Posted on 01/22/2019 6:48:06 AM PST by Kaslin
PITTSBURGH -- For nearly a quarter of a century, Amtrak's Capitol Limited route has taken me from my beloved hometown to Washington, D.C. Sometimes for fun, almost always for work, the experience is never the same.
And if you are a rail lover, it is always about the experience.
There is only one train that leaves the Pittsburgh station every day, and that is at 5:20 a.m. (which means your alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m.). Thanks to sharing the line with freight, that almost always means a 20- to 90-minute departure delay. Then there's the nearly eight-hour trip, twice what it takes me to drive there. Flying would only take an hour.
So why ride the rails? For starters, there's the joy of looking out your window to swaths of the countryside you'd never see if you were flying over them or cruising along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
There are miles of old industrial sites in places like Braddock and McKeesport, Pennsylvania, some filled with ghosts of the past. If you are curious enough, you look up what they were as you pass them by and learn something new about the cities and towns that built this country, as well as the people who built it.
You also see a remarkable amount of them being reused or repurposed as new companies chase the ghosts away. Rebirth among the ashes is the story of America.
The post office in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, is charming. The decay of the old brewery in Smithton, Pennsylvania, is hauntingly beautiful. The rapids of the Youghiogheny in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, are breathtaking. So are the sleepy little towns like Hyndman, Pennsylvania, and Paw Paw, West Virginia, where the long-long-short-long warning whistle of the train at each crossing echoes off the mountains that surround these valley towns.
What happens inside the train matters as well. One of the true charming parts of the ride is the dining car experience. It isn't just the warm, buttery grits and the crisp bacon. It is the people you meet because of the communal dining.
It was there on the Friday before former President Barack Obama's first inauguration where I met African-Americans traveling from as far as California by train to attend his inauguration. From veterans of the civil rights movement to young people caught up in his aspirational rhetoric, we were all sitting, conversing, sharing stories and experiences.
Last Monday, when I boarded the train for the first time this winter, I discovered the warm, buttery grits were no longer an option, replaced by a tub of yogurt and granola -- in a box. Dinner now came in a box. So did lunch. Gone were the crisp white tablecloths, and gone were the people who always cheerfully made whatever meal you wanted.
My first reaction was: If I were to want to be treated the way I am on an airline, I would take one. I took to Twitter and Facebook to express my disappointment in my best mom tone.
A call to Amtrak at first met deflection. As is the norm with spokesmen these days, they declined to talk and tried to insist I put my questions in email.
However, persistence, done courteously, sometimes does prevail. Apparently, I wasn't the only objector. Amtrak returned to hot meals by this past Wednesday.
The crisp, white tablecloths and the jobs have not returned. In fact, a month ago, employees held a small rally in D.C. to protest the dining service changes and the threat of outsourcing some 1,700 union food and beverage jobs.
Change is inevitable. Change is important. But it is often spurred by erroneous assumptions.
As Peggy Noonan commented on Twitter: "Amtrak's new management thinks trains are planes. A lot of us are on the train because we don't want to be on the plane."
Notably, Amtrak's new president, Richard Anderson, is the former chief executive of Delta Air Lines. There are a lot of things about rail service that can and should be modernized. But there are also some that shouldn't.
Anderson's next course of action should be a trip around the country by rail to listen to his devoted customers and learn who they are and why they ride. He and his team might realize what shouldn't be changed.
>>>A bucket list goal of mine has been to experience the Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint train scenes from North by Northwest. Is that possible in 2019?<<<
I think Eva is still alive so you may be able to pull it off.
I say this about libraries and librarians.
There is little my local library can do, that I cannot do at home.
And both the libraries within commuting distance have collections that have taken a distinct leftist turn.
However they are usually warm friendly places to visit.
Now instead of the quick email when something is overdue, I get a heavy handed computer generated email with all sorts of threats.
I am looking into some other way to feed the reading habit.
Sad after all these years.
but food service is not offered on all runs.
I see your point; still a long-A ride. And for some, I guess, that’s the whole point.
I took a ride decades ago and it sucked, and also took twice as long as driving. In my case it was about twice the distance here. The sharing of tracks with freight not only doubles the times (at least), it also gives a very rough ride.
For 98% of its tracks (and with bus lines running up and down the Northeast, one might be able to claim 100%), Amtrak is simply a government-sponsored playtoy for rich people who have a lot of free time.
“I would NEVER have guessed 8 hours by rail from Pittsburg to DC. I’d have thought half that at most.”
It probably would have been prior to WWII. Maybe even closer to 3 hours.
There was 120 mph passenger service between NYC and Chicago as early as the 1910 decade. Trains between other major cities would have been similar.
But that requires improved roadbed and freight trains don’t. And railroads have been out of the passenger train business since about 1960.
With planes and autos as competition there isn’t the high volume of rail passengers to warrant the investment in high speed roadbed. And freight trains, owned by the same railroads that own the tracks, get priority over Amtrak.
My wife and I took the Auto-Train 4 times with our last trip in 2011. Great trip in all respects. I took the train in November. Sadly a solo trip. Things have changed. Dining experience was way below past. No table cloths, pay for dinner and wine, no table cloths. As always it was a full train. It will be my last trip. Just not the same experience.
Just so you know, Salena Zito is a female.
I will oversimplify thing then go into a little more detail. In North America and Australia intercity trains run on the spare capacity of the freight rail roads, in Europe they run freight on the spare capacity of the passenger system. Passengers rarely if ever make the railroads money on ticket sales.
Prior to ~1960 many railroads in the US considered the passenger trains to be in part a way of advertising their freight services. Even today Brightline plans on using the passenger tickets as a loss leader, and actually making their profits from renting out retail space in the station.
The time it takes the train to travel a route is a function of length of route, track speed on that route, and how many stops the train has on that route.
I have taken 3 recent trips on Amtrak. Empire Builder to Chicago twice, and California Zephyr from Chicago to Salt Lake City. I loved all three trips. The scenery was gorgeous. Well worth the trip. The food service was great.
I have to agree with the article. You don’t take Amtrak for the speed of travel. You take it for the relaxing atmosphere and the travel experience. If I had more time I would take the train more often.
“The time it takes the train to travel a route is a function of length of route, track speed on that route, and how many stops the train has on that route.”
Well the roadbed dictates the upper speed limit. High speed passenger service requires banking and other upgrades that freight service doesn’t need and railroads aren’t willing to spend money on.
Railroads lost their near monopoly on long distance travel in the years after WWII and the whole passenger train ecosystem collapsed. If Brightline can figure out a way to make some of it work again then that would be great. To get really fast travel they have to eliminate grade crossings and bank the tracks. Maybe Florida East Coast is willing to do that.
Try these on for size:
1. Unions
2. America's urban areas are too distant from each other
3. Americans prefer to have a vehicle that takes them ALL the way to their destination, not simply within a few miles.
4. Government subsidies
That’s good info; thanks.
ping
“There should be a Waffle House Car on every Train.”
That’s effectively what the old-style, aka “heavyweight”, dining cars were, with about a third of the space being the galley-style kitchen and the rest was the service/dining area. I’ll be 64 next month and I got to experience that once in my life. It was either just after AMTRAK took over passenger trains or just before the change. The service was essentially what you can see in old movies with black men as table waiters and a mostly black staff in the kitchen. I wish I could recall if it was the summer of 1970 or 1971, as AMTRAK took over in May 1971.
That is what I first thought of!! Such a great movie.
I think a trip like that wouldn't be TOO bad the first time if you were expecting poor service but interesting, out of the way scenery. But one could probably do it by car for just a bit more money.
We’re Taking The Train
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nANtbPef8M8
“7 times as long as flying and costs almost twice as much”
“What is a ‘yute’?”
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