OAKLAND, Calif. — Herzog Transit Services, Inc., has been tapped by the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission to maintain cars and locomotives for the Amtrak’s San Joaquins.
The transition began in early September as both the Oakland-Bakersfield route and Sacramento-San Jose Capitol Corridor announced annulments of daily round trips [see “Abrupt cancellations hit …,” Trains.com, Sept. 4, 2025]. Maintenance for Capitol trains will continue to be handled by Amtrak personnel. The temporary terminations of San Joaquin midday trains Nos. 714 and 717 and Capitols Nos. 520, 534, 535, and 549 were subsequently extended through Friday, Oct. 3.
The corridors share state-owned equipment. A statement to Trains.com from the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority characterizes the cancellations as “unscheduled locomotive repair work. This vital maintenance is necessary to safeguard the long-term reliability of our fleets.”
Asked how the San Joaquin maintenance responsibility change has affected Capitol Corridor maintenance work still performed by Amtrak, spokeswoman Vernae Graham says, “Like with any transition, there is an adjustment period underway. We’re continuing to work with our partners to ensure maintenance standards remain consistent.”
Regarding reports that 13 multi-level commuter cars and three F40 locomotives leased from Caltrain by the California Department of Transportation are heading to the Capitol Corridor, Graham says,” those details are being discussed and reviewed, and we don’t have anything further to share right now.”
San Joaquin maintenance, equipment concerns
The San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission is the umbrella operating entity for both the Altamont Commuter Express and San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority. The commission had previously engineered an agreement for Herzog to maintain newly arriving, California-owned Venture equipment, as the Herzog company has done with ACE trains since the commuter carrier began operating between Stockton and San Jose in 1998.
While declining to explain the exact reason for the maintenance shift, an emailed response by the San Joaquin authority to a series of Trains.com questions does provide further insight.
“When we took over the intercity fleet, we found a large number of defects that didn’t meet our quality standards,” the email reads. “Since then, our team has been working around the clock. For example, one F59 locomotive had been out of service for 600 days. We sourced a fully rebuilt engine, secured all needed parts, and put it back together. We’ve also tackled major wreck repairs in-house with Herzog’s expertise and outside contractors, completing three so far. Within our first week, we restored six cars to service.”
Food service changes
Relations between Amtrak and the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority have been strained for some time over cost allocation issues, but most recently over the expense Amtrak has been charging to provide food service. In part, this led to the authority’s decision to drop Amtrak’s participation and switch Venture cafe cars to a self-service model from the cafe design originally specified, which led to construction and acceptance delays.
“There is no timeline on deployment of the Venture food service cars,” authority spokesman Ahdel Ahmed tells Trains.com. “We have a team dedicated to fitting the vending equipment into the cars and bringing on a food and beverage manager to help us with the front and back end once we move forward.” He says the team is also reaching out to local vendors, “to see how we can make this work.”
Because the San Joaquins and Capitols share equipment and the San Jose-Sacramento trains will retain traditional cafe service, the authority explains, “We are in the process of developing a storage solution that resembles the snack station on Venture cars that can be set up and taken down easily to help with the transition of service between the San Joaquins and Capitols.”
Cab cars still sidelined
Also not in service are the Venture cab cars, officially still going through the commissioning process about a year after Siemens first delivered them. The cab cars share structural similarities with equipment VIA Rail Canada has been operating in revenue service since 2023.
Sources tell Trains.com that the primary reason the California versions are not running is that they are not shunting signals properly on BNSF Railway tracks through the San Joaquin Valley. The host railroad has imposed a 32-axle-count requirement on passenger trains operating there for years. Until now, there has not been equipment specificity attached (as is the case with Canadian National’s Superliner-only edict in Illinois); the San Joaquins have had baggage cars and Viewliner II dining cars deadheading for that purpose.
The authority has yet to respond to specific questions regarding the cab car deployment delay, but it is assumed that the cab cars won’t operate until shunt-enhancing antennas are added. [See “Seeking answers on ‘loss of shunt’ …,” Trains.com, Sept. 6, 2023.] Siemens’ new Airo trainsets will apparently be so equipped, though who will pay for retrofitting locomotives and how much money is involved has still not been publicly disclosed.
Trains to be rebranded as ‘Gold Runners’
Despite all of these challenges, the San Joaquins are soon to be rebranded as Gold Runner trains. Details of how the new service will differ and the date of the changeover are to be announced within the next few weeks, but the change signals another way the San Joaquin Commission is seeking to create a unique identity apart from a strictly Amtrak operation as it embarks on increasing regional connectivity.
