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Like ehbowen, I only enjoy flying if I am in the front seat (which I was a lot, in small planes, 2012-2016, but haven't been more recently for a variety of reasons.) The last time I enjoyed commercial flying was in early 2002. The first few months after 9/11 were lovely, with people paying...

The Empire Builder does very well at drawing passengers in Montana, and there is already movement toward additional Chicago-St. Paul and Spokane-Seattle service, so it's not entirely crazy from a ridership perspective. The senators (and the Authority and a good portion of the public) are under...

So do I. But powerful senators leaning on Amtrak is one way that some "interesting" additions to the map actually did happen in the past. Getting Risch and Crapo onboard is big news. Been a long time since anyone in Idaho politics paid attention to Amtrak. (Their predecessors paid no interest...

I somehow suspect that if you could turn back the clock a thousand years and see real live knights in action, you'd see a handful of chivalrous gentlemen, and a whole bunch of guys raping and pillaging for their own amusement.

The pay is still quite good --- good enough that at the community college where I worked pre-covid, it was impossible to get any over-the-road trucker to give up trips to teach our CDL class. There was a huge demand, a year-long waiting list to take the class, but a shortage of instructors. We...

Does anyone happen to know if the actual requirement from BNSF is 3 units across the high plains or 2 units across the Cascades (and they carry the extra unit with them rather than needing a place to park it in Seattle and Spokane)? Am not aware of a similar requirement for 2 units between...

It does seem startlingly low. But one good thing about desert climate is that there's a lot less trouble with ties rotting, ballast washing away, and trees growing on the ROW than in a wet climate. I have walked quite a few roadbeds in southern Idaho and eastern Montana, 40 years after...

I'd be fine with just two major things (both already mentioned.) Run the trains on time, and adequately equip them. It seems that the last time Amtrak had adequate equipment was in 1971, and has been chronically short of everything, especially sleeping cars, continuously since 1972. They ran...

Interesting video. It has really grown! In the years I lived in Fairbanks (ending during the winter of 2010-11), if I ever saw the winter train, it consisted of a single baggage car and coach, and I had the impression you could typically count the passengers on your fingers.

There are a whole lot of routes where 8-hours-apart works better than 12-hours-apart. Oftentimes it comes from thinking of which cities you want to serve in daylight. If I added a second LSL frequency, it would be quite deliberately "daytime Chicago-Cleveland on one train, daytime Buffalo-New...

I don't think you will find local breakers in Superliner roomettes. I have had my roomette outlet go out in the middle of the night, when I had nothing except a cellphone charger plugged in. The next morning the attendant reset a breaker behind the master panel downstairs by the door, after I...

Yes, a total of six Heritage Fleet cars there. A search on another forum revealed their histories. Besides the high-level coach dorm, it included two coaches, a sleeper, a baggage dorm, and a buffet-grill-diner type of thing. Web videos will show clips of crews crawling around inside several of...

It is normal for the 2nd sleeper to appear and disappear from one day to the next in shoulder season. In winter it is usually absent. The 2nd Seattle coach runs somewhat less often than the 2nd Seattle sleeper -- in a pre-covid year it ran most of the summer, but essentially never in winter or...

Can confirm that liters per 100 km is the standard in Canada, and I was (until your mention of Taiwan) under the impression it was standard worldwide-outside-the-US.

This is rather ironic --- in that there were quite a few passenger trains running 90 or 100 right after WWII, until new government regulations required them to slow down in the early 50s. One has to wonder if there would have been a serious attempt at faster service in the 50s without that. As...

Flathead Tunnel training exercise photos, part 3 of 3

Flathead Tunnel training exercise photos, cont'd

A question came up in the Empire Builder wreck thread (Joplin MT, 25 September 2021) as to whether rural fire departments responding to a wreck were likely to have any experience with Amtrak equipment. I wanted to post an affirmative answer, at least for rural western Montana, in a place that...

It will vary from department to department --- but in many areas, they do. About three years ago, we had a very interesting exercise in my quiet little corner of Montana, where BNSF and Amtrak parked a couple of Superliners inside the Flathead Tunnel and set off smoke bombs inside the cars, and...

More metric weirdness: It was noted upthread that in the USA we often sell liquor in 750 mL bottles. Even at the duty free store right at the border. But if you cross the Canadian border you are allowed to bring.... 1140 mL of liquor with you. Why 1.14 liters, about 38.5 US fluid ounces? One...