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Yes. Pushing the start and end times to the extremes, not serving New York City, and providing only short-distance-train amenities on board was sort of a three-strikes-and-you're-out deal. Wasn't it intended in part to capture express freight business rather than passenger business anyway? A...

Traditionally the curtains were quite thick, and had velcro on the ends, so that you could seal the curtain against the window frame front and back, and seal the two halves of the curtain together in the middle. The single brightest light source in a roomette was often the crack under the bottom...

Amtrak LD trains did indeed show similar results, on those few occasions (all more than 40 years ago now) when the marketing, reasonable fares, and sufficient equipment were there. Just about every time there was an increase in service, the increase in ridership exceeded the increase in...

I agree, a Chicago-Phoenix service would be a fine addition to the system, and if I were going to add a western Auto-Train, that's the first set of endpoints I would consider for it (in the Northwest there are a ton of Arizona snowbirds, but there might be even more in the Midwest.) Yes, it's a...

The fire is still about 4 miles from the highway - and its normal tendency will be to spread uphill and downwind, while the highway and tracks are downhill and upwind. If you are curious where exactly the fire perimeter is, you can try the Montana Department of Natural Resources fire map...

It's a curious coincidence that that is one of rather few state line crossings that is marked with a railside sign today: see the white sign at right, in the attached Google Street View shot of the place where WA-290 turns into ID-53. Cant make it out in this view, but if memory serves, the...

The National Limited was one of a few trains that had no sleeper at all for a while in the late 1977-early 1978 period. It did get its sleeper back sometime in the summer of 1978, but the transcontinental sleeper was not restored.

It's usually the 3rd weekend of June but moved a week later for some reason this year. If music is your thing, they also have one of the very few alphorn clubs in North America (but you may miss them too: they play Saturday evenings all summer.) No matter what week you go there will be...

Xanterra would much rather see you pay the big money to ride their red-bus tour all the way across the park, than only pay for a ride to St Mary and then use the free shuttle. I think they quite deliberately don't help you make this connection.

The east side of Glacier is pretty and has several large lakes (Lower Medicine, Upper and Lower St. Mary, and Sherburne) with mountain backdrops. The Many Glacier Hotel is at the head of the last, at the end of a side road, in a bowl surrounded on all sides. I expect there are tour bus options...

The main thing that changed is that when they only served meals to sleeper passengers, three-quarters of the dining car sat idle. (I don't know if it's always that way -- but the last 3 times I rode the builder, we had a 16-seat dining car. The four tables nearest the sleepers. With the...

There are places to wye the train. But Minot is the crew change point -- and I would guess they didn't want to send a Minot crew westward, have them die in the middle of nowhere, and need to bring out a van with a second crew to go back east.

While I am not saying I think it's a good idea... that is how the Inter-American (St Louis to Laredo) ran from inception in 1974 until it was extended to Chicago in 1977. It was intended that the Inter-American receive transfers both from the National Limited and from a morning train from...

One of the two coaches? Yikes. I thought it still had three. No wonder it was packed. My first Amtrak trip was in May of 1986... when the Starlight had 3 sleepers and 5 coaches (one of them a coach-snackbar to take some pressure off the lower level lounge)... and some people were sitting in the...

It is perhaps not crazy, if you posit that this new train would carry a mix of short-distance travelers and non-time-sensitive land cruisers, but rather few people using it for 15- or 20-hour trips. It might be possible that this would reduce freight interference too. Shockingly much slower...

Pretty much everywhere in North America allows 10'8" on freight cars. That has to be reduced if the cars are very long and overhang a lot on curves: if you went to a Talgo-type design with a truck every 50 feet you could have the extra 2 inches. Possibly if you had 85-foot cars with the trucks...

Here are the condensed timetables for summer 1979 and 1980, for anyone who hasn't seen them: at least decent times at all the major cities. Until the fall of 1979, the Super Continental was still going via North Bay and Capreol, and the two trains swapped cars in Winnipeg. After that, combined...

An excellent plan. A train a day between each of the major western cities (that is, daily service from Vancouver to both Calgary/Regina and Edmonton/Saskatoon), plus day trains Calgary-Edmonton and Regina-Saskatoon is pretty much my idea of "minimal adequate service." I'd love to see a day train...

The current definition in GCOR (applies to BNSF and UP and many western shortlines): "One or more engines coupled, with or without cars, displaying a marker, and authorized to operate on a main track." The definition on most other roads is similar. So, there is no requirement for more than one...

I seem to remember there being fairly extensive focus groups done when the Viewliner prototypes were built (as well as some type of market research that said the traditional 10-to-5 or 10-to-6 mix of roomettes to bedrooms was wrong.) Of course I don't know how they recruited them - maybe it was...