Recent content by Siegmund

IMO that's a sleeper-specific view. Having done most my traveling by coach unless an employer was paying for the room... I will take the view and legroom of a Superliner coach seat, and dinner in a Superliner diner, over AmAnything. By a mile. The SSL is nice -- but I enjoyed my trips on the old...

This Montana Free Press article characterizes it as "hundreds of tons," which is believable (for a fairly small value of 'several' like 2 or 3) if a number of loaded hoppers overturned. Bears drunk on fermented corn is more than just a rumor, and is a perennial point of contention between...

Much higher than anywhere else in the country (or world) that I'm aware of. The most I've ever paid for an intercity coach trip on Amtrak or on a trip to Europe was around 25 cents a mile. Re "how many cars you can have on a train," Amtrak's traditional maximum was 18 (though I have seen photos...

Amtrak still called them brakemen at least into the 1990s, long after their role on a passenger train had become assisting the conductor with rather rare involvement with brakes and flags. Does anyone know offhand when they were renamed?

Long segments of BNSF, including most of the Flathead Tunnel to Marias Pass stretch, use concrete (and has used it for a quite a long time now.) So it's not as if concrete can't handle a northern climate, or can't handle heavy fast-moving freight.

Yes: both NYC and Pennsylvania sent through sleepers on the California Zephyr, City of San Francisco, Super Chief, and City of Los Angeles. The attached snips from their 1955 timetables show the Super Chief connection being carried by the 20th Century and Broadway, the other three by the...

They are an example of just how easy it is to make good bilevel designs if you're allowed to go to 17 feet tall. Which works on almost all US mainline routes (double-stacked containers are 18 to 20 feet)... but not in Chicago Union Station. I was disappointed that lowering the tracks by 1 foot...

This sounds like an upgraded or refurbished arrangement to me. My impression was that each block of 5 roomettes was on its own circuit, and I have had the circuit go out in my room while I wasn't doing anything but charging a phone. If that happened in the middle of the night, the power stayed...

A post on another forum reported a lounge on the Heartland Flyer this week, for 25th anniversary celebrations this month.

If it ever does come back I think it's considerably more likely to be via Ft. Worth and Atlanta than via the pre-Katrina route.

It ought to come with the right to run about 20, even if only 8 of the slots would be used right away. A well-scheduled nearly-level double track line has a shockingly high capacity, if dispatched well. I watched trains whiz past every 5 or 10 minutes on double track, so many places in Europe...

Not often. The northernmost tier of the Downwind 48 (I never could stand "lower 48" when I lived in Alaska) has been able to see the aurora a time or two per month, usually just for an hour at a time not all night, this past couple years. It's not something you can count on visiting ND or MT...

That is very close to how my girlfriend described the sleeper when she got to look inside it. Made it very clear she expects any trips she takes we me to only be in coach. (Which is fine by me - the only times I've ever had a roomette were when my work paid for the trip, and I could persuade...

Mini-nitpick: Minnesota sponsored Amtrak service from 1975 to 1985, one round trip a day to Duluth. There was much variety in the schedule over the years, sometimes timed to connect with the Empire Builder sometimes not, and for a time it ran all the way from Chicago to Duluth (only the part...

Turns out to be our mistake, not yours: a closer look at the satellite photo, and at the street view, shows that the wye has been disconnected from the main, though it could be reconnected if the switches were re-laid. If you're going to go to that much trouble, might as well build a new track...