Renaming New York's Amtrak train station

[Anderson]

I've always called it DC National/Washington National. I know a few people who call it Reagan, but that's hit-or-miss.

In Philly...the issue is that while Market East was a slapped-on name, Suburban Station has been Suburban Station for a long time. Also, while Penn Station might be obsolete, I know a lot of folks in Baltimore wll refer to it as Balto-Penn (to distinguish it from NYP...or the scads of other "Penn Stations" in the past). I think Amtrak actually tried to force the city to start calling it "Baltimore Amtrak Station" or somesuch...and that went over about as well as the statue in front of the station did.

 

[railiner]

The fastest I've seen the population adopt a new name, was when New York International Airport went from being referred to as "Idlewild" to "Kennedy" or "JFK".

Probably has a lot to do with the revered namesake.....

 

[jis]

Yeah, I am also yet to meet anyone in person who refers to Washington National as anything other than National.

You need to meet more people then.

ROTFL! We don't have a good counter-argument, so make invalid assumptions about someone that we do not know from Adam, and rant on about it.
How would you possibly know how many people I do or do not meet in Washington DC where I regularly go for conferences with various federal agencies? More than half the attendees incidentally fly in through National and continue to call it National whether someone likes it or not.

The fastest I've seen the population adopt a new name, was when New York International Airport went from being referred to as "Idlewild" to "Kennedy" or "JFK".

Probably has a lot to do with the revered namesake.....

Indeed. That was exceptional. Actually I can't even recall what it was popularly referred to before it became JFK.

 

[west point]

Ask pilots about name changes. HOU - Hobby, Houston intercontinental ( IAH - Intercontinental airport @ Houston ), Baltimore use to be BAL now BWI - Baltimore Washington International which saved Amtrak from getting a designation since BAL used for downtown,, Dulles ( IAD - International airport @ Dulles ) which started to International designations. Atlanta no name has ever stuck except Atlanta. Duplicate town name do cause problems such as Greenville, Springfield.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Easiest one is DFW ( Dallas-Ft.Worth International).

Everyone calls it DFW though the folks in Ft. Worth still question why Dallas' name comes first!

There's been talk in Republican circles of renaming it George W. Bush International!!!??? but Jerry Jones wants them to rename it after him!

 

[the_traveler]

Ask pilots about name changes. HOU - Hobby, Houston intercontinental ( IAH - Intercontinental airport @ Houston ), Baltimore use to be BAL now BWI - Baltimore Washington International which saved Amtrak from getting a designation since BAL used for downtown,, Dulles ( IAD - International airport @ Dulles ) which started to International designations. Atlanta no name has ever stuck except Atlanta. Duplicate town name do cause problems such as Greenville, Springfield.

The code for the Milwaukee airport is MKE. Amtrak used the same code for their stop downtown, but when they instituted the airport stop, they could not use MKE (as it was already in use). So the downtown stop remained MKE and the airport stop became MKA.

 

[trainman74]

Actually I can't even recall what it was popularly referred to before it became JFK.

"There's a scout troop short a child, Khrushchev's due at Idlewild..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqkcWCXTtFk

 

[Carolina Special]

There was a 1961 Twilight Zone episode "The Odyssey of Flight 33" which has a jetliner from London to Idlewild arriving a bit early, by a few million years, and seeing dinosaurs out the window.

So far as DC airports go, I once worked a couple of miles from National Airport, and that is still what I call it.

 

[Ryan]

and that went over about as well as the statue in front of the station did.

Hey, I like that statue!

As far as what to call BAL, a lot of it depends on context. If you're talking about locations in the city, "Penn Station" is unambiguous enough to stand alone. If you're talking about train stations along the NEC, "Baltimore" is usually sufficient (or perhaps "Baltimore Penn" to avoid the "BWI or BAL?" question, again context matters).

 

[oldtimer]

Easiest one is DFW ( Dallas-Ft.Worth International).

Everyone calls it DFW though the folks in Ft. Worth still question why Dallas' name comes first!

There's been talk in Republican circles of renaming it George W. Bush International!!!??? but Jerry Jones wants them to rename it after him!

Jim,

That cannot happen to DFW as the George Bush airport already exists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bush_Intercontinental_Airport

 

[Bob Dylan]

Al, Houston (IAH) is George Herbert Walker Bush International. W is not a Junior, but I see your point, maybe they could just call it WDFW, sort of like a Radio or TV Station!

 

[afigg]

ROTFL! We don't have a good counter-argument, so make invalid assumptions about someone that we do not know from Adam, and rant on about it.

How would you possibly know how many people I do or do not meet in Washington DC where I regularly go for conferences with various federal agencies? More than half the attendees incidentally fly in through National and continue to call it National whether someone likes it or not.

As someone who lives in the DC area, I would say that Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is trending towards being called Reagan National, but National Airport is still the dominant name used by locals. It is usually visitors and newer residents who moved to the DC who use Reagan National. I did get a funny look several years ago in a meeting when I referred to DCA as National Airport to several guys who had flown in for the meeting through DCA,

I think the rebranding of the Metro station names a couple of years back where they shortened all station names to 19 characters for clarity, with the notable exception of the "Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport" Metro stop (>>19 characters) along with the revisions over the years of all the airport and roadside signs has begun to shift the common shorthand name for DCA to Reagan National. But it will take another decade or two for the process to be complete. I have given in myself and have called it Reagan National Airport in conversations and meetings with visitors to DC from time to time.

The renaming of Washington National Airport to add Ronald Reagan in front was entirely a political move by the Republican controlled Congress in 1998 with a sideshow of sticking it to the local Democratically controlled governments to an extent (Congress changed the airport name, but provided no funds for the airport authority or local governments to implement the name change). Because DCA serves as the personal airport for Capitol Hill, Congress treats it like they own it (because they effectively do), that creates pushback from the local population. But I could see a time, many years from now where the Democrats control both houses in Congress, that they move to rename DCA after Bill Clinton or, to really poke the Republicans in the eye, Barrack Obama Washington National Airport.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I know I had trouble finding the stop for DCA on the "fare list" when trying to buy a ticket from WAS to DCA back on 2012. I can't remember under which name I found it.

 

[neroden]

Given the Iran-Contra Affair, in which the Reagan Administration wilfully violated a really large number of laws, nothing should be named after Reagan.

 

[Ryan]

A Federal penitentiary would be fitting, perhaps.

 

[Bob Dylan]

A Federal penitentiary would be fitting, perhaps.

""Jail to the Chief!"( Watergate era chant)

We, like most so called civilized countries, dont put our heads of state in jail. We kill some, and ride some out of town on a rail, but no cross bar hotel for our Commanders in Chief! ( see Nixon, Richard).

I personally find naming the main airport in the Nation's Capitol after someone who fired the PATCO Air Traffic Controllers something out of Monty Python or Mad Magazine!

But that's just me! I'm with Ryan, a Federal Corrections Facilty would have been more appropriate!

 

[jis]

Before National was refurbished it was sort of like a federal penitentiary

 

[Ryan]

Touché, good point.

 

[jis]

OK, the great name debate that raged for a while about what the Farley Building Concourse will be called and what the whole station will be called after the new concourse goes on line has finally been resolved by events overtaking the question.

The station is still called Penn Station.

The new concourse is called Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station or some approximation thereof.

 

[flitcraft]

Names are easy to slap on, harder to get people to actually use. The ever-changing stadium names are a prime example. Another are university buildings that get named for big donors, who understandably want their names to be used, rather than the generic or older ones which often persist. At my university, a huge, extravagant student center was built, but never officially named because, years after its completion, no bigshot donor has anteed up enough money to get it named. So, the front of the building says, in huge metallic lettering, simply STUDENT CENTER. One day I was walking across campus and happened to see the university president walking in my direction. We stopped for a brief chat, and I couldn't resist asking why the STUDENT CENTER letters affixed to the building were so large. "We're still trying to find a donor," he explained, "And we wanted the donor to know that you'd be able to see their name from space!"

 

[Bob Dylan]

Names are easy to slap on, harder to get people to actually use. The ever-changing stadium names are a prime example. Another are university buildings that get named for big donors, who understandably want their names to be used, rather than the generic or older ones which often persist. At my university, a huge, extravagant student center was built, but never officially named because, years after its completion, no bigshot donor has anteed up enough money to get it named. So, the front of the building says, in huge metallic lettering, simply STUDENT CENTER. One day I was walking across campus and happened to see the university president walking in my direction. We stopped for a brief chat, and I couldn't resist asking why the STUDENT CENTER letters affixed to the building were so large. "We're still trying to find a donor," he explained, "And we wanted the donor to know that you'd be able to see their name from space!"

Love it! I work @ a Major University that is constantly building New Structurres that are named for Major Donors and the Old Structures named for Racists, Sexists etc are being renamed with "Up to Date " Names.

 

[me_little_me]

I think they should rename the LD platforms to be the "Congressman John Mica Memorial Platforms" to honor the man who did so much to promote Amtrak Dining and who is remembered here in this forum with tears in everyone's eyes (after they think about what they will eat on their next LD trip).

As to the station, how about the "Norfolk Southern Station for Delayed Trains" for their contribution of Fs for on-time Amtrak trains.

 

[Barb Stout]

I think they should rename the LD platforms to be the "Congressman John Mica Memorial Platforms" to honor the man who did so much to promote Amtrak Dining and who is remembered here in this forum with tears in everyone's eyes (after they think about what they will eat on their next LD trip).

As to the station, how about the "Norfolk Southern Station for Delayed Trains" for their contribution of Fs for on-time Amtrak trains.

Something like that was actually done at UW-Madison. The Elvehjem Art Museum on the UW-Madison campus was named after a professor of biochemisty who later became dean and then president of the university. I heard that he was a strong STEM advocate well before the acronym became a thing and was more than dismissive of the arts, making statements to the effect that the arts shouldn't be funded at the university level. Whether that and the next part is true or not, I'm not sure, but I heard that people who wanted to poke a stick at him satirically named the university art museum after him when it opened in 1970. That art museum did indeed get its name changed in 2005 when Jerome A. Chazen, a founder of the company Liz Claiborne, donated a bunch of money to the museum, so they changed the name from The Elvehjem Museum of Art to the Chazen Museum of Art, but because I was there before 2005, I'll always remember it as the LVM.

 

[jis]

No one can beat the Indians when it comes to anointing stations with ridiculously long names. For example:

What used to be Bangalore City is now officially Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna (Bengaluru Station)

Gomoh Jn. is now Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Gomoh Jn.

The age old famous Mughal Sarai Jn. is now Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Jn.

Most still use the original name which is more convenient an way, but I suppose the new name serves some purpose of making a political statement.

As for how the political part plays out is illustrated by the change of a street name. The American Consulate in Kolkata (the second oldest American Consulate anywhere) used to be on Harrington Street. During the Vietnam era, the Marxist state government of West Bengal (of which Kolkata is the capital) renamed that street Ho Chi Minh Sarani.

And so the beat goes on....

 

[TrackWalker]

No one can beat the Indians when it comes to anointing stations with ridiculously long names....

They are but amateurs when compared to the people of Wales...