Regular Train Riders Stayed Away in Droves : Walkout: The biggest impact in state was on San Diegan service. Rail patrons unaware of strike were given special airline or bus fares.

Sheri Inloes stood on the Amtrak platform in Oxnard, her bags packed and ticket in hand.

The only thing missing was the train.

Scores of other commuters, business travelers and tourists made the same sad discovery at train stations in California as an on-again-off-again nationwide rail strike-lockout started early Wednesday, shutting down all but one passenger service in the state.

The greatest impact was on Amtrak’s popular San Diegan service, which carries about 5,500 commuters and others among Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

Long distance and transcontinental Amtrak trains were canceled Tuesday in anticipation of the walkout. When the strike hit Wednesday, it targeted freight railroads but also forced Amtrak to shut down all of its trains that operate on the freight carriers’ tracks.

That ended service on the San Joaquin route from Oakland to Bakersfield and the new Capital Corridor line between San Jose and Sacramento.

The only passenger service still running in California on Wednesday was the San Jose-to-San Francisco Caltran commuter service, which carries about 10,500 passengers a day. It is run by the Southern Pacific Railroad for the California Department of Transportation.

For the most part, regular train riders were aware of the potential strike and stayed away from stations in droves. Southern California commuters either drove alone, formed informal car pools or waited for buses provided by the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“It went fine,” said OCTA spokeswoman Mona Ziada.

Long distance travelers either traded their tickets in for credit against special air fares offered by United, Delta and USAir, or took them to Greyhound, which accepted tickets for full bus fares.

Still, there were dozens of train patrons who had not heard that a late-night pledge not to strike against Amtrak had been overtaken by an equally disruptive early-morning strike against CSX, a major freight railroad.

And they were not happy.

“This really irks my noodle,” said Inloes, 16, who briefly thought that cancellation of Amtrak’s Coast Starlight had stranded her at the Oxnard Transportation Center. Later, however, she learned that she could fly home to Portland, Ore., on Delta for $12 less than her 27-hour train ride cost.

Robert Ross of San Juan Capistrano said that he and about 20 co-workers who regularly commute by Amtrak from south Orange County to Hughes Aircraft in Fullerton were “very distressed” about the strike but arranged an informal car pool in place of the train.

“The traffic, actually, was surprisingly light,” Ross said after he arrived in Fullerton.

Indeed, Caltrans spokesman Russ Snyder in Los Angeles said that the loss of commuter trains failed to register on the region’s crowded freeways. “We checked and there was no appreciable change that we could see,” he said.

Times staff writers Bob Elston, Len Hall and Jeff Perlman in Orange County and Carlos V. Lozano in Oxnard contributed to this story.