Trains suspended again for work at Del Mar, Carlsbad & San Clemente

Coastal rail service between San Diego and southern Orange County will be suspended again this weekend, the second time this month, for work including the construction of a 1,400-foot-long wall below a recurring landslide in San Clemente.

Also during the suspension, the latest phase of a decades-old bluff stabilization project will proceed in Del Mar. And a separate project is underway in Carlsbad to replace a 1940’s wooden trestle railroad bridge and add a second set of tracks across the Batiquitos Lagoon.

Coaster, Amtrak and freight trains will not run between San Diego and southern Orange County on Saturday or Sunday. Regular service will resume at 5 a.m. Monday. Sprinter service between Oceanside and Escondido is not affected.

North County Transit District, the Orange County Transportation Authority, Caltrans and other agencies together schedule maintenance and construction on or near the tracks during “absolute work windows” about seven times a year. After this weekend, the next work window will be Feb. 21 and 22.

A bluff failure above the railroad at San Clemente’s Mariposa Point in January 2024 took out a pedestrian bridge parallel to the tracks and suspended passenger train service for weeks. Loose soil above the tracks continued to shift for more than a year afterward.

The 12-to-15-foot-tall catchment wall, supported by steel beams sunk 40 feet into the ground, is intended to protect the tracks from additional landslides. More th...