Search results

Underwater. The ex-town of Danville was drowned by the Kentucky Dam. The lift bridge in question is about 50 miles south of the dam. Search for "Benton-Houston Ferry, TN" in Google Maps, or grab the .kmz file from Mississippi Rails to display the L&N in your Google Earth, and follow it east...

I guess if the interior of a business class coach is just a regular coach interior, they could be assigned anywhere.

Not exactly good news for the Coast Starlight, if that equipment deadhead eastbound, is it?

I think it might have been considered a Mini in the United States as recently as the early or middle 80s. Look at a random picture of a 1970s Broadway Limited or Silver Meteor, and count carefully to see if Amtrak was enforcing the 18-car length limit or not the day the picture was taken... I...

As far as I am aware, no: the two East-West routes diverged in Medicine Hat; you either went to Calgary, Banff, Revelstoke, etc, or you went to Lethbridge, Cranbrook, Nelson, etc. There was a Calgary-Lethbridge local that was downgraded to an RDC in the mid-50s and removed soon after. There was...

I have heard the phrase "Calgary Airport to Banff" kicked around before --- leaving people to imagine rails magically appearing along Stoney Trail and bypassing both downtown traffic jams and slow riverbank S-curves, which I don't think will ever happen --- but not heard anyone actually commit...

I have to observe that the two Calgary-area families of my acquaintance go west to various places between Canmore and Lake Louise to hike and ski much more often than they go to Edmonton; one goes almost every weekend. Of course they need to access different trailheads every week - public...

If you can get to West Glacier there will be shuttles to take you across to East Glacier. But it varies year to year whether there is a bus from Kalispell to West Glacier or not. (The Park Service pays for service inside the park, Flathead county pays - or doesnt - for service west of the park.)...

Welcome aboard. I grew up in southern Idaho, long enough ago to have boarded the Pioneer in Pocatello in the dead of night a few times. But moved away shortly before the train did too...

And that is exactly what Amtrak did, for several decades. They turned the people over faster than that, though - the 4 seatings were 45 minutes apart. They really hustled at dinnertime. And they did it because that many people wanted to eat -- 3 seatings with every seat taken did not meet the...

It's not so much "attracted to the tracks," or even "attracted to free food", as "prone to alcoholism." Piles of grain left to rot beside the tracks will ferment. Between fixating on the...ah...unusual food source, and impaired judgment, they tend not to get out of the way the way they normally...

Re the pressurization thing: As mentioned, commercial flights very often are pressurized to only 8,000 feet (it's very expensive, in dollars and pounds, to make an airplane strong enough to maintain a larger pressure difference) --- so perhaps the most relevant detail, re the CZ, is that it is...

The old VIA schedules can be found online a few places. Grabbing a schedule before and after 1990 at random: Summer 1989: VIA Northlander: Northbound, Toronto 2125, North Bay 0230, Cochrane 0930, Kapuskasing 1145. Southbound, 1740, Cochrane 2005, North Bay 0310, Toronto 0810. ONR Northland...

Yes... what they didn't ever do, as far as I know, is put any through cars from the US onto a train from Mexicali to Guadalajara or Mexico City. In the last pre-Amtrak official guides, the recommended route for people coming from the west coast was crossing the border at El Paso (without any...

I can only add that in the Amtrak schedules of the mid-70s, when the old Inter-American continued past San Antonio to Laredo, there was no through sleeper, but the train from Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City on NdeM was always advertised as a connecting service. I am not aware of any other place...

Can confirm that in the 'olden days' they knew how to get people in and out very efficiently. I don't remember seeing 5 dinner seatings in the diner, but I do remember 4, at 45-minute intervals, with just about every seat full. That feeds 288, and that is about how many people wanted to eat, out...

At least two possibilities come to mind: One of them is having 36-inch aisles on only one level of a bilevel car -- and perhaps having 2x1 seating on that level and 2x2 seating on the other. That might be a really handy way to ensure the availability of coach and business class, or long- and...

It was more doable when the Starlight's running time was shorter. 40 years ago, before there was a Portland section of the Builder, it was part of the regular schedule -- but at that time the Builder ran a couple hours earlier than it does now. Grabbing the summer 1979 timetable at random, I...

That's an improvement over making the closure announcement approaching Wishram (though some sleeper folks still did get handed their breakfasts halfway to Bingen-White Salmon as the attendant gathered her stuff up.)

I appreciate the confirmation that there is no excuse for closing the diner until at least an hour later than they currently do. Closing one stop prior sounds perfectly reasonable. Does any other train with a daytime arrival close as early as the Builder does, about 3½ hours before arrival by...