego County, started at Santa Fe Depot and finishing at Oceanside - a distance of 41 miles. The railway passes through the mountainous terrain just north of San Diego and also runs along the Pacific coast north of Sorrento Valley. There are eight stations served by Coaster trains, and they are as follows (going north):

San Diego Santa Fe Depot
San Diego Old Town
Sorrento Valley
Solana Beach
Encinitas
Carlsbad Poinsettia
Carlsbad Village
Oceanside

This entire route is shared with Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner service and the occasional BNSF freight train. The Amtrak/Coaster route runs parallel to the San Diego Trolley between Santa Fe Depot and Old Town. Once the train arrives at Oceanside, passengers can make connections with Metrolink commuter trains to Los Angeles and the Sprinter service to Escondido. The 'Sprinter' is unique because the trains are a European design - the Siemens VT642, which is part of the Desiro family.

Coaster trains cater primarily to commuter traffic, and the weekday schedule consists of 11 trains a day in each direction. The frequency increases slightly during the morning and afternoon peak periods. On weekends the service is reduced to just four trains in each direction. Sometimes additional services are run to cater for people heading to the Del Mar Horse Races, as well as people going to Padres baseball games in San Diego.

There are seven locomotives on Coaster's roster. Five of them are F40PHM-2C's, which were originally EMD-built F40PH's re-built by Morrinson-Knudsen. These engines are numbered from 2101 to 2105, and arrived in San Diego in 1994. Two more locomotives were added to the fleet in 2001. These two are the EMD F59PHi type and are numbered 3001 and 3002.

In June 2018, five Siemens SC-44 locomotives were ordered for the Coaster service. These are set to enter service either in 2020 or 2021, and will replace the five F40PHM-2C locomotives. Two more SC-44's were added to the order in June 2019, and these two will replace F59PHi's Nos. 3001 and 3002.

As for passenger cars, well Coaster's fleet includes 28 of them. They are all Bombardier Bi-Level cars, with 10 of them being cab-cars. The first 16 coaches (8 of them being cab-cars) were built in 1994, with another 6 added to the fleet in 1997. Six years later - in 2003 - another six coaches were built for Coaster. Two of the 2003-built coaches are cab-cars.

Cab-cars are basically normal passenger cars, albeit with a driver's cab at one end. Thanks to a series of big, heavy cables running the length of the train, the cab-car allows for push-pull operation on a locomotive-hauled train rather than using multiple units. How it works is that - in one direction - the driver sits in the locomotive cab and operates the train as normal. When they get to the end of the line, the driver simply changes to the cab-car and the locomotive pushes the train back down the line.

Normally Coaster trains consist of one locomotive and at least six passenger cars. Typically the cab-car is at the southern end of the train, with the locomotive at the northern end.

As well as this V8 engine in Coaster livery, I have also made a Coaster livery passenger car to go with it. The number carried by this re-skin is that of a real-life V8 locomotive.