When Metrolink service first began in 1992, trains terminated at the Santa Clarita station, but with plans to extend the line northeast to the Antelope Valley. Those plans were expedited by almost 10 years when the 1994 Northridge earthquake caused the collapse of the freeway connector of State Route 14 onto Interstate 5 at the Newhall Pass interchange. With funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency the Metrolink constructed an emergency extension of the line along existing rails to Lancaster to help relieve the traffic bottleneck.