Making Tracks : The Trains Will Move Fast on New, Seamless Rails

Sound carries far in the cold, clear nights of December, so many North County residents have awakened in the wee hours to ponder what all the noise is about.

Not to worry. It’s just a crack team of 210 workers replacing decades-old railway track with brand-new spans of steel along the 52-mile stretch of Santa Fe Railway from San Juan Capistrano to Sorrento Valley, south of Del Mar.

The crew and about 70 machines work in the dark--from about 9 p.m. until 4:30 a.m.--in a coordinated fashion that allows them to progress 2 or 3 miles by dawn and lets passenger trains resume their busy schedules.

The $45-million project will improve the ride and allow Amtrak trains to maintain their 90 m.p.h. speeds on the Los Angeles-to-San Diego run, the most profitable passenger corridor in the country.

Mike Martin, spokesman for Santa Fe, said the old track, laid in 1940 and 1941, had deteriorated to a point where safety concerns dictated that new track be laid or train speeds be cut in half.

The new rails are 1,440 feet long--more than a quarter mile--and are welded into seamless spans. The rails are built in one piece and transported to the site by special train.

The result may give nostalgia buffs a few pangs of loss because the clicketyclack of the passing trains, produced when wheels strike unwelded joints of existing 39-foot-long tracks, will go the way of the mournful steam whistle.

The project began after Thanksgiving and was scheduled to be completed Friday. But because of delays caused by removing the equipment each morning and replacing it each night, work will resume today. High-powered lights illuminate the work site, and the clang of mechanical hammers echoes through the night, silenced only by the dawn.

Many of the crew members are Navajos, who have long been known as some of the best rail workers.

As the crew moves south along the coastal bluffs and lagoons, they sometimes attract irate onlookers--residents who did not read or comprehend the warnings of the project published in local papers.

Also inconvenienced by the project are Amtrak riders who take the late evening trains. The 8:45 p.m. trains from Los Angeles and San Diego turn into buses between San Diego and San Juan Capistrano, dropping off passengers at each train station along the way.