April 3rd, 2016: Santa Fe Trail

[Snakeadelic]

You'd think railroads might make a comeback as a viable passenger transit system in places like where I live...the county I live in is double the square mileage of the state of Rhode Island, and not all of it is enormous mountains. There are unused tracks everywhere, including a set that cross the street next to the county fairgrounds about 5 blocks from my front door. Instead, if I wanted to catch an Amtrak somewhere, my choices would consist of the Empire Builder (Seattle-Chicago) route with the nearest station 2+ hours north. I used to ride Amtrak a LOT during the summers--so often that, by the time of my last trip in that era, the conductors were so used to me curling up in my lower-level seat (I only rode Superliners, the big silver 2-story cars, because the seats on the Talgo bullet trains were horribly uncomfortable) that they had a betting pool about which stops I'd wake up at. Now that I have a decent camera and some practice, I wouldn't mind another go on the Coast Starlight route (Seattle-Los Angeles) along the Puget Sound! A passenger train from the next town south of me, Darby, up to Missoula and then on to Kalispell/Whitefish/Flathead Lake might make it a lot easier for people to live semi-rural and work urban. Amazing how fast trains went from "this is how EVERYTHING goes EVERYWHERE" to "we're hoping to save fuel costs by stacking semi trailers on railroad flatbeds"...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Most of the tracks we see are spurs, built to service a factory, mine, produce area, stockyard, or some place that needed freight service. To go from point A to point B, the car you get on at A travels the spur back to the main line. Then you or the car has to switch to a main line train, then down the line to the spur going to B, switch again, finally up the spur to B. That's a lot of time and equipment to get you some place you could easily drive to in far less time

They'll only run passenger service if there's a huge demand and they don't get in the way of the freights. You don't see mixed trains like the old days, with a mix of freight and people cars, except Alaska. The only place passenger trains really work is the main lines between big cities and commuters in and out of cities, where they can count on a certain level of ridership most every day.

I always though that trans Canada would be cool, but like the states, a big hunk is flat and not much to look at, then the mountains send you into sensory overload trying to look in nine directions at once.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A fatal this morning in Philly, amtrak hit two workers and a backhoe, derailing the train, so the corridor from NYC south is shut down and will be until it's straightened out, which could be a long time. That's a flaw in the system.