Passenger Trains > Quick Trip Report

Just a brief trip report as I sit here in Chicago awaiting this afternoon's departure of #3.

My buddy and I boarded #1 on 3/8. We had a wonderful trip to New Orleans. Actually had an early arrival.. A first for me. UP dispatcher seemed to be wide awake for us. But since there were relatively fewer freights it might have been easy to keep us OT. Great crew. Clean train inside and out. Had a real wake up call when we got to the NOL hotel and I realized I had left my bag with tickets, iPad, and passport on the train. Ran like mad man out to Canal St. trying flag a cab down. Got one. Taxi driver was very cool and peddled to the metaled it back to the depot. Ran thru the station. Train was still there! Wide open ran in to my room and, thank you Jesus (I'm not religious), my bag was still there! Lots of security around no one tried stop or question my frantic looking self. They probably should have. As the Bard says, all's well that ends well.

Spent the next day riding desirable streetcars around. Had my ritual coffee and pastry at Cafe du Monde.

Caught the Crescent 3/12 for the usual ride thru the South. Other than Richard Anderson's prison food and a filthy dirty exterior and windows the least said the better. Jumped on the Carolinian at for one hour ride to Durham to visit my sister for a couple days. Again filthy dirty exterior and windows. 

Reboarded the  jam packed Carolinian on 3/15 for miserable (and we were in Business Class!) ride to Alexandria for the RPA Conference. The usual filthy dirty exterior and windows, prison food and demoralized crew. 

At the RPA conference I buttonholed the Amtrak speakers and excoriated them over the filthy trains. $66 billion and they can't spare dime to hire window washing crews? Really???

We stayed until Friday when I had a personal appointment with my Congressman, Jared Huffman (D) of California and reported all of the above. I asked him to make some phone calls to make Amanagement squirm over this. He is a big Amtrak supporter and votes the right way all the time. He said that twice he, and his wife, attempted to take #5 from Chicago to California and both times the train was canceled due to freight train pile ups. He was still optimistic and said he loved trains and would try again. Third time would be the charm I suppose.

Off-topic. my traveling buddy and I had a few hours to kill in DC before train time so we used our gallery pαsses to check out the action in the House of Reps. Just so happened we got there as they were voting on the 1.2 trillion measure to keep the government open, the chamber was full of politicos. Spotted our guy Huffman and the seven headed demons MTG and Matt Geatz.

Jumped on the Capitol at 4:05. Clean train inside and out! Great crew but the usual prison food. Looking forward to a nice ride, real food on #3 this afternoon.

That's all for now.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/24 17:18 by OnTime.

Thanks for the report, and your feedback to Amtrak execs and your Congress rep.

The only consistent thing about Amtrak is the inconsistency.

The only consistent thing about Amtrak is -- the cost-cutting Stephen Gardner

who can't run Amtrak properly.

ronald321 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The only consistent thing about Amtrak is -- the
> cost-cutting Stephen Gardner
>
> who can't run Amtrak properly.

<THREAD HIJACK BROKEN RECORD ALERT/>

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for the report, and your feedback to Amtrak
> execs and your Congress rep.
>
> The only consistent thing about Amtrak is the
> inconsistency.

You have that right. Although one thing that's pretty consistent the past few years is filthy windows. Clean ones are the exception, which is ridiculous. This was not the case five or six years ago.  There is simply no excuse for this. It's a very poor reflection on the company.  Even the trashy greyhound manages to keep their buses washed.