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I ride the Maple Leaf a few time a year and I find it pretty reliable all the way to Toronto from AMS or SDY I like the food on both sides of operation, I don't notice a quality difference really, but rather a different variety when operated by VIA. The two times I have encoutered delays, one of the...

Does Amtrak have such a criteria to determine where an Amtrak train will even stop; much less what services it offers at a particular stop? One of the questions should be "Amtrak staffed, private contractor, shared staffing, or unstaffed" - there are plenty of stations which are shared wi...

I've seen them used twice. The first time was on a a Delta Air Lines flight back when they had Buy on Board meals. In that case, the unit itself is put back in the cart and Gate Gourmet downloads the transactions and processes them when they are on the ground. The second time, I was with my friends ...

Mr. Halstead, I've seen the handheld units in action, they work great.

USRailFan wrote:

george matthews wrote:If there was a train that crossed the Mexican border

Has there ever been such a train in the last 50-60 years?

I was wondering this myself because the Amsterdam, NY station is not staffed but if you go into the waiting area, there is ticket window and juding by the building, it was built in the 1950s, but I can't find anything to tell me when it was de-staffed.

When the Maple Leaf enters Canada and is under the operation of VIA Rail Canada, all the annoncuements are done in English and French.

NFL? Ha, US Customs won't like that.

I know for a fact that the dispatchers do their best to keep Amtrak rolling, but this is a working railroad. I agree with that. On my most recent trip on the Maple Leaf to Toronto, I had my scanner on and well the CSX dispatcher had to ask 63 to stop and he goes "Amtrak 63, I hate to tell you ...

I just came back from the post office to ship off stuff I sold on eBay. The local postmaster was running the counter. I had a brief conversation with him since well I was the only in there. He bascially said for the most part, the post office now is pretty efficient, but in some cases, its because o...

Something else I heard is that the orginal way the Maple Leaf worked is that I think it was at Buffalo Depew, a VIA RDC would meet passengers going to Canada and transfer to the RDC.

Any truth on that?

jp1822 wrote:To add another detail - the cafe car in Canada gets VIA stock and personnel. There is an on-board VIA Service Manager (or chief) in place of a Conductor.

Amtrak operates the Maple Leaf from NYP to NFS. After that, it's really a VIA Rail Canada operated train with VIA on-board service crew.

My Question is, does the engine crew also change to VIA people at NFS?

george matthews wrote: The connection from the Hudson line to Penn Station is quite recent. Until it was built Empire trains all ran into Grand Central.

Sigh! I'm sorry to see so many of you whose ONLY passenger train experience was with Amtrak. Gentlemen, it used to be much, much better. I've never loved Amtrak, only regarded it as an unpleasant necessity if there were to be any passenger trains at all. My first "Amtrak" trips were on th...