OAKLAND, Calif. — Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor service will cancel seven trains for a month beginning today (Jan. 26) because of ongoing equipment issues, the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority has announced.
Canceled through Feb. 27 are five weekday trains and two on weekends:
- On weekdays: Sacramento-Oakland trains 531, an 8:53 a.m. departure, and 537, a 10:53 a.m. departure; Oakland-Sacramento trains 520, a 5:28 a.m. departure, 526, an 8:58 a.m. departure, and 534, a 1:58 p.m. departure.
- On weekends, Sacramento-Oakland train 737, an 11:53 a.m. departure, and Oakland-Sacramento 736, a 2:58 p.m. departure. These trains will run on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 8.
The temporary schedule reflecting these changes is available here.
In a message to riders, Capitol Corridor Managing Director Rob Padgette says the cancellations stem from “limited locomotive availability” in the fleet shared with the San Joaquin Valley’s Gold Runner service. The Gold Runners previously announced cancellation of one round trip through March 5 because of equipment issues [see “Gold Runners cancel …,” Trains.com, Jan. 7, 2026].
“Under normal conditions, we rely on additional standby locomotives to fill in when mechanical issues occur,” Padgette writes. “In recent weeks, those standby locomotives have not been available, which has made it more difficult to recover quickly from mechanical problems and has led to an increase in cancellations.” The authority is pursuing short-term lease of additional locomotives, and is working to return sidelined equipment to service, he says, while Caltrans is moving forward with an overhaul program for the operation’s older locomotives.
The Capitol Corridor and Gold Runner operations began experiencing extended equipment-related cancellations in September. Maintenance for locomotives and cars is overseen by Herzog Transit Services subsidiary Transit America, a move that took place in August [see “Maintenance responsibilities shift …,” Trains.com, Sept. 29, 2025].
— Updated to correct timing of Transit America assuming responsibility for equipment maintenance. To report news or errors, contact trainsnewswire@firecrown.com.
Any surplus Caltrain locos? Wait they were all zeroed out.
This not a Siemens problem it s an F59 problem. Apparently the state and agencies had let the F59’s go way beyond their overhaul date with the failure rate increasing as a result. Amtrak had been back stopping these failures with its locomotives. Recently the agencies replaced Amtrak as the maintenance contractor for state owned equipment replacing Amtrak with a private contractor. Surprise that contractor is cheaper but does not come with a supply of protect locomotives. Hence the sudden train cancellations right after both the Capitol Corridor and Gold Runner JPA’S to pre-covid frequency levels.
Maybe F59s ATM, but Siemens locomotives repeatedly fail on both VIA and Amtrak routes. I wonder how much redundancy Brightline has on their sunshine state fleet.
Trains and/or Firecrown should do in depth reporting on the Siemens Charger locomotives. It seems they must have serious reliability issues. Bill Stephens had statistics on the “fly rate” reliability of the Norfolk Southern locomotive fleet. Where are such statistics on Siemens? Obviously detailed failure data exist, but where (there is very little reporting and no data doing a Google search)? Seeing as how some have been in service for nearly a decade and Amtrak is going sole-source with Siemens, the traveling public and public funders should know.
A year or two back, someone posting on this site suggested that I put mention of the Siemens problem onto the Wall Street Journal tip line. I did. As far as I know (I subscribe) WSJ did not look into the issue and publish.
Regarding Siemens on Brightline, I don’t recall reading of any problems down there. Maybe a climate thingie, warmer in Florida compared to Montana.
I would never criticize any TRAINS editor. I have either subscribed, or else purchased back issues, back into the 1960’s. I have nothing but the very highest respect for all the editors and staff for the last six decades and in the present time as well. No publication can cover every single issue (or be criticized for not doing so), but this one issue is screaming at us.