Commentary and a trip report by Andrew C. Selden NOTE: Mr. Selden is President of MinnARP, and is the newly elected President of URPA. He will be a speaker at the RailPAC November 15, 2014 Conference in Sacramento. The challenge of operating passenger trains, and in particular the higher revenue long distance trains (Amtrak’s largest,…

Commentary by Anthony Haswell, Vice President, Arizona Rail Passenger Association prepared for National Train Day, May 10, 2014, in Tucson, Arizona NOTE: Mr. Haswell is the founding father of NARP. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. The first job of any historian is to determine when a historical event began. Since Amtrak was created to deal…

Commentary by Russ Jackson …comments in this report are those of the author, not necessarily those of the RailPAC Board of Directors What a summer it has been for Amtrak’s long distance trains. The new fiscal year began on October 1 so the counting starts over. Usually we comment only on the western trains here,…

Commentary by Anthony Lee, RailPAC Associate Director At the recent congressional hearing regarding re-authorization of Amtrak, Congresswoman Diane Titus(D) of Las Vegas requested a another study regarding restoring passenger rail service to Las Vegas, which is good news. The best option of restoring passenger rail service is a daily connection to the California Zephyr at…

Commentary by Robert MacDonald, RailPAC member, Oakland On September 11, 2014, the media announced that the Nevada State Legislature had passed the approval of TESLA’s constructing its “gigafactory” at Union Pacific’s station of PATRICK, which is about 13 miles east of the station of Reno. TESLA has announced that their new plant will employ 6,500…

NOTE: Below is a commentary on the newly introduced Passenger Rail bill, written by Andrew C. Selden on September 11. The bill was introduced in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on the same date. READ THE BILL at http://transportation.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hr5449.pdf To: Jim Billimoria and Justin Harclerode, U. S. House T & I Committee Gentlemen: HR5449 (Amtrak)…

Commentary by Russ Jackson, RailPAC Opinions expressed are those of the author, not necessarily those of the RailPAC Board The summer of 2014 is thankfully almost over. As this is written there is a week to go until Labor Day, and then the Congress will return to Washington DC for two weeks of yelling at…

Here are this month’s photos by RailPAC photographers. Click on each photo to see it full size! Contributions to this page are welcome. Send your jpg rail photos to Russ Jackson, RailPAC Photo Editor, at [email protected]. 1. This is a segment of the new elevated path from the Bob Hope Burbank Airport train station and…

Our Mission is to promote the development of a modern, sustainable, environmentally friendly passenger rail system through education of the public and government officials. Our Vision is a comprehensive rail network of long distance, intercity, and regional trains, supported by and integrated with local transit, bicycle access, and pedestrian friendly stations.   We accomplish these…

MinnARP President’s Column; Commentary by Andrew Selden NOTE: Mr. Selden has been a frequent speaker at RailPAC Conferences The long, suffocating death-grip that Amtrak has had over America’s intercity passenger rail service for the last 40 years may be starting to come undone. The agent of change driving this potential revolution is frustration among the…