Intercity Passenger Rail

[acptulsa]

I've thought of the network too, though I think of it as Enterprise Rail. And I don't see having it compete with Amtrak, because the gubbmint couldn't compete if they did have their own rail outside The Corridor, and the states involved could inherit that. So, I think there should be a reverse of the process that created Amtrak. The railroads agree to run this or that service for a period of time, and in return Amtrak gives them the equipment to do it with. After all, that's how Amtrak got what it needed to begin in 1971.

And the railroads are pretty damned efficient companies. I think they could compete. Small stations or the big, old stations with plenty of rent-paying stores in them, no complaints if they do form a single system because air and road do still compete with them...

The Union Pacific considers steam excursions worth the trouble a few times a year. Whether they're profitable or just good advertising, I don't know. But I don't see all the railroads shying away from this challenge.

[Anti Federalist]

General freaking Electric is the biggest locomotive builder in this country, and they can't even come up with a decent high-speed truck for this kind of service.

General freaking Electric. Too damned busy trying to brainwash us with msnbc to do their damned job.

Bet if they got a contract to build some new truck/tread drive assembly for a MIC killbot, they'd have no problem. Grrrr....

[UtahApocalypse]

I worked for three years on The Heber Valley Railroad in Utah.

Me and My Motorcar for Firepatrol


Diesel Locomotive

[Anti Federalist]

I worked for three years on The Heber Valley Railroad in Utah.

Me and My Motorcar for Firepatrol


Diesel Locomotive

Awesome.

I was an operator here for a couple of summers.

http://www.trolleymuseum.org/

[acptulsa]

Either of you been to the National Museum of Transportation, just west of St. Louis.

Have I got some pics! Need to get a scanner...

http://www.transportmuseumassociation.org/

[Anti Federalist]

Either of you been to the National Museum of Transportation, just west of St. Louis.

Have I got some pics! Need to get a scanner...

http://www.transportmuseumassociation.org/

No, I don't get out west too often, but it looks interesting.

I'm going to take the kids here during the summer.

http://www.cassrailroad.com/

Largest collection of operating Shay verticals in the world.

[acptulsa]

Shays are funny--all the geared engines are, if you're used to hearing the rod engines. The things chug fifty beats a second to beat the band and you just know it's going to come around the bend at seventy, and the thing is doing twenty.

Drag 'em down to the B&O museum in Baltimore. Another good one. They have the oldest equipment I've ever seen in person.

[Anti Federalist]

Shays are funny--all the geared engines are, if you're used to hearing the rod engines. The things chug fifty beats a second to beat the band and you just know it's going to come around the bend at seventy, and the thing is doing twenty.

Drag 'em down to the B&O museum in Baltimore. Another good one. They have the oldest equipment I've ever seen in person.

Yeah, been meaning to get there for years now.

[Anti Federalist]

Shays are funny--all the geared engines are, if you're used to hearing the rod engines. The things chug fifty beats a second to beat the band and you just know it's going to come around the bend at seventy, and the thing is doing twenty.

Drag 'em down to the B&O museum in Baltimore. Another good one. They have the oldest equipment I've ever seen in person.

The folks at Clarks Trading post in Lincoln NH have one of only three in the world of these IIRC

[acptulsa]

The folks at Clarks Trading post in Lincoln NH have one of only three in the world of these IIRC

About that. How are you going to explain to your preacher you're taking your grandkids to see a Climax?

[acptulsa]

Here's a side-geared Shay. Really sounds like it's going somewhere, doesn't it?

[AGRP]

Pretty trains:



What a nice excuse to line the coffers of our elected officials.

[acptulsa]

What a nice excuse to line the coffers of our elected officials.

Lord. Trolleys. Every city worth the name once had tracks. Now, how do you get them back at this late date without it becoming a major cluster?

Well, this thread isn't about transit or suburban rail. But the things we throw away. Like the Constitution, for example. What a wonderful feeling when we finally wake up and say, 'What have we done?'

[Anti Federalist]

Lord. Trolleys. Every city worth the name once had tracks. Now, how do you get them back at this late date without it becoming a major cluster?

Well, this thread isn't about transit or suburban rail. But the things we throw away. Like the Constitution, for example. What a wonderful feeling when we finally wake up and say, 'What have we done?'

That ^^^

I'd give you rep if I wasn't out of ammo.

Some things mankind got right on our first try and should not be $#@!ed with.

New does not always equal better.

[AGRP]

Lord. Trolleys. Every city worth the name once had tracks. Now, how do you get them back at this late date without it becoming a major cluster?

Well, this thread isn't about transit or suburban rail. But the things we throw away. Like the Constitution, for example. What a wonderful feeling when we finally wake up and say, 'What have we done?'

Portland has a very extensive rail system (they kept a lot of their tracks). It's the poster child for trolleys/tram.

The system may be bankrupting the state, but they are pretty.

[Anti Federalist]

Here's a side-geared Shay. Really sounds like it's going somewhere, doesn't it?

Bulldozers on tracks.

They do just what they were designed to do, climb the sides of mountains hauling a full trainload of logs.

IIRC I read somewhere a Shay can manage a 1 in 8 grade.

[acptulsa]

Portland has a very extensive rail system (they kept a lot of their tracks). It's the poster child for trolleys/tram.

The system may be bankrupting the state, but they are pretty.

They are nice. I rode on one once. Back in the day cars were more expensive, and trolley systems could run as private enterprise. By the end of World War II those days were gone. Cities had to choose whether to subsidize them or let them go. Meanwhile, postwar policy called for getting us all the oil we could burn, if we had to conquer the world to do it. With subsidization like that, who can compete with cars?

[acptulsa]

IIRC I read somewhere a Shay can manage a 1 in 8 grade.

Yeah, if it didn't have too much of a load. Mt Ranier Scenic has a Climax, too, but it doesn't run iirc. Read a story about one of the geared engines running upgrade. It began slipping, and pretty soon was running away backwards because they had lost traction. So, the crew bailed.

Dejectedly, they trudged down the track just knowing they were all fired. Then the engine and train chugged around the corner. It had regained traction on a flatter stretch of rail and come back to them. They climbed on, were more careful to maintain traction uphill, and didn't tell the story until they had all retired.

Or so I heard...

[AGRP]

They are nice. I rode on one once. Back in the day cars were more expensive, and trolley systems could run as private enterprise. By the end of World War II those days were gone. Cities had to choose whether to subsidize them or let them go. Meanwhile, postwar policy called for getting us all the oil we could burn, if we had to conquer the world to do it. With subsidization like that, who can compete with cars?

Yeah, they're a boondoggle; but I have a soft spot in my heart for them for the same reason why people here do (auto companies bought many city trolley systems).

Nothing beats going to the city and hitching a ride on the train or hearing the sounds of screeching breaks, clanging iron, and the smells/sounds of life.

Portland > Seattle

[acptulsa]

Well, a President Paul would never print you billions to run it. But he would be even less likely to tell Portland's citizens they can't do it. And he'd keep the Railroad Administration the hell out of it.

And as a completely personal opinion colored somewhat by where the people I love are, Seattle + Portland > the $#@! out of California.

[nayjevin]

This little guy popped into my head:

Big Brutus is the nickname of the Bucyrus-Erie model 1850B electric shovel, which was the second largest of its type in operation in the 1960s and 1970s. It is currently the centerpiece of a mining museum in West Mineral, Kansas.

It is 160 feet (49 m) high and weighs 11 million pounds. The bucket holds 90 cubic yards (69 m3) or 150 tons. Maximum speed is 0.22 MPH. It cost $6.5 million in 1962.
Big Brutus, while not the largest electric shovel ever built, is the largest electric shovel still in existence. The Captain, at 28 million pounds, was the largest shovel and one of the two largest land-based mobile machines ever built. It was scrapped in 1992.[1]

The Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company donated Big Brutus in 1984 as the core of a mining museum which opened in 1985. In 1987, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated Big Brutus a Regional Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.[2]
The museum offers tours as well as camping.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brutus

Grandpa took me there as a kid. Blew my mind.

[Anti Federalist]

Something else we don't make anymore ^^^

CAT bought out B/E and is expected to close the deal sometime this year.

While giving lip service to maintain a US presence, I'll bet CAT will shift most, if not all, of the manufacturing process to the EU and China.

[libertyjam]

Something for anyone who wants to delve deeper--route list 'on the eve of Amtrak'. Quite a contrast to what Amtrak ran itself.

http://broadway.pennsyrr.com/Rail/Am...s_pre1971.html

I notice one mistake on that list, the Texas Eagle did not terminate in Texarkana but went on down through Longview to Dallas. Don't know if it went on to Houston or not, but Amtrak was still running this train until just a few years ago.

[acptulsa]

No, actually they did terminate at Texarkana in April of 1971. Back then, Texas required all railroads in the state be chartered in the state. So, railroads had subsidiaries in the state. This effectively turned every service in Texas into an intrastate service, at least legally. There were services into and out of Texas, of course, but legally and officially they were their own intrastate runs. Never mind that if the run to Texas was late ending, the run within Texas would be just as late starting...

So, Texas provided a unique opportunity to drop passenger services, and the state government was more than willing to allow it. And when you had a railroad (like the MoPac at the time) which hated passenger service and would sabotage its own service just for an excuse to drop it, getting rid of Texas service was a top priority.

The route you mention was just almost the only service Amtrak added. There was a run on an electified line that bypassed York, PA to go through no town as big, which was odd. But few others.

[acptulsa]

[acptulsa]

Pity rail travel had to 'go out of fashion'. All things do.



But it's a bigger shame that the government decided to eliminate any chance it had to 'come back into fashion'.

[Anti Federalist]

The Super Chief 1948

[acptulsa]

This was not, by the way, a real service. Who would go from Manhattan to Tennessee via the Carolinas?! Good tune, though. Steam locomotives provided the rhythm and inspiration for so many great songs of so many genres (like about half of bluegrass).

[Anti Federalist]

This was not, by the way, a real service. Who would go from Manhattan to Tennessee via the Carolinas?! Good tune, though. Steam locomotives provided the rhythm and inspiration for so many great songs of so many genres (like about half of bluegrass).

Some folks claimed it was written about the Crescent Limited, or Southern Crescent, NYC to NOLA service.

But that route never went far enough west.

I've ridden that train before, all the way, from NOLA to NYC. It was a great trip.

[acptulsa]

I've ridden that train before, all the way, from NOLA to NYC. It was a great trip.

It was absolutely the finest train to continue into the Amtrak era. And deserves to have one of its Pacific locomotives preserved in the Smithsonian. That said, the route went through Atlanta, not Chattanooga. And you didn't get your breakfast in Carolina, either.