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The airline industry runs at a 2% to 3% profit margin, quite a contrast to freight rail. On Bloomberg radio guest analyst Richard Aboulafia kept citing that figure when describing the airliner manufacturing industry (available without a subscription as a podcast episode, sorry readers). He says...

it's especially spare at Raleigh. Two trains a day to get on the NEC. Both northbounds leave in the morning and both southbounds arrive in the evening. Buffalo - NYP has a considerably better schedule. That RGH schedule squelched me when I wanted to go from RVR to RGH for a meeting, wich would...

League of American Bicyclists has a task force and is collecting a survey. (Guess the name League of American Wheelmen went out.) You can take a fold-up bike only on the Flyer. It runs all Superliners now, says Wikipedia. Some Amfleet I's, and I don't know what else, have bike racks, which take...

Wonder if Alabama would have supported it if it went to the capital Montgomery instead of Mobile.

Also note the winter is the rainy season directly on the West Coast. The further north you go, the more it rains. L.A. and San Diego are more or less beach weather. In Seattle people ignore light rains. A rainy spell typically runs a few days.

In the winter, people driving across the country prefer the more southern route depending on starting and ending points. I don't know how people feel about winter considerations on Amtrak's three cross-country routes. Not considering the season, the southern route ranks last in most people's...

While I agree, it's also true connections are a drag, especially from the west. And many people want to leave New York at 6:30am. It's the busiest time at airports, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know what they were thinking in 1981, other than WV Senator Byrd's intervention, but the Wikipedia...

The Cap/Cardinal has a parallel discussion going on here: https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/capitol-limited-discussion-2023-q4-2024.86126 For PHL-CHI, the Cardinal is 4 to 5 hours slower than the Cap or Lake Shore connection. For CHI-PHL, it's 3 to 6.5 hours slower.

The La. politicians seem onboard for BR, but such things have happened before.

That's a good question. Since no one has answered yet, I did a google search. High speed Rail Alliance, Feb. 2022. "The cars are being introduced at a rate of 8 cars per month starting with the Chicago – St. Louis Lincoln service then expanded to other routes as more cars become available."...

Louisiana and Mississippi supporting Amtrak is huge. A couple of notes: The Miss. Gulf Coast became such an economic engine in the 1990s that it got its own area code, in a low-density state with only one code. The lowest density states in the South are Ark. (58 per sq. mi.), Miss. (63), Ala...

With onboard equipment, flag stops could be considered an ADA improvement. Maybe even a source of grants. One of the views, by the way, out of the train window between WAS and the Long Bridge to Virginia is the nine story DC Department on Disability Services building.

A capital idea! The Cardinal used to have dome cars, and it was a shame when this scenic route went to single level, so it could extend to New York. In the 1980s I first heard it was hard to get a ticket in the summer, when it runs the New River Gorge in daylight hours. There's no way to see...

These roomettes also have storage space in the big area that extends over the center of the train, accessed by standing on the seats.

The Amtrak OIG reports are worth looking at, summarized in the Semiannnual Report to Congress. It's a pretty quick read, since the first 27 pages of the 52 are where you get the story. Whether getting $140m back from fraud is a good sign or a bad sign, I don't know. The report is a mix of cases...

The railroads seem to like big cash for making the improvements. Brightline and state-supported rail seem to work that way, though I suppose Brightline managed the work more directly?

I can't figure out if it's a deadlock on the Mobile city council (requiring a super-majority vote), or that negotiations with all parties are close to a resolution.

Cutting a nice long rail for jointed track, at a steel mill in 1938. :confused: At 24:52, https://www.c-span.org/video/?450280-1/steel-mans-servant-1938

The "rolling coal" video shows some distress in that P42. But it's encouraging to see the new Chargers heading out like clockwork.

For Washington Union Station during the war, see the 37 photographs by Gordon Parks here: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/coll/item/2004667446/ As background, maybe this is common knowledge, but it was new to me: https://www.american-rails.com/world.html