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While UP is not the easiest railroad for Amtrak to deal with today, they have gotten better from where they were in the late 1990's/early 2000s. For example, the reason the Crescent Star proposal from 2001 never started up is because of the inability to negotiate an agreement with UP to add...

I hope you're right. All of these dining service models are better than flex dining. Although it would be better if every LD train, both west and east of the Mississippi, got full service dining, I can see the routes with shorter average passenger trips, like the CL, CONO and Cardinal, not...

While they will be entering Canada, they won't be running "through" there, "through" being defined as entering Canada, then later re-entering the United States on the same trip. The latter scenario would require two border crossings and the delays associated with them, rather than just one, like...

The good news is that this is not going to be another Sunset East situation. (Using a major disaster as an excuse to truncate an underperforming route).

You'll never see passenger rail service return to the Ocala route because CSX rerouted most of its trains going south of Jacksonville onto that route following the opening of the Sunrail commuter rail line in Orlando.

According to the SRC, two daily RT's between NOL and Mobile are phase 1 of the project to restore Gulf Coast service. Phase two will be to extend one of those RT's to Florida. That being said, phase 2 is still a ways off, but from a host railroad negotiations standpoint, with most of the route...

Building the preclearance facility in Montreal is the last essential step to restoring the Montrealer train (via extending the Vermonter to Montreal). That facility will also be used by the Adirondack train. As far as restoring Chicago-Toronto service, while Ford is not paying for an Amtrak...

Is it possible to amend 49 U.S. Code § 24102 (7) (the law that requires ANY new route, regardless of length, to be state-funded) to include a new Gulf Coast train to Florida in the federally-funded national network? If that can be done, it will make it much easier to get around the lack of...

It wouldn't surprise me If Minnesota or Wisconsin placed an add-on to the Venture order to equip this train. Under this scenario, the Horizons would only be an intern solution to the equipment problem.

Now that all funding for this route is in place. The next big issue is equipment. Where are the locomotives and rolling stock going to come from? I suppose there could be an add on to the Siemens Venture order for the Midwest corridors from Minnesota, but I haven't heard of any plans to do that...

An Auto Train on the route of the California Zephyr would likely have to be routed on the Overland Route through Wyoming between DEN and SLC due to the immense length and weight of such a train, because the locomotives would have trouble pulling such a train over the Rocky Mountains on that part...

FYI, these new railcars are branded as "Venture", not "Velaro"

In addition to increased frequencies to the Missouri River Runner, It would be nice to see a new route planned, in partnership with Oklahoma, running from STL to OKC via Springfield, MO, and Tulsa, OK. (former Frisco mainline) At Springfield, there would be thruway bus connections to Kansas City...

Actually, the SFZ was on the chopping block as part of the Carter cuts, but the ongoing oil crisis at the time saved that route and a few others, including the Inter-American (today the Texas Eagle, albeit truncated), Southwest Limited (today the Southwest Chief), and the Pioneer (discontinued...

We may have already found the solution to "the dining car problem" back in the 1990's. That is to run the dining car 24 hours a day, like they did on the Sunset Limited back then. During that experiment, the dining car on that train actually made money because they got more use out of an asset...

According to Trains Magazine, the Kansas City Southern Railroad has accepted Canadian National's offer for merger. The Surface Transportation Board still has to approve the merger, and Canadian Pacific has 5 days to counter-offer the proposal, or KCS will terminate their merger agreement with...

According to Passenger Rail Oklahoma chairman Evan Stair, any new route, even those over 750 miles long, would have to be state funded, making the cutoff mileage irrelevant when it comes to adding new long distance routes. This could be why Amtrak is focusing on shorter corridors instead of LD...

With all these orders, Siemens might have to build or buy another plant to fulfill the demand. The should buy the former Nippon Sharyo plant in Rochelle, IL and expand production to that location. The plant is less than a decade old, and was designed for the purpose of building new passenger...

While I don't believe the entire former Southern Belle route will return to hosting passenger trains anytime soon, I do believe there is demand for passenger train service along the most densely-populated portion of the route - the route between New Orleans and Shreveport, LA, which includes...

Yes, especially a second frequency serving Ohio in daylight.