on Dec 18th at the Baltimore Amtrak station, with a ticket for a soon to depart Amtrak train, I was ordered off the platform and told to stop taking photos. Now I am well known at this station and the amtrak officer knew me and was polite and even let me grab a few last photos but was adamant that I must leave the platform and remain in the waiting room until my train is called.He did suggest that if I "Really" wanted some photos that I could go over to the light Rail platform which is considered an "open platform"
A policy that access to platforms (or even certain platforms) is controlled strikes me as very different from a policy that access to platforms is free but photography is restricted. The former is very easy to enforce uniformly and fairly, and falls under the aegis of either safety, trespass, or both. The latter allows for lax, variable, or profiled enforcement, and doesn't have any clearly definable logic. It sounds like in Bob's case, the policy may have been the former sort, though it may also have been the latter sort. I'm not familiar with BAL, so I don't feel like I can judge this one very well.
While changing engines on the Crescent at WAS in late December, I took numerous photographs on the platform. Nobody cared, even though I was very clearly taking photographs and even took photographs of train crew, service crew, engineers, etc. Then I took a photo of an Amfleet wheel and a baggage handler or redcap, I forget which, told me politely "photographs of trains are ok, but no photographs of parts of trains". Which strikes me as yet another random non-policy comment from someone just feeling like they should say something. He didn't even stop to chat, he just said it casually while walking past, and it wasn't a big deal at all.
It was just another example of how Amtrak employees aren't given any clear direction about what is and isn't ok, and sometimes make up their own policies and self-determine their own authority to enforce them (or that low-level managers create these things and tell their underlings, which gives the underlings more of a sense that they're real policies). And that doesn't seem to be something Amtrak is taking any steps to control, which just leads to a culture of vigilantism and fear rather than common sense. And while instances like mine are totally insignificant, sometimes this manifests itself in more confusing situations like Bob's, and sometimes in really troubling situations like Patrick's (with Agent Pat).
I suppose, like everything, the only thing to do is write President Boardman, but I don't know how likely it is that vigilante policies will ever be controlled (underlings instructed by vigilante managers will never know the policies are suspect, and photographers who might write letters to Boardman will never know who those managers are, and company-wide training may not change the habits of vigilante managers).
