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Amtrak Passenger Stabbed While Sleeping September 3, 2008 Amtrak Passenger Stabbed While Sleeping - Considering the recent beheading in Canada an a Greyhound bus, an attempted beheading on another bus, and this… I may consider alternatives to public transportation.A 24-year-old man was stabbed while sleeping on an Amtrak train just south of the Oregon state line.The suspect, Armando Avalos, jumped from the train and suffered a broken ankle, authorities said. Avalos, 48, of Oxnard, Calif., was arrested Saturday on charges of attempted murder, parole violation and manufacture and possession of a dangerous weapon.He was being held without bail Tuesday...

In April, Brian Hopkins told a reporter from The Journal News in New York the sad tale of how his left arm and leg came to be amputated. It was May 2006, right after his graduation from Yale. He was on a platform at the South Boston train station when "an overhead wire broke loose and shocked him in a freak accident." Reasonable people would consider this an open-and-shut case of negligence. Indeed, Mr. Hopkins has filed a federal suit, only with a very different narrative under which Amtrak is liable because it failed to protect the safety of trespassers....

Midnight Train to DelawareIt is the image the Obama campaign has been pushing since the moment the selection was made: that of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Amtrak. Lunchpail Joe, they say, is just “one of the people.” Such a Regular Joe Sixpack, in fact, we’ll end up calling him Vice President Joey. Joe Biden, you see, takes the morning train. He works from nine to five a day. He takes another home again, to find….well, you get the idea. Or, if you don’t, there’s been no shortage of voices clamoring to paint the picture for you: "He's not a creature of...

LOS ANGELES — An Amtrak train traveling from here to San Diego ran out of fuel on Sunday night, an Amtrak spokeswoman said. “It’s not uncommon for trains to run out of fuel here,” the spokeswoman, Vernae Graham, said. “It happens from time to time.” This summer, a locomotive traveling on the same Pacific Surfliner route ran out of fuel, Ms. Graham said, as did a train in the Pacific Northwest last year. “They are fueled once a day,” she said. “Once the train leaves in the morning, generally there is sufficient fuel for the entire day.” The six-car train...

It's a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot's cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. "I hope you will support my work on...

Soaring gas prices and higher airfares are causing Ameri cans to take a closer look at their rail system ___ The storybook plight of the Little Engine That Could, struggling to make it up a mountain, is a pretty apt metaphor for America's rail system. Limited access, outdated equipment and high ticket prices have been the sorry story of Amtrak, the nation's principal rail carrier, from its beginning—pushing most would-be riders to other ways of getting around. But $4-a-gallon gas and chaotic airways are working in Amtrak's favor. In an era when green is hip and mileage matters, trains can't...

One of the many good ideas that powered President Bush to the White House, only to die on Capitol Hill, was the plan to tear down Amtrak and start from scratch. He believed privately owned railroads, which are doing splendidly these days on the freight side of the business, could do a better job on passenger rail. Congress, beholden to Big Labor and firmly in the grip of logrolling agreements to preserve money-hemorrhaging routes even Amtrak doesn't want, never got past grumbling about Amtrak's many deficiencies. Last week, the House passed a five-year, $14.9 billion proposal to help Amtrak rebuild...

Record prices for gasoline and jet fuel should be good news for Amtrak, as travelers look for alternatives to cut the cost of driving and flying. And they are good news, up to a point. Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month. But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand. Many of the long-distance trains are already sold...

As the airline industry has run into turbulence prompted by high fuel costs, Amtrak and its Northeast Corridor service that connects Providence, Boston, New York and Washington have kept chugging along. Amtrak said increases in ridership and ticket revenues resulted from increasing gasoline prices, competitive advantages over the airlines and improved service on trains. Recently released figures for the month of March show the national passenger railroad had an overall 12.9-percent increase in ticket revenues over last year, beating the company’s budget by 10.5 percent. Ticket revenues totaled $143 million in March. The Northeast Corridor’s gains for the same period...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

Allegedly he was causing a disturbance on the train and the conductor attempted to move him to another part of the train, that’s when he said he had a bomb and the bomb was in his bag” says Emporia Police Chief Bernard Richardson. Around 2am the bomb squad determined the threat was a hoax. The Yemeni man was taken into custody by the FBI and is facing a felony charge of making a threat on a public conveyance. The hundreds of passengers were finally able to continue on their way.

Two U.S. Border Patrol agents parked near the tracks at Union Station on a recent morning. Amtrak passengers filed out onto the platform, ready to board. The train screeched to a stop on the southbound tracks. The agents set to work. They checked passengers boarding the train. Then the agents got on the train. They walked down the aisles of two coach cars, asking some of the 150 riders -- many half-asleep in their seats -- for identification. The conductor stood outside on the platform. This is part of his routine -- the daily visit from federal agents whom some...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Amtrak passengers will be subjected to random screening of their carry-on bags as part of a new security initiative that will include armed officers and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains, an Amtrak spokeswoman said Monday. Details of the new effort, which were first reported by The Associated Press, will be announced Tuesday, the spokeswoman, Tracey Connell, said.

Breaking news: Amtrak passenger train and a freight train collide on Chicago's South Side.

The Alameda County Coroner's office identified a man hit and killed by a train at the Berkeley Amtrak station this morning as Scott Slaughter, 31, of Berkeley. A coroner's office spokeswoman said Slaughter was talking on his cell phone on his way to work at Truitt & White lumber store when he was hit at 8:15 a.m. The lumber yard and an adjoining business share a gate in a fence that runs along the tracks where Slaughter was heading, the spokeswoman said. According to witnesses, Slaughter waited for one train to pass on a first set of tracks. After the...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu was behaving erratically as he fled the Bay Area on Amtrak's California Zephyr, at one point stripping off his shirt and shoes, before paramedics were called to take him off the train in western Colorado, passengers said Friday. Hsu, 56, on the run for the second time from a 1992 grand theft conviction in San Mateo County, was arrested Thursday after the paramedics took him to a hospital from the train station in Grand Junction, Colo. A spokesman at St. Mary's Hospital said Friday night that Hsu was in fair condition but would not say...

These are boom times for Amtrak. The passenger railway is seeing big increases in ridership on the Northeast Corridor and other routes that provide fast, reliable, comfortable service. Medium-distance commuters are finding it's better to ride a train than sit in an airliner for hours on the tarmac or battle urban traffic jams after landing. The Bush administration, meanwhile, continues to press its vision for Amtrak, though in a somewhat desultory manner. The president essentially wants to take the money-losing long-distance routes out of the hands of Congress and let more pragmatic state leaders decide their fate. The worst of...

Amtrak has announced a major disruption of train service in the Pacific Northwest. Only train no. 510 and 517, which run between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., will operate. All other Cascade trains between Eugene and Vancouver are cancelled due to safety concerns. An Amtrak representative this morning said the disruption is undefinite. Rail authorities said a recent mechanical inspection of some Cascades trains led to the decision to suspend service so all Cascade trains can be inspected. Amtrak officials say they are contacting passengers to alert them of the cancellations. No alternate transportation is being provided. An Amtrak representative said...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amtrak is trying to gin up new business by offering $100 in free alcohol to customers on some overnight trains. The national passenger rail company is making the unusual offer to promote a new high-end service being offered on a trial basis for certain sleeper car trips. Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program—the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers—can get a $100 per person credit for alcohol between November and January. The offer of free drinks comes on top of the dinner wine that is already included in the cost of a ticket for GrandLuxe trips on the...

Conductor Tossed Kids For Disorderly Conduct, Amtrak Says TAOS, N.M. -- Four children, ages 12 to 15, were removed from an Amtrak train in the dark, 600 miles from home, after accusations that one of them stole an iPod. No charges were filed against any of the children, who spent the night at the Kingman, Ariz., police station after Amtrak put them off the train at 2 a.m. Saturday as they returned home from California. Police let the four stay in the conference room until a parent retrieved them. Zackary Sharfin, 13, and his 12-year-old brother Christopher had traveled with...

KNIPPA, Texas - Storms dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of Texas on Saturday, stranding more than 170 passengers on an Amtrak train for hours and forcing rescue crews elsewhere to pull at least 50 people to safety. Water covering the tracks in Knippa, about 75 miles west of San Antonio, stopped a westbound Amtrak train carrying 176 passengers around 9 a.m. CDT. Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said buses were driving the passengers to El Paso, where they were expected to board another train early Sunday.

CNN Just interview a passenger who has been on a stranded Amtrak since 9:30 a.m. More calls are coming in from passengers on the train. Seems this lady wants off and Amtrak is saying to the passengers they don't know when that will happen. Rumors are the tracks are washed out at both ends. Food, water, air, toilets still in good shape. Just seems to be very frustrated passengers due to lack on info. So they wanted to reach a live national news show to let them know they are stuck. The Anchor on CNN said well sounds like they...

Just before ten p.m. last Sunday night, a diabetic man in insulin shock was booted off an Amtrak train in the middle of a national forest. According to Phoenix CBS Channel 5, 65-year-old Roosevelt Sims was headed to Los Angeles when Amtrak personnel, having assessed him as drunk and unruly, left him at an isolated railroad crossing in what a police officer described to the Phoenix media as "800,000 acres of beautiful pine trees." Sims' family had tried to call him on his cell phone that same night, but he was incoherent and, they report, in insulin shock. When officers...

PHOENIX -- A 65-year-old St. Louis man is missing after Amtrak personnel, mistaking his diabetic shock for drunk and disorderly behavior, kicked him off a train in the middle of a national forest, according to police in Williams, Ariz. Police said Roosevelt Sims was headed to Los Angeles but was asked to leave the train shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday at a railroad crossing five miles outside Williams, reported KPHO-TV in Phoenix. "He was let off in the middle of a national forest, which is about 800,000 acres of beautiful pine trees," Lt. Mike Graham said. Police said there is...

The Great PC Train Robbery By Lloyd Billingsley FrontPageMagazine.com | May 18, 2007 On April 16, a Monday, passengers aboard the last Amtrak train of the day back from the Bay Area wondered why the engine ground to a stop as it approached the I Street bridge over the Sacramento River. They didn’t know that five people stood on the tracks, gang members among them, throwing rocks at the engineer, who stopped the train. The attackers dragged him out, demanded his wallet and cell phone, then beat him senseless with a bottle and a fire extinguisher. They also attacked the...

[snip]DENVER — An Amtrak train carrying nearly 140 passengers was evacuated near Denver after a passenger threatened the crew and others onboard, claiming he had a weapon and bomb, an Amtrak spokeswoman said early Monday.[snip]

MODESTO, California: An Amtrak passenger train collided with a compact sports utility vehicle Tuesday, killing all six people inside the car. None of the 70 passengers or crew members aboard the Oakland-bound train was injured, Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said. Shortly after 2 p.m., the driver of a Chevrolet Tracker stopped on the tracks before the railroad crossing arms came down, said Steve Mayotte, chief of the Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District. She attempted to back up and then drive forward to escape the approaching train, he said. "When the driver attempted to back up, she hit the railroad arm...

Amtrak police have arrested a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of assaulting a Capitol Corridor engineer who was dragged from his train and attacked with rocks and bottles. Vernae Graham, an Amtrak spokeswoman, said the boy, whose name was not released because of his age, was caught shortly after the attack and arrested Tuesday. Another juvenile who was also held for questioning was released, she said. The engineer was attacked after a group of youths stood on the tracks and halted the train Monday around 10:15 p.m. The engineer opened a door when a conductor was threatened by the group, authorities...

The engineer of an Amtrak Capitol Corridor train was seriously injured Monday night in West Sacramento after a group of people forced the train to stop, dragged the engineer from the train and assaulted him with rocks and bottles, according to Capitol Corridor officials. The attack occurred as the train from the Bay Area neared the I Street Bridge to Sacramento's rail station and slowed for a signal, said Eugene Skoropowski, managing director of the Capitol Corridor, said. A group of people stood on the tracks to block the train, which stopped. When the engineer went downstairs and opened the...

WASHINGTON - The Capitol Limited, an Amtrak train from Chicago, is scheduled to arrive in Washington every day at 1:30 p.m. But frequent rider Edda Ramos knows better than to make plans for the afternoon or evening. She knows a late arrival — sometimes by an hour or two, sometimes by seven or eight — "is the one thing you can count on." The 764-mile route is among Amtrak's most dismal performers, with just 11 percent of trains arriving within 30 minutes of their scheduled time last year. But the problem exists to one degree or another on the majority...

Chugging along to the show’s close, anchor Dan Harris ended the January 7 “World News Sunday” by introducing correspondent Bill Redeker’s wistful story of how first-class travel on the nation’s railways might “become a thing of the past,” thanks to federal budget cuts. Yet Redeker left Amtrak’s critics at the station, ignoring its massive costs to taxpayers who aren’t even riding the trains. Splicing his report with dining car scenes from “Silver Streak” and “North by Northwest,” Redeker complained that Amtrak had to skimp on china, stemware and tablecloths to meet budget cutbacks on its California Zephyr rail line. “It’s...

WASHINGTON -- Amtrak officials said Union Station in downtown Washington was evacuated due to some type of smoke condition. Officials said diesel locomotive smoke coming through the luggage room caused the precautionary evacuation just after 6 p.m. Fans were used to blow the smoke out of Union Station. The evacuation ended after about a half hour. Trains were delayed for 25 minutes during the evacuation, but regular service has resumed.

Jury awards $24M to Pa. men burned after climbing rail car Associated Press PHILADELPHIA - A federal jury awarded $24.2 million to two men who were severely burned by electrical wires when they trespassed onto railroad property and climbed atop a rail car. Jeffrey Klein and Brett Birdwell, who were 17 at the time of the accident, sued Amtrak and Norfolk Southern Corp. after being burned by a 12,500-volt electrical wire in Lancaster in August 2002. In their lawsuit, they argued that the companies should have placed warning signs alerting people to the wires, which power locomotives. After an 11-day...

I just returned from an extended trip on Amtrak, Houston to Anaheim Ca. .. I wanted to take a slow boat to China, in order to extend the time I had to spend with my son before dropping him off at college, sniff (but as they say, that is another story).. Slow boats weren't available so I took the next slowest form of transportation, a train, and we loved every minute.. It has been years since I took a real train ride, my son had never had the pleasure.. I thought it would be a great time to slow down...

All Aboard Fiscal Conservatism Good sense on Amtrak funding. By Joseph Vranich On Friday, some ostensibly conservative senators may vote to give record amounts of money to Amtrak through subsidies and another loan bailout. They would not if they would only read “What Is Government Waste?” from the Taxpayers for Common Sense, which provides the following benchmarks for the merit of a government program: 1. If it doesn’t work, don’t fund it. Amtrak is a financial wreck that comes nowhere near the promises Congress made when it created the quasi-public corporation in 1970. According to the Americans for Tax Reform,...

Daughter Wanted To Save Money On Shipping Dad's Body CHICAGO -- Police said a suburban Chicago woman traveling on Amtrak with her ailing father waited up to 23 hours and about 1,000 miles to tell authorities that the man died on the train. The Cook County, Ill., medical examiner said 80-year-old Daniel Stepanovich, of Hammond, Ind., was pronounced dead just after midnight Tuesday. Stepanovich died from heart disease and cancer, according to an autopsy conducted by the Cook County medical examiner. His daughter told officials that her father died Sunday evening, just as the eastbound train was pulling into Glenwood...

COLLEGE STATION — A Texas A&M University student was killed while trying to jump aboard a moving train, police said. Robert Walker Best, 23, was killed early Saturday when he slipped under the train on a rail line located a few blocks from the university campus. He was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. Best, of San Antonio, would have been a fifth-year senior biology major when classes resumed Monday. Police said Best was with two male friends when the accident occurred — one a student at Blinn College and the other a University of Texas student. College Station...

<p>PN is reporting a large power outage from Washington D.C. to New York.</p> <p>Newscopter Seven is live over the Northeast Corridor tracks in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Amtrak tells Eyewitness News that just after 8:00 a.m., a major power outage hit Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line affecting trains running from Washington, D.C. through New York Penn Station to Queens.</p>

With just 25 days until the official start of hurricane season, New Orleans officials and Amtrak remain far apart on one of the most critical elements of the city's plan to evacuate residents if another storm threatens. Evacuation preparations announced by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday rely on using trains from Amtrak and buses owned by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority to transport as many as 15,000 elderly, sick and other vulnerable residents out of danger. State authorities then would take those fleeing a hurricane to shelters and other temporary quarters. But Amtrak officials say they don't...

DEBUNKING AMTRAK MYTHSThe fight over Amtrak funding has intensified, as the full House of Representatives voted to restore the $626 million cut proposed by the House Appropriations Committee, thereby bringing the Amtrak allotment back up to $1.2 billion. The budget reduction would have eliminated all money-losing long-distance routes.As the debate continues, Joseph Vranich, author of End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains  (AEI Press, November 2004) offers these facts to debunk Amtrak’s most popular myths.MYTH: America needs long distance trains. FACT: Amtrak ridership is insignificant. Amtrak ridership in 2002 totaled...

(AP) WASHINGTON Last year, President Bush proposed no federal aid for Amtrak. Its highly touted high-speed train was sidelined for months with brake problems and its president was fired. Still, the passenger railroad chugs on toward its 35th birthday Monday. To mark the occasion, a group of analysts who have followed Amtrak's woes over the years will gather in Washington to discuss what critics call Amtrak's "35 years of subsidies, waste and deception." "Amtrak keeps making promises that things would get better, one promise after another," said Joseph Vranich, a former Amtrak spokesman and former member of the Amtrak Reform...

Amtrak service on both north and southbound tracks has come to a halt after a bridge support was damaged in Rocky Mount Wednesday evening. -- Until the repairs are made, no rail traffic north or southbound can happen south of Rocky Mount. All trains between Florida and Rocky Mount will be cancelled as a result, as well as any trains in northern areas headed south of Rocky Mount. There is no current estimate on the number of trains affected.

"This isn't going to make me boycott Amtrak even though I have a choice (could fly United from Newark I guess), because I think that's exactly what G.W. Bush wants. I believe that yesterday's episode was part of a plot to piss off would-be Amtrak riders, make them switch over to the airlines, let ridership fall and the perpetual Amtrak operating deficit widen, and then G.W. will say, "See, we tried our best, but people just don't want to ride the train" and justify taking away the proposed $900 million subsidy. Amtrak employees, and anybody who prefers to use Amtrak...

SACRAMENTO - New Amtrak president David Hughes came to Sacramento to meet and greet last week, according to a story in the Sacramento Bee, and, the newspaper said, Hughes' arrival was a fitting one: His train from the San Francisco Bay area arrived a half-hour late. According to Union Pacific - which owns and controls the tracks - the train was held up for track maintenance and freight trains. That's nothing new, regular train riders say. UP long has made it clear to Amtrak and other rail lines: Freight first, passengers second. Increasing congestion on the rails is a national...

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - A trainload of frustrated passengers has been stuck on an Amtrak train stranded in a patch of woods in south Georgia for more than 24 hours. Amtrak Train 98 has been stalled near Georgia's border with Florida while engineers wait for a derailed CSX freight train to be removed. Meanwhile, the train's passengers - including many cash-strapped families headed home from vacations - are getting frustrated. "We're stuck in the woods," said Eleanor Meyer. "People have ran out of money buying food. This is unbelievable. You have to run to different cars because certain cars have...

Report: Air Marshals to Guard Trains Wednesday, December 14, 2005 WASHINGTON — Federal air marshals will expand their work beyond airplanes, launching counterterror surveillance at train stations and other mass transit facilities in a test program this week, according to a published report. Teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers will fan out to bus and train stations, ferries, and mass transit facilities across the country to "counter potential criminal terrorist activity in all modes of transportation," The Washington Post reported on its Web site Tuesday night, quoting documents from the Transportation Security Administration. The Post said...

WASHINGTON - Amtrak's president was fired Wednesday by the company's board of directors, who said David Gunn did not drive the debt-laden rail service fast enough toward major changes. Democrats criticized Gunn's ouster and questioned whether the firing was legal, contending it was part of a Bush administration effort to kill national rail service. As Amtrak's president and chief executive, Gunn struggled to maintain service amid a sinking financial picture and a push by the White House and some in Congress to transform the railroad into a group of companies offering regional service. Gunn was offered the chance to resign....

Amtrak's board called a meeting for Wednesday and plans to fire President David Gunn, according to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Gunn has clashed with the Bush administration since assuming the post in 2002. He has said Amtrak can't survive without federal subsidies while the administration has pushed to eliminate them. The board scheduled a meeting for 2 p.m. and plans to fire Gunn, Schumer told The Associated Press, citing "a very high and reliable source." Schumer called Gunn's removal "a crushing blow to Amtrak's hopes for success and reform," and praised him as "a brilliant manager." Gunn, who came to...

WASHINGTON -- Amtrak's board of directors on Wednesday fired President David Gunn, saying the debt-laden rail carrier needs "a leader with vision and experience." Gunn has struggled to maintain Amtrak service amid a sinking financial picture and a push by the White House and some in Congress to recraft it as a group of regional inter-city companies. "Amtrak's future now requires a different type of leader who will aggressively tackle the company's financial, management and operational challenges," Amtrak Chairman David Laney said in a statement. "The board approved a strategic plan in April that provides a blueprint for a stronger...