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Where? What trains? As far as I've ever experienced, it's all cafe car, where you have to get in line and order, and the attendant has to mess around with the payment.

The Portland section of the Empire Builder serves a cold dinner to sleeper passengers leaving from Portland. I've heard that it's supposed to be actually pretty good, so anything from a deli might not be much better. For the rest of the trip to Chicago, the Builder has traditional dining in...

There's a difference between an Amtrak long-distance train where people are on board for hours or days and a short corridor trip, especially if one can pick up stuff at the departing station. Same for airlines. I usually fly Southwest out of BWI. Essentially no food service, except for drinks...

One thing to see in Boston, if medical history interests you, is the Ether Dome, at Massachusetts General Hospital. This is a circa 1820 surgical amphitheater where the first public demonstration of ether anesthesia was held in 1846. The also have a cool museum of medical history located just...

Boston hotel rates are funny and highly seasonal. I've been staying at the Marriott Courtyard by North Station on my last few trips. The rate in the summer was close to $600 a night. I stayed there last March, and when I booked it in the early fall, the rate was closer to $300 a night. Then...

Ah yes, the small-town charm of hosting the main north-south freight railway route on the east coast and having 750+ meter long PSR double-stacks, coal trains, and Hazmat rolling right through your downtown. It's bad enough in Baltimore, they're ready to spend zillions on a new outer harbor...

What town populated by sane people would fight hard to keep HAZMAT running through their downtown? I mean, we have that in Baltimore, but at least the tracks are in a tunnel, albeit a tunnel built in 1890. I'm not sure why the locals in Ashland were so opposed to a bypass, and leaving the...

There might also be an issue that the people who write the repair manuals don't have the writing skills to write manuals in clear, simple language that can be easily understood and not misunderstood. This is partly based on my experience reading various technical instructions of gizmos that...

I've been reading all the threads about all of the real meltdowns in service on Amtrak this summer, especially with the long-distance trains. (though it seems the NEC has been having its problems, too.) When I say "meltdown," I mean a train that's cancelled before or in the middle of its run...

What's the beef BNSF has with the Chargers? I saw the Empire Builder come into Seattle with a Charger in front, and that's BNSF trackage.

Yep, the only way into the Bay Area that doesn't involve a crossing of the various coast ranges is the current route used by the San Joaquins. And at the other end, there's Tehachapi Pass, and then all the current rail lines that go into the Los Angeles Basin also have to cross mountain ranges...

And what they charge for the rooms has to bring in enough money to cover the costs of providing the food. So either way you pay for it, either by higher room prices or lousy "free" food. And I've stayed at lots of motels that don't have any food service, or have a separate chain restaurant...

They've been doing something like that on the Crescent and the Cardinal for a few years now. Anyway, the vast majority of passengers on Amtrak long-distance trains are not traveling "36-65 hours." In fact, there's no Amtrak long distance train that has a 65 hour running time (at least as...

When the Capitol Limited had a lot of mail/express in the 1990s and early 2000s, we always boarded in Washington on the lower level, with the mail cars and roadrailers trailing on behind into the !st st. tunnel.

What would today's NEC, Keystone, and Empire Service be like if the private railroads (PRR, NYC and New Haven) had invested in improvements in the 1950s instead of letting things go to seed? The PRR finished its electrification in the 1930s, and after 20 years of hard use, maybe it would have...

There you go. The property tax thing is a big deal. Ownership of the tracks by the government or some sort of non-profit entity might make that fixed cost go away. Airports don't pay property taxes. The state highway departments and drivers don't pay property taxes (and I think the gas taxes...

See? The only investment being done on the railroads was with government funds.

I very frequently ride 6 straight hours BAL-BOS on Acela First, and do quite well without a diner or a lounge. And most Acela/NER passengers are not riding the full 6-7 hours. BAL-PHL is 1:15, PHL-NYP is about the same, WAS-NYP is about 2:20, BOS-NHV is about 2 hours, NHV -NYP takes longer...

The original (current) Acelas don't have table seating, either. It doesn't seem to hurt their popularity. Remember, most riders ride less than two hours, and the current fold-out table at the seats has much more space than the fold-out table on the Amfleets. I do 6-hour Acela rides from...

One aspect of the passenger business that the mainline railroads didn't attempt to recover was that of the corridors, which in the age of autos and airplanes was actually their best chance to revitalize their business. I say this on the basis of my extensive riding of the NEC (especially the...