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I was driving north into Rensselaer on Route 9J about 6:25p on Saturday when 49 whizzed past on its way from New York. With three coaches, diner, three sleepers and baggage car, it looked a bit healthier than it has in recent years. As it was at speed and I was driving, I couldn't discern the...

Coach? Sleeper? Combination?

As others have said, the best scenery on the Cardinal is more reliably seen eastbound. And to me, the Lake Shore schedule is more tolerable westbound than eastbound. By late September, you'll miss the Mohawk Valley, which I think is really quite scenic, going west, but you'll still get the...

I believe the T trains have for some time been using a temporary platform east of the station, near the old depot that Amtrak used before Union Station was revived, because of the construction. The T had announced a plan for bustitution on the same weekends between Worcester and Grafton, the...

The B&O definitely had the reputation for excellent service. It was well before my time, but when my father-in-law was traveling back and forth between New York and Washington in the late '30s, he said he took the B&O whenever he could, even though it was slower and required going from the CNJ...

It's actually amazing that it lasted as an all-room train till then. About 10 days earlier, the Century had been withdrawn altogether, replaced on a much slower schedule with an unnamed amalgam of the remnants of the New England States and Wolverine. By late '67, it seems everything in the...

Actually, Friday's southbound doesn't appear to have lost any time between Windsor, Vt., and Greenfield, Mass. The delays were all north and south of there. I'd figure the delays in Mass. and Conn. were not flood-related.

The New York Central route was longer in mileage than the Pennsylvania but was fully competitive in terms of scheduling. (No mountains to climb meant sustained higher speeds.) I don't have an easily accessible source for actual ridership numbers, but as Willbridge's table above suggests, the NYC...

I don't know the specifics on the slow orders, but Friday's 56 was terminated at Springfield, and Saturday's southbound is canceled again north of New Haven. There has been quite a bit more rain from various storms over the past week, and heavy rains were forecast from a front passing through...

It certainly could be that this bedroom-roomette arrangement is the only option for having a sleeper room the whole distance on this particular departure. However, if cost is a consideration, it might be worth checking the preceding or following day's departure to see the price of a through...

Quite possibly the price of a bedroom on one portion plus a roomette on the other will result in a higher overall cost than a through room of one kind or another in the Boston sleeper.

Yeah, I fear the most you could get out of the Quebec transportation officials would be a highway sign directing visitors to the new REM terminal, which of course is situated at the junction of two superhighways. Clearly their concept is that everyone will transfer to cars and some buses to...

Yes, the VIA cafe food has really deteriorated over the past 20 years. And like Amtrak, VIA has regrettably moved away from the dining car being a service open to all. I used to meet coach passengers in the Canadian diner, and bought meals there myself as a coach passenger in years past. Also...

I find it much easier to be patient when you have dome cars, better beds and vastly better food. Our last trip west on the Canadian, which was before the latest round of schedule padding, we arrived into Vancouver 23 hours late and had been as much as 30 hours late in Alberta. We reached the...

Most of the times I've ridden the Capitol it was because the sleeper rooms were significantly less expensive than on the Lake Shore, which otherwise would be a much more direct routing for me. The last time I rode it, in early 2020 right before the pandemic, I found a bedroom on the Capitol for...

I recall from research for a previous trip that there is an Enterprise car rental place within easy walking distance from the Grover Beach station.

There is a lake in the way, unless the van rides the ferry or goes up to the bridge at Rouses Point. But you're correct that the overall ridership from Plattsburgh is not that high. Nineteen per day is an average, though; I have seen probably 75 piling off there when the SUNY students were...

In the early '70s, Amtrak was down to five daily round-trips NYC-Albany, three Albany-Syracuse and just two to Rochester and Buffalo. It was New York State that backed expansion of that, plus restoration of service to Montreal and track upgrades to cut a half-hour or more off the running time...

I remember one trip on the Adirondack about 1990 when we were bused from Montreal to Plattsburgh, then transferred to the previous day's northbound, which for some reason had terminated there. So it is possible. Of course the equipment then was a Turboliner, so it was easy to reverse direction...

A second frequency seems like it would be more easily achieved in the near term, although I have heard only vague talk of this idea from Vermont officials and advocates. One issue is that the trip from Burlington to New York is nearly eight hours, so a second frequency would probably have to be...