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Even with the northbound Adirondack restored to its regular time slot beginning Monday, capacity on the Empire Service is tighter than I can recall. As of tonight (Friday, 11/22), for Thanksgiving week travel from New York to Albany: -- Every train on Tuesday, 11/26 is completely sold out...

It looks like running the Maple Leaf and Adirondack as separate trains takes effect this weekend -- Sunday night east/southbound and Monday morning west/northbound. This is great news for through travelers on both trains, ending the ridiculous long layovers at ALB, and it also fills a big gap in...

Lots of people in the Hudson Valley north of Poughkeepsie and up into the southern edge of the Adirondacks rely on Empire Service trains from Albany, Hudson and Rhinecliff to get back and forth to NYC for business and personal reasons. The region has a huge contingent of people whose weekend...

Just learned about the Empire Service cutbacks while searching for holiday-season travel options. The plan that takes effect Nov. 11 leaves some ugly service gaps, particularly for evening departures from New York. The current 7:15p departure from NYP is advanced to 6:46p, and after that there's...

I think I recall from a visit there that the current Greenfield platform is in the area where both the north-south (Connecticut Valley) and east-west (Fitchburg/Hoosac Tunnel) lines run parallel, but it is on the far north (Conn. Valley) side. So trains coming from the west on the Hoosac Tunnel...

I don't think VIA has been running Park cars on the Ocean since they lost the use of the loop track at Halifax a couple years ago. I believe they still sometimes run unconverted Chateau cars on the Churchill train and at peak times on the Ocean, and Room A in those cars is a drawing room ("cabin...

Nowadays, the rooms in the Canadian's Park Car are Prestige rooms, meaning you need to pay for the Prestige class of service to book them. The forward-most room in the car is an accessible room so is saved for people who need it for mobility reasons. But as railiner suggests, VIA's phone agents...

So the train that rescued them was the next Quebec-bound train, due there about 4 p.m., meaning it endured a 6-hour delay as well.

It does sound from the CBC report as though the new equipment's safety features are a bit too fail-safe and caused the train to just come to a halt, leaving the crew unable to get it moving again. The report also says the train was in single-track territory, apparently blocking the main track...

I've been on the Canadian when it was stuck for hours somewhere in the prairies or northern Ontario in the dead of winter, but when you're on a train that's stocked for a four-day ride through remote areas with a diner and a couple of lounge cars, the crew is prepared to deal with that kind of...

I can't figure why it would have taken 10 hours to get another train to come to the rescue. There should have been another Quebec-bound train going by at most four hours later. Of course, even that would have been a very long delay for a trip that normally takes less than four hours from end to...

Do they really block out two roomettes on every run for storage? So much for maximizing sleeper revenue. Doing away with baggage service at Boston was another Anderson-era innovation, like dining cars without dining.

I believe Steve4031 reported on this incident starting about post #20 in the thread "Trip Report: Brightline and the Silver Star." I will try link to that here: https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/trip-report-brightline-and-the-silver-star.87770/#post-1048218 I gather from his report that an...

For those who don't have the patience to compare the dates in the Amtrak notice with a calendar, the upcoming bustitution of trains 448 and 449 follows the same pattern of CSX track-work disruptions of the past several years: The westbound Lake Shore 449 departs Boston as a train on Fridays...

The Cardinal and Sunset Limited are the only two LD routes that operate less than daily. Both of them have three departures per week in each direction, so they are not quite every other day -- i.e., there will be three days between one set of departures each week. The Cardinal, for example...

I can remember using those regional toll-free numbers that existed before 800-USA-RAIL. You could use them to get train status information. Of course, there was no Julie in those days, so if you called you were connected to a live person and maybe had to wait on hold for one to become available...

I'm sure you could find a hotel in Brunswick or Freeport in the range of $100 to $200 per night. If you catch the 7 a.m. train, you can get about six and a half hours in Boston before catching the 5:20 back to Maine. Or you can really make a day of it and take the late-night train back -- it...

The Boston hotels are out-of-sight expensive. That's one reason I gave up trying to connect from the eastbound Lake Shore to the last Downeaster to Maine. If the LSL is more than a couple of hours late, there could be a $500 penalty. Regarding the Downeaster, the same train sets that come...

The Maple Leaf and Palmetto are both more than 12-hour runs end to end. I think this will be a big downgrade in comfort and a deterrent to through travelers. Of course, end-to-end ridership on the Maple Leaf is pretty scant since they started forcing everyone to haul their luggage off the train...

All of the Downeaster stations have high-level platforms. Many are short enough that only a couple sets of doors make the platform.