(forgive the further divergence from the original topic )

Oh, I needed no conversion to rail travel, I just needed to discover Amtrak.

jackal: thanks for all the tips!

• I've been on all the Metrolinks except the Antelope Valley (Lancaster) line (though in the case of the Ventura County line, it was on the Surfliner, which uses the same tracks )
• I'd have to think long and hard about the San Joaquins day-trip you mentioned, since it's literally 24 hours, of which I found that about 4 is in Sacramento (and I thought 10 hours of single-station flapping in OC was tiring! )

I've loved trains for a long time; I got it from my father (sort of...his interest was more in legacy(ish) steam trains and freight and models, mine in modern[ish] short- and medium-distance passenger trains).

Some highlights:

• When I was about 3 or so, I went with my parents on the Algoma Central from Sault Ste Marie to Hearst and back. Because of the strange 3-year-old minds work, all I remember is getting a cheeseburger and a pack of gum.
• Sometime later (maybe when I was 5?), the Cass Scenic Railroad in Cass, WV. I've lost it since then but the only thing I remember from that trip is they got me some book about steam locomotives, in which there was a cutaway diagram that fascinated me for months.
• I grew up in NW Indiana, so there were, of course, the monthly-or-so day trips to Chicago on the South Shore, and even now it is how I get from downtown Chicago to my hometown (having taken the CTA Orange or Blue Line from MDW or ORD, respectively, of course).
• When I first moved to LA, the MTA Green and Blue Lines were already in their present form, what is now called the Purple Line was the single Red Line, and there was no Gold Line. Since then I made a point of going on the first Red Line extension to Hollywood, the further extension to North Hollywood, and the Gold Line, on their respective opening days.
• One of my other hobbies is genealogy, so for a while I was going to the LA Central Library every other weekend, using the Gold and Red Lines. The train was a way to get to the library; after I'd gotten as much information as I was going to from the library, it became that the library was an excuse to take the train.
• Yet another hobby is coin collecting; twice a year there's a big show in Long Beach, and for that I take the Gold, Red, and Blue Lines, both as an excuse to take the train, and because the parking at the LB Convention Center is so damn expensive. I think next time (Feb 18) I'll take the Surfliner from Glendale rather than the usual Gold Line from Pasadena.

For the curious, I have some 200+ pictures from the 'real' trips mentioned in my previous post at http://picasaweb.google.com/chuljin. (N.B. I'm only about half done captioning them all.) Enjoy!

Forgive the mindless rambling.