Passenger Trains > A world removed from the NEC

For those of you who have never seen Amtrak in flyover country, here are a few pictures from a small town in wide open New Mexico taken on Thursday, March 4, 2021. First photo shows the extensive station facility in Deming, NM. Next up we have the one hour late westbound Sunset Limited train #1 passing the Southwestern Railroad yard and two of their stored GP30s as it slows for the station stop. Then we have the station "platform" in the middle of Ruby Street. One passenger off, no one on today. Good thing there is the informational sign to tell people that this is actually a station stop, as when you first pull up, you sure aren't convinced. 

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This is an improvement compared to waiting at the near-by service station and no sign where the train stops.

But the laugh is that a poster suggested that their be a TSA agent at every Amtrak stop for security?
Sure  when over half of the stops are similar to this.
 

At least that station has signage.

Another Sunset Limited stop, Benson, AZ, has even less.

https://www.google.com/maps/@31.9689634,-110.2972841,3a,75y,102.75h,72.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1syo-G0FBvMEvGxNXh_DFwmA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/21 13:39 by RuleG.

Amtrak station and directional signs are hard to come by.  Amazed folks can find these obscure locations.  No tiolets or train info to be had.  Hope there's internet service so potential passengers can get a train update- 'How late is Amtrak running today-?'. 

Deming is where The Silver Spike was driven on March 8, 1881 when the AT&SF RR joined the Southern Pacific. The technical name of the Santa Fe's subsidiary was the Rio Grande, Mexico and Pacific but it was really the Santa Fe. 140 years ago Monday, if my math is right.

1990's Marysville CA. A single small version bus stop shelter.  One sign. 
Waiting in the dark of the night for #11.  But the engineer saw me, and a door down the track opened up for me.
 

Depending on where you are, it could be a long, cold, wet wait if Amtrak is running late.  I know that there were a few places that had basically a bus stop, a shelter with plexiglass on at least 3 sides, and sometimes a partial on the 4th side.  Hopefully, they will have a street light near the shelter if the train is scheduled to arrive at night.  At least it looks like there is plenty of parking in those places.  

On the other hand, how many passengers have to be served at that location to break even on that shelter?  I guess it's better than 4 poles with a tin roof and a park bench.

John

For raw desolation, I cant think of a station that was more isolated than Borie, WY. But there was a shuttle bus to the nearby metropolis of Cheyenne.  It actually came alive at train time, but ooh boy was it BF nowhere in between

TO'er mcflyer and I parked his RV overnight in the Borie parking lot back in the 80s.  Very strange place to watch trains in the night.

The station building was still standing when I took this photo through the window of my Superliner room on the westbound Sunset Limited back in June of 1982.
-Ken Gear

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sig292 Wrote:

> The station building was still standing when I
> took this photo through the window of my
> Superliner room on the westbound Sunset Limited
> back in June of 1982.

The building is a remnant of a large two-story "union depot" and Harvey House shared by SP and Santa Fe: https://howdyyall.com/Trains/Images/Depots/NM_Deming3.jpg

It was cut down to a modest one story structure in 1930.  The building still exists, but was moved off-site back in 2003: https://goo.gl/maps/cBZC1PJ5UdMv4tTa9

SP, of course, wasn't particularly interested in interchanging traffic with Santa Fe at Deming, so Santa Fe eventually found its own way to California.

Reminds me of my middle of the night waits for 11/14 (Coast Starlight) in Orland, CA during the early 1980's. I don't recall any signage or facilities of any kind. My roommate was kind enough to drive the 20 miles from Chico in the fog to pick me up. There were no cell phones to check on train status, beyond calling 1-800-USA-RAIL to see if the train was running on time. It was a happy day when the train was rerouted through Chico !



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/21 23:33 by SanDiegan.