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Amtrak Long Distance News in the New Year … the good, some bad, and the expected “ugly”
Let’s start with the ugly status of the Dining car removal from the Silver Star train, since it’s the hottest news. On January 28, just as this is being written, URPA learned that Amtrak employees were told the day before that the Star’s dining car is PERMANENTLY gone. As predicted here since this “experiment” was…
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Western Long Distance Trains at the End of 2015: A Positive Report
Here we are, Christmastime 2015, and lo and behold the Amtrak long distance trains continue to roll and to some extent thrive despite the negative publicity that they are “money losers.” In recent posts this writer has talked about the positives that are being accomplished on the Coast Starlight, and the opposite effects that are…
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The Coast Starlight: Paso Robles to Eugene; not endpoint travel! What about the food?
Report and Commentary by Russ Jackson with Ralph James Amtrak likes to tout its end points and the volume of traffic it gets between those departures and destinations on all of its routes, but while some passengers do that it is the intermediate station travel that fills up the trains. Can you imagine, as RailPAC…
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Pacific Parlour Car Temporary Withdrawal
A well-informed source has told RailPAC that Pacific Parlour Car service will be missing from the Coast Starlight in the coming weeks because the FRA has some concerns about the glazing. Apparently one car has already been fixed and Amtrak is awaiting delivery of material for the rest of the fleet. Unfortunately we cannot offer…
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Metrolink in a Tail Spin: Is there a way out?
Napoleon used to say that he liked his generals to be lucky. Presumably he would not have employed the first CEOs of Metrolink, who suffered considerably from ill fortune, particularly the Glendale accident. But bad luck is only one small part of the picture that has brought about the near collapse of Metrolink. After 23…
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This is a Great Time to Build High Speed Rail
Every few weeks or so the Los Angeles Times publishes stories by Ralph Vartabedian which are highly speculative, thinly researched and critical of the California High Speed Rail Project. The worst time for the media is when the news is boring. So for as long as there has been stories, spinning a story has been…
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High Speed Rail at Los Angeles Union Station by 2024, not 2029
In a surprise move at the Los Angeles Metro Board Meeting on October 22, 2015, an agenda item was voted on and approved to make changes to the Southern California Regional Interconnector Project (SCRIP). Part of the change will coordinate SCRIP’s construction of run-through tracks at Union Station with the construction at the same time…
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The Eagle, the Sunset, the Star, a Trip Report, and a rowdy car
Whenever a passenger is ready to travel by Amtrak, has a ticket in hand and is ready to go to the station to board the train the first anxiety is always whether the train will be on time or be running late (in many cases hours late). For this trip let’s get the on time…
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How My Train Was 90 Minutes Late, Yet I still Got Home On Time
Even the best plans can get derailed. I planned to catch a mid-afternoon train out of Oceanside on a recent Friday to see a friend and his wife off who were taking the Sunset to travel home after a California vacation. The plan was they would meet me at LAUS when I got off the…
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What will the Passenger Trains of the Future be like?
There are major changes coming in the near future to transportation, and this will impact rail passenger service as well. All forms of transportation are under pressure to save money, be more energy efficient and run more cleanly. Autos, truck and bus builders are looking for solutions to these problems. We may find that the…