Working on the Railroad (Station) : Old Depot in Orange Is About to Become a Whistle Stop Again

The Rail Age is about to return to this old whistle stop.

For 22 years, the historic Santa Fe rail depot here, four blocks west of the city’s quaint traffic circle, has played host only to vagrants. Horns blaring, freight and passenger trains streak by now-empty packinghouses.

The passengers and crates of oranges, walnuts and olives that once shared the timbered platform are but remembrances for the city’s oldest residents, such as Kenneth Claypool, who as a 10-year-old newsboy in 1908 greeted the trains that brought him his supply of Los Angeles newspapers to sell.

“The depot was very important to life in Orange. . . . It was where everything happened,” said Claypool, now 95, who earned $6 a month back then. “People came and went, and they had to go through the depot.”

On Dec. 6, the Orange County Transportation Authority’s morning and evening commuter trains will return passenger service to this station for the first time since 1971, when the Santa Fe Railway--citing high costs and reduced patronage--hauled away the chandeliers and oak benches as collector’s items and locked the heavy wooden doors.

To celebrate the return of rail service, anyone who brings canned food for the Salvation Army on Dec. 6 will be given a free train ticket. That evening, a gala reception will be held at the depot, on Atchison Street north of Chapman Avenue, next to Orange County’s first public park.

After Dec. 6, the fare will be $15 round trip to Los Angeles, or $182 with a monthly pass, and $10 round trip to San Juan Capistrano, or $105 for a monthly pass. The train will depart Orange about 6:30 a.m. and return about 6:30 p.m., OCTA officials said.

“We’re hoping that lots of people who commute from San Juan Capistrano to jobs in central Orange County will take this train,” OCTA spokesman John Standeford said.

Orange is the first of four new commuter rail stops that are being added on the route between San Juan Capistrano and Los Angeles over the next two years. Currently, OCTA’s periwinkle and white Metrolink trains stop at both ends of the rail line, and at Irvine, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Fullerton.

New commuter rail stations are being planned in Laguna Niguel, Tustin and Buena Park. But the old Santa Fe depot in Orange--freshly painted for the opening day festivities--will remain empty inside.

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Rather than renovate the 1938 mission-style structure, which retains some original oak cabinets and tile floors, officials have built an outdoor concrete rail platform with overhead canopies next to the historic structure.

The city’s Redevelopment Agency eventually hopes to find a commercial tenant, such as a restaurant, for the historic 1938 structure, which replaced a Victorian-style original depot built in 1888. A prospective deal with one restaurant chain fell through recently, but the station remains the centerpiece in the city’s plans to redevelop the warehouse area around the site.

Meanwhile, a bus turnabout has been added out front. Four OCTA routes--Lines 53, 54, 59 and 69--will be rerouted here from their current stop at Almond Avenue and Glassell Street.

A new Art Deco facade is nearly complete at the north end of the old depot building--a fancy front for new restrooms that will serve both rail and bus passengers.

At first, rail tickets will be sold by conductors aboard the trains. Later, automatic ticket vending machines will be installed on the platform.

OCTA officials said two additional Metrolink commuter trains will begin to serve the route in May, stopping at Orange in the morning and in the evening. Exact schedules have not been worked out yet, however.

Service to and from Riverside is expected to begin in 1995, with two trains in the morning and two in the evening.

None of the 18 daily Amtrak trains between San Diego and Los Angeles, with stops in San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Irvine, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Fullerton, will stop here, because Amtrak is barred by federal law from serving too many stops close together.

Until Metrolink service is expanded in May, only about 130 passengers a day are expected at the Orange station.

That’s a far cry from the hundreds of passengers who came on 16 trains a day at the peak of service in 1925, by which time Kenneth Claypool owned a bakery in town and took trains to San Francisco and San Diego.

“It will be nice to see trains stop in Orange again,” Claypool said. “The depot has been an important part of people’s lives here.”