Friggin trucks. They’re so dangerous.
Clearly a need to separate train and street traffic everywhere. Stalls on tracks will continue to bedevil train traffic until over or under passes are built at all or most crossings. Just another indication of how parsimonious the nation is about spending for the public good.
The Superliners’ days are numbered
Amtrak to possibly service Columbus by 2030.
Folks have been talking about Amtrak serving Columbus for decades!
People get very excited about lines drawn on a map. But (almost) nothing ever gets built.
It’s the same with the hundred other proposed Amtrak projects across the country.
Does anything ever get past the “press release” phase?
Yes, in the past two decades we have seen this only a few times, and only in random rural areas - in Maine (extension of Downeaster from Portland to Brunswick), in Vermont (extension of Ethan Allen Express from Rutland to Burlington) and a couple of Virginia extensions to Roanoke and Norfolk.
There is no reason to be optimistic about any of these latest Amtrak proposals about trains going to Columbus OH, Baton Rouge LA, linking Dallas to Houston, etc. etc. etc.
Let a thousand press releases emerge!
Not a lot of details have been released surrounding the circumstances of a shooting on board an Amtrak train in California.
This is a new one for me. Homeless on Amtrak.
It happened again, this time in Camarillo (right next to Moorpark).
Vehicles keep getting in the way of passenger trains in Ventura County, California.
Turns out he wasn’t even homeless.
Is it reasonable to wonder whether the local constabulary is engaged in a cover-up?
“It’s just unbelievable. Just absolutely unbelievable,” his mother, Julia Detweiler said. “He’s not homeless. He was a person. He’s going to be well missed. I mean, he had love and support. Many people are hurting out there.”
…
Julia Detweiler said officials have not told her what happened the night her son was killed. But she said she wanted others to know about her son and his death.“We want it known that he was basically an ordinary person and he loved to travel. His joy was to travel on Amtrak trains. It was a very important part of his life, and I don’t know what transpired to bring this type of force onto the train,” Julia Detweiler said.
The night Detweiler Haritoudis was killed he was traveling from Klamath Falls, Oregon to Sonoma County, his mother said. Her son was disabled and suffered from mental health issues, she said.
“So I believe he might have been talking to himself and that disturbed society on the train, which I think led to a fall out,” Julia Detweiler said.
Oh absolutely.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/us/politics/acela-amtrak-avelia.html
After years of delays and safety and design disputes, Amtrak is one step closer to bringing new high-speed trains to the busy Northeast Corridor.
Amtrak officials said late Friday that the new trains, which had failed an extended series of computer modeling tests, had passed on the 14th try and had been cleared by the Federal Railroad Administration to begin testing on the tracks that run from Washington, D.C., to Boston.
The faster, more spacious trains — sets of locomotives plus passenger cars — come with a price tag of about $1.6 billion and are to replace those in the Acela fleet, which should have been decommissioned at the end of their life cycle in 2016.
The sleek new red, white and blue Avelia Liberty trains are to travel at a maximum speed of about 160 miles per hour because of a limit imposed by the Northeast Corridor’s aging tracks, 10 miles faster than the current Acela trains, and are expected to tilt for a faster and smoother ride around curves. They accommodate up to 386 passengers, an increase of 25 percent.
Yes, at last!
If they were to replace all the tracks I wonder what their top speed could actually be.
I think 200 mph. I could be wrong. Beyond the tracks, there are curves too tight to get to top speed, and adjoining land is developed which makes it difficult to move the tracks.
Yeah the Connecticut coastline is one of the limiting factors on speed because of all the curves. On the fastest portion of the route between Providence and Boston, the tracks are more straight over a long distance.
Amtrak has commenced construction at Philadelphia’s 30th St. Station.
There are actual advocates for rail in South Dakota, which isn’t served at all by Amtrak.
