Recent content by bms

I have very poor service west of the Twin Cities, so y'all can wait for my Empire Builder report :)

Another win for the Chicago maintenance team.

I'm a college basketball fan and have been to the NCAA tournament three times. My fourth time seeing the tournament was supposed to be in my hometown Cleveland in 2020, and my sister was going to fly in for the games. All that was cancelled because of Corona, so we decided to make up for it by...

I took it the last two weeks from WAS-CLE, and the main problem I experienced was that there was a passenger who needed a good talking-to or to be kicked off the train. Two weeks ago this guy was shouting into his phone after midnight playing f**/marry/kill on the phone, making vulgar comments...

One thing I've learned the hard way is that you can always go back to a place, but you meant to go back to a time and a place - and you can't do that. Great trip report! I just started on a big trip and you've inspired me to actually try to write it up.

It looks like Amtrak is still allowing you to book the connection from the westbound Lake Shore Limited to the Texas Eagle, even though that's now only an hour and 47 minutes between trains after both trains had their schedules lengthened. It seems like that connection could be missed fairly often.

But the systems to route a plane trip will almost always find some routing because so many more planes are available compared to trains. You can't just search for any city pair and expect Amtrak to return any routing at all. And the timetables are pretty well hidden like you say. At some...

I really miss the midnight Megabus from Cleveland to New York. Unlike most cities, it actually stopped in Cleveland at a station with a heated waiting area and bathrooms. Technically Megabus service in Cleveland was suspended due to the pandemic, but it's been two years. I still use...

I think Amtrak needs national advertising just to raise awareness that it exists. In Ohio, the most common reaction I get when mentioning train travel is that the person I'm talking to wasn't aware that intercity passenger rail service exists. The amtrak.com site also needs to be much more...

It's been running with one sleeper, no lounge, and two always-packed coaches. Capitol Limited in coach for the last two years hasn't even been a better experience than a Greyhound bus. At least with maintenance being done somewhere other than Chicago, there should be fewer instances of...

It's just cans of pop and bags of chips, things like that. For a real meal though I have come to like Jersey Mike's in Union Station, they actually have a great cheesesteak.

There would be a huge demand for any train service from the Lehigh Valley into New York. The people in power need to make this happen.

There are a lot of people in Atlanta and in Nashville who don't have a car. Traffic is also completely awful in that area and gas costs $4.50. If train service began between those cities, I'd be shocked if it wasn't successful, even if it was slow because of the terrain.

Amtrak's online booking system leaves a lot to be desired. You could call 1-800-USA-RAIL to book the whole thing, and it might require a supervisor or a second call. You could also book CSN-CHI and CHI-ABQ separately online, and call the same number - ask to "link" the two trains so the...

There is so much demand in the South that you could practically rebuild the old Southern Railway passenger system, but North Carolina and Virginia appear to be the only States willing to pay for an acceptable level of service. One of the major flaws of the National Network is that it's...