Search results

The conductor is a public face of the company. To a passenger, titles don't amount to a hill of beans. You know otherwise, but everyday passengers see only a bunch of people in Amtrak uniforms. The conductor's actions and attitudes set the tone for the onboard crew. If the conductor exercises...

Often, the only time I see a SAC is when s/he is doing a post station-stop seat check run, often with grim determination. Sometimes I'll see an attendant speed-walking through the car, eyes fixed on the door at the far end. What I hardly ever see (and here is my suggestion for better service) is...

Think of three playing cards stacked one on top of another. The outer two cards are incredibly tender beef, but the middle card is incredibly tough gristle. The butcher has to make two very precise, large surface area cuts to slice the gristle away from the beef. If the butcher succeeds, the...

Frog and pig I can understand, but frog and horse? Is Kermit two-timing Miss Piggy?

As much as I ever thought about a horse's hoof (which is not much), I thought the bottom was flat. Guess I just outed myself as a city boy.

...and that's supposed to clear thing up? :blink:

Another thread I haven't searched for asked a question about the training regimen required to become a sleeper attendant. At NTD today I spoke a real live honest-to-goodness SCA and asked. To be a SCA requires two weeks of classroom training that focuses mostly on FRA regs and safety rules...

Patrick, Alice and I had a grand day at LAUS. In addition to the hardware on the display, the Harvey House restaurant wing of the station was open (no longer a restaurant, but still a glorious space), there was a large N-gauge (oxymoron?) pike operating, and more. It seemed like a large turnout...

Next thing you know, Boardman will be spending Christmas with you :-D Congrats! I want the full story when I see you.

It was almost a Vulcan mind meld you had. Congrats! See you at the meeting Saturday :-)

Sometimes adding a bit of margarine can make a batter light, crispy and not greasy. Let's not be bitter over a better butter batter.

Federal fuel taxes are a small percentage of the cost of roadways, even assuming the Highway Trust Fund be fully-funded. The most serious investigation I'm aware of was done by the Texas DOT. It looked at the cost to build and maintain a highway vs. the estimated fuel taxes collected from the...

Ahh, to be young and revolutionary...

96%, but I'm hardly an expert, and the description gives me more credit than I deserve. I was expecting questions like, "On what train number did the P42 make its first appearance?" or "What is the axle spacing on a Superliner I bogie?" To both of those, the correct answer is, "Uhhhhhhhh..."

You're right that as cars move to higher mileages or alternative fuels that a gallon tax makes less and less sense (and cents), but up to now it's been a rough approximation of a mileage tax. I'm was simply arguing that you didn't want to use a tax system, but then suggested a tax as an...

Which side are you arguing? Let's not use taxation, or let's use taxation? And need I point out that a fuel tax and a GPS-tax are both mileage-based? There ain't much daylight between them!

Here's another way to look at it. I remember one of my econ profs in college telling us that charging for a student parking sticker wouldn't do much of anything to reduce parking demand, unless the sticker were ridiculously priced. Why is that? A sticker is a once-a-semester fee, so once it's...

I want to know how you arranged for such an accident to take place. You set this up in advance so you could "coincidentally" be on a passing Surfliner, camera at the ready (and admitting that you were the only one with a camera), so you could take these great pictures. Clearly, you're a...

So what's the problem? It's nothing you don't see during a Super Bowl half-time show! :-D

The pinch-hitter Superliners I've seen in SoCal are coach/baggage units. Do you know if the NorCal Superliner cafes are used as cafes on regular runs? Or is the lower level just not used?