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Ya, electrification is necessary in the end. If Sacramento wants to kill off HSR they should do it. If they don't, they should put up bonds and build it. There's lots of things wrong with HSR planning, but the stringing of wires is among the things that are extremely right here.

Great to hear! :-D It is also important to note that a few days ago, the Court finally ruled Texas Central Railway a "railroad" and an "interurban electric railroad" . Pretty interesting that the court ruled the latter. Does this mean Texas Central is now an interurban railway l...

One of the problems with our civilization as presently configured is that our decision makers do way too much pre-compromise with NIMBYism Amtrak is a federal agency, strictly speaking they don't need to prioritize the aesthetic preferences of a handful of Old Lyme homeowners, rather than a village ...

I'm not sure if Amtrak has enough sleeping car business to justify making a train mostly sleeping cars, but I still think that with better marketing and perhaps improved scheduling and maybe a broader range of offerings (adding things such as slumbercoaches and luxury sleeping accommodations), it c...

Was the ridership low on NEC sleepers, or was the issue that you had a sleeper car that wasn't earning money during the day that could be assigned to a LD train that would? As long as Amtrak could more profitably assign sleepers to all-day running long hauls you have higher utilization than on night...

I think VIA has long come to accept that the Canadian is primarily a tourism operation with shades of political cover, given it's 2 or 3 a week schedule depending on the season and a timetable that's more appropriate for six-axle heavyweights and steamers than it is for any post-1950 passenger train...

Sure, but when you were already losing $600 a ticket for the Canadian in the first place and hemorrhaging money elsewhere, management in Montreal might be looking for an excuse not to open up that expense if they don't have to.

We're going to start opening up in British Columbia next week - we were never on "shelter in place" levels of restrictiveness, but they're talking about 6 person home gatherings and opening up some personal service businesses, since the plague seems to be under control here. But the hits t...

Is it? It's by my reckoning 302 miles of extremely tangent track between Chicago & Columbus by that route. The Great Circle line is 277 miles. By the same measure, New York Washington is modestly more circuitous

didn't the Georgia Railroad only do that much because it allowed them to own a bank?

It's probably better that this proposed second Amtrak train ends at St Paul Union Depot. It's like how in Philadelphia, all Amtrak trains don't go into the core of Center City but instead Septa does. Septa honors those people with Amtrak tickets who are getting off and boarding Septa trains at any ...

I've always been surprised that the Builder doesn't stop at all in Minneapolis. Compare the Starlight, which stops in Seattle & Tacoma, Vancouver & Portland, Emeryville & Oakland, Burbank & Los Angeles

A trip over the Burlington essentially trades Milwaukee for...Dubuque. The rest of the communities not served by both are very small

I suspect that if the GN & NP had owned a Milwaukee-serving route to Chicago, they would probably have run their trains that way too

Surely the Twin Cities Hiawatha would be the logical name, no? It's a Hiawatha, but it goes to the twin cities too. It doesn't go to Emeryville

Fort Wayne - Lima - Columbus could be done by putting a switch in at Dunkirk, avoiding all of the freight mains, no?