Well, the train has left the station, or at least it did several times late Friday evening from the new Arcadia station as you wil see in the video below. The Foothill Gold Line station will be dedicated in a ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 22. The two new train cars recently delivered from Japan via Lancaster and the multiple complex and heavy crossing gates on First Avenue were being tested last night, Aug. 7, 2015, between Arcadia and Irwindale towards the end of the weekly Downtown Arcadia Street Fair and well beyond the 9 p.m. closing time for the fair. <Story continues below the following video…>
Workers said the trains are being tested at maximum allowable speeds of 55 mph (even though they are capable of going 100 mph). The new Foothill Gold Line is an 11.5-mile extension of the electric light rail line that now runs from Downtown L.A. to the Sierra Madre Villa station on the east side of Pasadena. Trains will run every eight-minutes or so when service begins from Pasadena to Azusa somewhere between March and July of 2016. The next segment will go to Montclair, and eventually the target will be Ontario Airport in San Bernardino County.