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How much of an increase in ticket prices are you willing to accept for an improved Amtrak wifi system that supports video conferencing and 4K video? Alternatively, how much are you willing to pay for Amtrak wifi that isn't free? (For the sake of argument, let's say they charge for it in 4-hour block...

The passengers who complain the loudest about not being able to do Zoom calls or watch movies in 4K are generally people who can easily afford (and probably already have) an unlimited data plan from their own wireless provider and/or their employer can afford to set them up with a mobile hotspot for...

I hope the ET23s are headed for Maine... Rigby and Waterville could really use some better yard power than the ex-PAR junk, and the ET23s would also provide a welcome reduction in air pollution for folks who live near the yards.

Satellite is line-of-sight, so it might work in open farmland but probably wouldn't work in a lot of other areas. Cellular is not line-of-sight, and it can penetrate buildings/structures, which allows it to work almost everywhere. It also has a bandwidth advantage over satellite.

The Downeaster's wifi launched in 2008.

The Downeaster was also the first Amtrak train to offer electronic ticketing.

Acela was the first train to offer the amenity. Actually it was the Downeaster. I remember the news articles about it. Amtrak officials made comments such as "the Downeaster is the perfect 'test tube' to experiment with new products before rolling them out to the rest of the network."

They probably spent at least a million dollars on the yard office renovation alone.

It now looks like a different yard on a different planet, compared to how it looked when PAR owned it. I never realized just how bad it was until I had the CSX version of Rigby Yard to compare it to.

And saving an hour and a half is a big deal when you've still got a lot of 10 MPH and 25 MPH track to travel on before your crew runs out of time.

The scene at 2:05 in the video is definitely good old fashioned Guilford!

...properly maintain their bridges in accordance with FRA bridge standards. FRA bridge standards are not a binary "safe or unsafe" condition. A bridge can, for example, be safe for 10 MPH freight operation but unsafe for 60 MPH passenger operation. Bridges are given ratings for exactly th...

It's a huge liability issue for Amtrak. They're not going to risk dumping a carload of human beings in a river every time they cross a bridge that's at risk of failing. That's a very different risk calculation than dumping, say, a car of cement or steel plate or perlite.

Amtrak had concerns about some of the bridges on the Rockland Branch, with regard to handling the weight and speed of typical Amtrak equipment and service. I know that MaineDOT put at least one or two of those bridges out to bid for repairs, but I'm not sure if they've been repaired yet.

As someone who had the misfortune of traveling aboard VIP buses several times in the past, I hope the Swirks maintain them better than VIP did. Being trapped inside a broken-down bus on a hot day — with windows that can't be opened — is miserable at best.

At the Boothbay Railway Village:

North Pole Express: https://railwayvillage.org/event/north- ... 023-12-02/