Remembering how Coaster got rolling as rail line turns 25
Pete Aadland remembered when kindergartners from Paul Ecke Central School in Encinitas surrounded him with signs, asking him not to kill them with his buses and trains. And the front lights of his company car were broken out that night.
Paul Price recalled when the Navy refused to allow a Coaster stop in the popular Miramar-uc San Diego area. That refusal stood and there’s none there to this day.
Former Carlsbad City Councilwoman Julie Nygaard said she was added to the board of North County Transit District (NCTD), which runs the passenger trains, when the city’s previous representative didn’t want a Coaster station downtown.
Former Solana Beach Councilman Joe Kellejian reminded he warned Price, transit-district director of development at the time, that support might be withdrawn for the whole commuter-train project if Price went ahead with a plan to delay lowering the tracks in his city. The tracks were lowered.
Both Nygaard and Kellejian said the board had to get “dogmatic” pushing for a train system over more buses. Trains, the two council members insisted, were the future.
So, the board bought the rail line.
These and many more reminiscences sprinkled conversations Saturday night as two dozen folks who were there in the beginning celebrated the Coaster’s 25th anniversary.
Most everyone, including this reporter, who was on board that first Coaster train Feb. 27, 1995, remembered that only two of six trains met the schedule that day because of technical difficulties.
Aadland, NCTD’S former spokesman, and his wife, Elaine, hosted the patio party at their Carlsbad home.
They had arranged a table inside of Coaster memorabilia, everything from a model train set to paint chips used to decide the train’s distinctive teal, blue and white colors, to be used on buses, too. Of course, there were Coaster-themed coasters, the cork-mat kind placed under a drinking glass.
“I came just for this,” said Betty Laurs, onetime NCTD marketing manager now living in Southern Oregon. “I wouldn’t have missed it.”
One who couldn’t come was Dick Fifer, executive director at the time. Fifer, only the second person to lead the district, still lives in Encinitas, but his health prevented his attending.
North County Transit District was formed in 1975 as an amalgam of thenseparate bus systems in Oceanside and Escondido.
Fifer had run the Escondido buses and had no experience with trains.
The district board consists of a county supervisor and one representative each from Oceanside, Carlsbad, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Vista, San Marcos and Escondido.
Kellejian and Nygaard credited then-mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler of Escondido, transit board chairwoman, for helping get the Coaster show on the rails. Pfeiler was not in attendance at the party.
About naming the Coaster, Aadland told the group, “I knew I had come up with the perfect name and was excited to present it to the board. It went on the coast, you did not have to pedal, you could sit back and coast — fun like a roller coaster. The board listened and asked me to come back with something more serious. I was pretty bummed. Over a glass of Chardonnay that evening, my wife, a brilliant writer, came up with the solution. The name would be Coast Express Rail — Coaster the nickname. We used Coast Express Rail for the opening poster and newsletter. From then on, it was the Coaster.”
Laurs said of NCTD personnel at the time, Bill Farquhar, at the party, was “the only one who knew much about railroads.”
Amtrak, which runs its trains on the same rail line, was active, of course, and John Eschenbach, soon to retire after more than four decades in railroading, was at the party telling of plans for new train equipment.
“We all did not have the experience to do what we were doing,” Laurs said. “Every person sitting on the patio tonight deserves credit. We did something wonderful.”
“We created something,” Price said, “that’s become part of the fabric of the community.”
Lola Sherman is a freelance writer. Contact her at lola@ seaside-media-services.com.