Today is National Train Day, which would be my favorite day of the year but it's actually the first one ever so I have no particular opinions about it.
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National Train Day
10 May 2008 11:06 am
Comments (18)
i look forward to the Presidential photo-op of Bush in an engineer's hat, playing with his choo-choos.
At least we get an excellent poster out of it.
i look forward to the Presidential photo-op of Bush in an engineer's hat, playing with his choo-choos
If only GW had been more into train sets than little green army men the world would be a much better place today.
Woo! Celebrate public transit... on a Saturday!
I guess it would make too much sense to celebrate public transit on a day that significantly more people actually might use public transit.
Woo! Celebrate public transit... on a Saturday!
Exactly my thought. I'm not even sure the trains are running in SoCal today.
Matt: Don't forget a freight train brought the coal from some desolate corner of West Virginia to the power plant that's running your laptop right now. No trains no blogs.
Wow, and I'm actually taking a train today -- yay, Amtrak! Yay, earmark funding without which there'd be no Amtrak!
This would be sort of cool, except we have only one train track through town, and it only has about one train on it a week (or a month, sometimes), and that's just to haul milled lumber to other places.
So, not much opportunity to appreciate the day on those ground.
(The track in question is the Almanor Railroad)
Great for squashing pennies as a kid, though.
And on the day before train day I experienced the train trip from hell... From a non-local-rail standpoint, our country does not have a passenger rail system. It has passenger trains that run on the freight train system, and it shows.
I was going from Pittsburgh to DC.... the train was supposed to leave at about 6am and get into DC at about 2pm (nevermind that it's ridiculous that a 4 hour drive takes 8 hours by train best-case)...
There was some freight train issue in South Bend... something derailed or something, i'm not sure... anyway, the train didn't get to pittsburgh until 8am.... An hour or so later, we stopped, because CSX was having a switching issue, and we had to stop to let a freight train pass... Over an hour later, we got moving again, and over the course of the day we repeatedly had to let the freight through.... The trip concluded with the train taking an hour to roll the massive distance between Silver Spring and Union Station, getting passed by a dozen Metros along the way.
Overall, we ended up 4 hours late on an 8 hour trip.
For many people, they will come out of this experience saying: "never again"
But the bigger issue is that rail is very non-fault tolerant... When something goes wrong, it creates a nasty chain reaction of effects, and with the freight people running the show, passengers end up paying the price for any screwups that happen.
And on the day before train day I experienced the train trip from hell... From a non-local-rail standpoint, our country does not have a passenger rail system. It has passenger trains that run on the freight train system, and it shows.
I was going from Pittsburgh to DC.... the train was supposed to leave at about 6am and get into DC at about 2pm (nevermind that it's ridiculous that a 4 hour drive takes 8 hours by train best-case)...
There was some freight train issue in South Bend... something derailed or something, i'm not sure... anyway, the train didn't get to pittsburgh until 8am.... An hour or so later, we stopped, because CSX was having a switching issue, and we had to stop to let a freight train pass... Over an hour later, we got moving again, and over the course of the day we repeatedly had to let the freight through.... The trip concluded with the train taking an hour to roll the massive distance between Silver Spring and Union Station, getting passed by a dozen Metros along the way.
Overall, we ended up 4 hours late on an 8 hour trip.
For many people, they will come out of this experience saying: "never again"
But the bigger issue is that rail is very non-fault tolerant... When something goes wrong, it creates a nasty chain reaction of effects, and with the freight people running the show, passengers end up paying the price for any screwups that happen.
And on the day before train day I experienced the train trip from hell... From a non-local-rail standpoint, our country does not have a passenger rail system. It has passenger trains that run on the freight train system, and it shows.
I was going from Pittsburgh to DC.... the train was supposed to leave at about 6am and get into DC at about 2pm (nevermind that it's ridiculous that a 4 hour drive takes 8 hours by train best-case)...
There was some freight train issue in South Bend... something derailed or something, i'm not sure... anyway, the train didn't get to pittsburgh until 8am.... An hour or so later, we stopped, because CSX was having a switching issue, and we had to stop to let a freight train pass... Over an hour later, we got moving again, and over the course of the day we repeatedly had to let the freight through.... The trip concluded with the train taking an hour to roll the massive distance between Silver Spring and Union Station, getting passed by a dozen Metros along the way.
Overall, we ended up 4 hours late on an 8 hour trip.
For many people, they will come out of this experience saying: "never again"
But the bigger issue is that rail is very non-fault tolerant... When something goes wrong, it creates a nasty chain reaction of effects, and with the freight people running the show, passengers end up paying the price for any screwups that happen.
I, too, took a train on National Train Day. It was not, however, in the nation of the U.S.A. -- and hence was quite good -- so I'm not sure if counts.
Sorry folks, I, uh, um, er, drove to National Train Day. It's just too easy to park by Chicago Union Station on a Saturday and the 'el is too much under reconstruction for weekend use at the moment, and I forgot I have a Metra station nearby.
They had a darned good turnout of people although it was a bit too much rail enthusiast/foamer for my taste and not quite enough "here's what we could be doing".
They had an interesting car display in the station (Metra not needing fifteen-plus platforms on a weekend), Two Superliner I cars, one coach and the other a diner converted to their new cafe car format for Texas and New Orleans trains. The seating on these long distance coach cars has been re-upholstered and is more comfortable than ever -- think transatlantic business class before the invention of the lie-flat seat -- although the tray tables are awkward indeed to open up; the sliders need some lubricant or something. But despite the spotless carpet and seating, you could see where it needed work in the coach car -- cracked plastic trim, especially in stairways and restrooms, and so on; after all the Superliner I cars were delivered 1979-1981, Pullman Standard's last ever order The cafe cars themselves are symptoms of Amtrak's car shortage; they decided to run the trains they're on with just one of these cars replacing a diner and a Sightseer Lounge, and apparently there's some serious overcrowding as a result because they're having to serve both the snack-and-socialize function and the sit-down-meal function. Maybe a case for Amtrak to do some at-your-seat servive? Certainly it's going to be tough for them, at I would guess $3 million to $4 million a pop, to buy more dining cars.
Also on show, an early 1990s-era Superliner II sleeper, freshly re-upholstered and re-carpeted, and a Horizon coach car (their standard car in the Midwest for services of up to 400 miles). The Horizons have standard three-pin 110v outlets at every seat but less legroom -- think United or Virgin Premium Economy.
Joe, part of the reason rail is "non fault tolerant" as you put it is that train runs on CSX, which is probably the most bottleneck-ridden rail network in the country if not all of North America. In general, US rail networks -- almost unique in the developed world in not getting government support for infrastructure -- have had to make do and mend, and a particularly obnoxious example of it exists on that Pittsburgh to Washington run -- Sand Patch Tunnel. It was built before the first world war as a two-track tunnel. Then in the 1980s, CSX closed the main diversionary route, the Western Maryland (which they had bought only in the 1960s). And then in the 1980s, when intermodal trains came in, the containers wouldn't fit through Sand Patch. So they single tracked it, with the single track going down the ridgeline of the tunnel, so the trains would fit. Only it creates a huge choke point on a formerly double-track main line.
At such point as CSX re-opens the Western Maryland or makes Sand Patch good to go for two tracks again, you'll see those delays vanish. Of course you'll still have the eight hour problem, due to a line that winds along river bottoms because trains can't make the steep hills you see on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The only long-term solution to slow train times through Appalachia is new rail routes with lots of bridges and tunnels (as well as reopening the mostly short-lined or rail-to-trailed WM as a through route -- it also has a lot of nice bridge and tunnel short cuts).
There are stories like this all over the country. Appalachia is full of them but the main lines up the west coast are constrained by a lot of single track, and indeed I know of only one route from the West Coast to Chicago that is double-track most of the way -- LA-Albuquerque-Amarillo-Kansas City-Chicago on BNSF. When you go to Europe do you see cascading delays like you do on Amtrak? No. Why? The infrastructure is there. Whether it's massive building of new lines such as the French TGV, or major investment to take care of bottlenecks like the Trent Valley four tracking project in England, it tends to get taken care of.
Of course, in this age of pricey gasoline, freight railroads in the US are finally making a viable return on investment (seven percent, up from just two percent 15 years ago), and they're doing the best they can at pushing the investment themselves. But it's still not nearly what is needed for our economy. If we're at all interested in affordable transportation for shippers or people in this country, the government would match those freight railroad investments at least dollar-for-dollar, and probably in the process leverage some passenger capacity as well.
@ James Gary
LOL!
I actually have a list of train songs on my radio station, Radio Sweetheart (http://www.live365.com/stations/mikijourdan) in honor of National Train Day! It includes music from the likes of Beck, the Clash, the Decemberists, James Brown, Robyn Hitchcock and Tom Waits. To see when it plays next, check my schedule for "I Often Dream of Trains."
I actually have a list of train songs on my radio station, Radio Sweetheart (http://www.live365.com/stations/mikijourdan) in honor of National Train Day! It includes music from the likes of Beck, the Clash, the Decemberists, James Brown, Robyn Hitchcock and Tom Waits. To see when it plays next, check my schedule for "I Often Dream of Trains."
| 
Heads in the Sand
"Me and my homies like to play this game-
We call it "Amtrak," but others call it "the train."
You see, we all line up, in a single file line-
And rap about why public transit is fi-ine."
Yo.
Posted by James Gary | May 10, 2008 11:22 AM