Passenger Rail routes cover very, very little of this country.
Posted on 10/22/2014 4:25:31 PM PDT by QT3.14
It's been 21 years, and John Moore still eagerly leans against his passenger window to watch the landscape pass by as the train he commutes on every day roars over the Moodna Viaduct in Cornwall, New York.
The green hills and vibrant leaves just below the elevated track make the trestle one of the prettiest scenes on the 57-year-old's trip. For more than two decades, the senior business analyst has been traveling about 67 miles for work from his home in Cornwall to lower Manhattan. His total commute time is 2½ hours each way.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
I’m not a psychologist, but Willie always was cordial and pleasant to me and I didn’t see any real signs of difficulty, just a whole lot of passion. He was an old school FReeper, and you remember what this place could get like back then. Personally I miss him.
Part of it was that Willie’s love for trains included gooberment mass transit.
Especially in San Francisco...
How about the word, “childish?”
I want to take the Trans-Canada Rail trip one day.
:D - Thank you.
(I assume that was the kind of so bad
you get with a good pun or other such wordplay.)
You assume correctly... :)
Croak dead or ZOT long gone? (Well, I suppose a guy could be both.....)
What are the rail cars like? Amtrack or more like the interior of a bus?
I was in Russia recently and took the high speed train from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back. 4 hours each way at 200+ kilometers per hour. That was a great trip.
I recently started commuting to Manhattan by rail (from Connecticut). It's about a 90 minute trip each way. I actually like it as it gives me more free time at home than when I used to commute to Boston by car.
That might not make much sense to anybody but here's how it works. I catch a 6:32am train and during the ride in, I'm able to read my Wall Street Journal and then open up my laptop and get caught up with work. I arrive in Grand Central around 8am and show up at the office refreshed, after grabbing a cup of coffee on the short walk over there. Contrast that to my Boston days when I would spend an hour and a half to two hours commuting into the city by car and not get anything accomplished except burn gas and wear out my brakes.
Then I usually catch the 4:47pm train back to Connecticut. During that time, I've got my laptop open in which I catch on the work of the day so that when I arrive home, around 6:45pm, I usually have nothing left to do work-related. Contrast that to my Boston days when I used to fight at least an hour and a half of traffic to get home only to rush through dinner so that I can log on and get caught up with work. I would often be doing work until 9PM at night back in those days.
Did I mention that I grab a 24 oz Foster's oil can for the trip home? Yes, Grand Central sells you beer for the train ride home. How sweet is that!
So not a bad commute at all. If Willie Green was still around, I'd have to apologize to him for all grief I gave him over his choo-choo trains.
The VRE cars are very nice. The MARC trains are iffy. The older cars I like much better. The newer ones are more like bus seating, unfortunately. :-(
I briefly was riding NJT to Newark, and of course I took the subway for years, but that’s not the same.
I took the train to New Orleans and back twice, that was a lot of fun. I’d love to go cross country some day.
I just love trains, my grandfather was a conductor on the 20th Century Limited, so it’s in my blood.
I took the Eurostar from London to Brussels, and the the Train from Lyon to Paris. It was pretty cool to get off the train and be right in the heart of Paris, beats flying into Charles De Gaulle or Orly.
I’ve done Philadelphia to Seattle and Los Angeles to Seattle a number of times. It’s an adventure. You learn not to worry too much about on-time performance.
Passenger Rail routes cover very, very little of this country.
They used to cover a lot more, but over the past 30 years, the network has shrunk to what you see on that map.
Because he thought taxpayers should subsidise the trains! that's why.
Many FReepers love trains -- heck, a lot of us love windmills and solar panels, too. We just don't like using our tax money to support them.
The conductors on my commuter trains (VRE and MARC) are very friendly and professional. There’s an exception from time-to-time, but rare. Most of them know me as a regular.
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