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Only hundreds of billions is quite a lowball estimate. $5M per mile gets you to $100B. In an uninhabited area where you already have the ROW, you can perhaps lay a second track next to existing track for that price. If you have to acquire new land in an urban area it is a whooole lot more than...

Concorde could maintain just shy of11psi differential pressure (6000 feet inside, 60000 feet outside) so could have maintained sea level pressure to somewhere between 30000 and 35000 if it wanted. I am not aware of any other. There is a large weight penalty for making the airplane able to...

Yes, they are marked as Coach and Sleeper, and they have numbers on each end (32000s are sleepers, 34000s are coaches.) The numbers will also distinguish S1 from S2 - I find that easier than trucks. Some but not all of the sleepers have half of the middle window blocked on the top level.

Funny how all these expensive improvements to accommodate a second frequency are needed now, when that route had a second frequency for two-thirds of the time Amtrak has been in existence.

When the days are short, I would say east is better for Glacier Park, west better for Cascades(7) or Columbia River Gorge(27). In summer, you can see good things both ways. If you're a real diehard for scenery.... book your trip for the full moon, and keep your nose glued to the window all...

There is a balloon track in Elko. (I do not know whether it was used to turn the CZ or not.) Once upon a time, UP would have felt obligated to get the passenger train over the road via the detour, just like they will be doing with their freight trains. That time seems to be long past.

I gather that in 1977 that wasn't intended as an insult. It has been, every time I've said it or heard it, in more recent decades. They certainly could have been worse - as the airlines have shown us with every new remodel :) But after riding both Heritage and Superliner I always thought of...

Correct. Newport News was part of the national network from the beginning (that lovely little one-car second section of the Cardinal that split off in Charlottesville, as well as the Colonial.) There was always some weirdness with running empty cars to and from NPN -- when they first added the...

Ever tried to build a power plant? There is a certain political contingent that thinks having the private sector build these and then sell the power to public utilities is magically better than having public utilities build them. There have been two big nuclear plant construction projects in...

In the moderately ancient past, I rode on a CZ and a LSL that wyed and then backed into Chicago. I had the impression that, at one time, it was their normal procedure to keep the noise and fumes away from the passengers. I haven't been that far east in quite a while - I gather from this thread...

That would be a lovely run for the passengers, who presumably would disembark at East Glacier for a land tour of the national park. The whole trip from Spokane to East Glacier deserves to be seen in daylight. But it would pose some big logistical challenges for the equipment; East Glacier's...

Almost all of the roadbed is still there. You can drive almost all of it on the west side (bypassing a short segment west of Riflesight Notch.) On the east side you can drive up to the Yankee Doodle Lake/Jenny Lake area and walk the rest of the grade, with a bypass around the caved-in tunnel...

When Amtrak was first formed, railroads were "paid" in stock for buying in to the network and for equipment they turned over. It never paid dividends and was never traded on the open market. There was a proposal over a decade ago for Amtrak to officially buy those shares back and retire them. I...

It is a beautiful area. I went too early in the year the one time I visited by car/foot, and only got to follow it up to about the 10500 foot level from each side. It is one of three or four abandoned passes in Colorado that I need to get back to before my already-diminished hiking ability...

I associate "Tannoy" with WWII-era sound systems - the "now hear this" type of annoucement to all hands on a ship or all prisoners in a POW camp. I was not aware that the brand name had persisted to the present day, or that the word was still in common use in Britain. I've only seen it in...

The rumor mills in Montana are buzzing overtime with a story to this effect today. Supposedly there is to be a public announcement "soon." In the meantime, the closest we have to official confirmation is a fuzzy screenshot of an email which apparently went to MRL employees today. It is no...

I've never had motion sickness aboard the train. When I was younger, I had no post-ride effects either. As an adult, I can walk just fine when I disembark, and hardly notice anything weird if I am outside and moving --- but when sitting or lying, I have the mildly disorienting sensation that...

The Uintah got to its intended destination, and yes, most of the abandoned roadbed is now a road. County Roads 4 and 201 follow the old roadbed up West Salt Creek except for a few washouts where the road has moved up onto the hillside, and then up and over Baxter Pass and down the other side to...

If all of the senators do that, we may get a national network. This sort of letter is the closest thing to multi-state cooperation in support of Amtrak (or just about anything else, in this part of the country) we've seen in a while. Re the 2022 election: of these 8, only Crapo, Hoeven, and...

The news is not all bad, re the trackage situation. MRL has been investing heavily ever since its creation. There is more Class 4 track now on the NCH route than at just about any time since 1979. Places described as 40 or 45mph track in previous studies are now running freight at 60. As for...