Metrolink riders resume their commute

Metrolink’s first train 111 to return to service since the deadly crash arrives at the Simi Valley station.  (Annie Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Metrolink’s train 111 crosses Chatsworth Street just before the site where at least 25 people were killed and 135 were injured in a head-on collision with a Union Pacific freight train.  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

A Metrolink train and a freight train are used to reenact Friday’s deadly collision. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were doing a “site distance survey” to determine at what point the engineers on the ill-fated trains first saw each other.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Sonja Salinas brings flowers close to the site of the crash between a Metrolink train and a freight train in Chatsworth.  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

MTA bus driver Humberto Munguia stops to say a prayer at a memorial to victims of Friday’s crash.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Diane Fowler of Filmore reads in the morning sunlight as she rides the 7 a.m. bus from the Metrolink station in Moorpark to the Chatsworth station to catch a train for the rest of the trip to Los Angeles.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

At the Metrolink station in Moorpark at 5 a.m., passengers board the bus bound for the Chatsworth station, where they will catch a train headed toward Union Station.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Denise Horton of Moorpark blows a kiss at a makeshift memorial at the Metrolink station there. Horton said she rode the train to work for eight years, sitting next to Alan Buckley, who died in the crash. “It will be hard for people to not see the same people,” she said.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, greeting passenger Frank Burcelis of Moorpark, was on hand Monday morning to reassure Metrolink riders in Chatsworth. “I want to dispel any fears about taking the train,” he said. “Safety has to be our No. 1 concern. Taking the train is still the safest option for commuters.”  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

John Luder of Moorpark relaxes while riding the Metrolink train from the Chatsworth station to downtown Los Angeles. Luder said that he normally rides the Metrolink 111 line, which crashed on Friday, but he drove instead because he needed to go to Santa Monica after work to get pipe tobacco.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Brian Buss, 31, of Westlake Village was among those at the Chatsworth train station who signed a get-well card for Bob Hildebrand, the conductor in the rear car of Metrolink 111. Hildebrand was hurt in the crash.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

All remnants of Metrolink 111 and a Union Pacific freighter have been removed from the route where the trains collided Friday.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

A railway worker stands at the track switch that Metrolink 111 “blew through,” according to a National Transportation Safety Board official, before colliding with a freight train.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The Monday after the fatal Metrolink commuter train crash in Chatsworth, Isaac Sorenson catches an early morning train from Union Station to his job in Glendale.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Irene Mondoza, right, hugs her friend Julia Ledesma as they meet at Union Station after riding a Metrolink commuter train.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)