Passenger Trains > Question- Gulf Coast Service Restoration

Any news on the Gulf Coast Amtrak Train?
Is it set to start January 2022? Or did Ida push the date back?
Did Alabama ever get on board and support said train?
Did CSX/NS change their position after the STB ruled against them?

If it were to start this January wouldn't Amtrak need to start hiring people, training crews, gathering trainsets, updating website/start selling tickets...?

Thanks in advance.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/21 14:29 by scott9915.

Things are still "clear as mud".  No confirmed hard news from any quarter since the STB ruling two months ago.

What would you expect, especailly with Stephen Gardner making sure they make that deadline, but where's the equipment gonna come from if it's a go!

The politicians along the route mostly do not support it, so I don't know why it is being foisted upon those folk.
If they don't want it, they don't want it. 
They'll just get a crapy little truncated train with beat down equipment anyway.
Spend the money elsewhere.

Sept 29th - $700,000 in grants were announced for staion improvments in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, and Pascagoula (Birmingham too but it's not on this route). 

Personally I don't think they'll meet the January deadline, but hopefully sometime in early 2022 they can begin service. 

MS: 3 MS Coast train stations get $700,000 for makeovers ahead of Amtrak return in 2022 | Mass Transit (masstransitmag.com)

They'll have to start getting those Siemens Venture cars into service to free up more Horizon cars from Chicago.  The good new is that we here in Washington shouldn't need any more Horizons for a while.  We have enough to just get by when all four of our Cascades round trips between Seattle and Portland and two between Seattle and Vancouver BC are restored, whenever that happens.  

Situation's like this waishes me to head back to 91 and if I was there in DC I'd advise Calytor to make sure a succsessor for him would be a good one, ever since Downs and except for Gunn, Amtrak is not how they were back in the 80s and 90s when things were so much easier to accomplish and all that good stuff!

ProAmtrak Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Situation's like this waishes me to head back to
> 91 and if I was there in DC I'd advise Calytor to
> make sure a succsessor for him would be a good
> one, ever since Downs and except for Gunn, Amtrak
> is not how they were back in the 80s and 90s when
> things were so much easier to accomplish and all
> that good stuff!

It's a different world were in to be sure.....

Yeah they knew how to grow things, not like things are now, that 2035 map Amtrak posted last year is a bunch of bull crap just because of the excuse about how "outdated" LD Trains are, if they're outdated how come ridership is still strong and during last years outbreak of Covid, how come that was the sector that recovered quicker!