Recent content by Herb

The coastal route (San Jose to Santa Barbara) should be purchased by California and upgraded. Getting more miles of track infrastructure under public ownership is the real solution. It could be developed so that not only passenger trains but local freight would be hauled. I’m serious about the...

The CSL runs next to the ocean only from about Santa Barbara to just past Vandanberg. From there on it’s all in land. When the Pacific Parlor car was part of the consist, sleepers were a better deal cause you had sole access to it. If there was a parlor car on all long distance routes it would...

It’s 2023 now and most of these issues have evolved! I regularly use the iPhone app for my tickets and have not had a problem. Amtrak IT must have gotten some help!! The TQP is still not very useful. If Amtrak had more frequent service and more routes it might be ok. I’m now finishing a week...

I did not have that particular problem but FNBO is a funky bank! Bank of America was simple and straight forward. Logging into FNBO the first time took a bit, because FNBO uses another URL to log in. After I go that figured out I moved onto the next issue. One of my banks went thru a merger and...

The better question is “If all railroad infrastructure was owned by the Federal and State governments (like our Highway system ) would passenger service run on time? For the answer check out the Swiss National Railroad. They run passenger service and freight. Their passenger service is on time...

Why is Amtrak so difficult? They have the information because they need to know where their trains are and when to meet up with them. It seems like someone in Amtrak has made the decision to be less transparent and more opaque in their operations.

When looking at the study it shows the weakness of our current system. Each state has to study and provide funds. When just making a route one should consider not only the end points but the thru-points along the route. In addition segments of the larger interstate route should be used as...

The whole issue is that America’s railroads are not national infrastructure, they are private infrastructure. I believe Congress gave way to much to the railroads when AMTRAK was formed. If Congress had said, OK you don’t (won’t) do passenger service as in the original agreements (where they got...

I book BC on the. CS when it started. There was Wifi, two bottles of water a pillow and a $6 voucher to use that trip in the dinning car or cafe. Since then they have dropped all of those FIRST CLASS features. The car was not crowded but there were plenty of people in the car. The las time I...

I just tried booking a business class seat in April, May, June and July. All that was available was coach and sleeper. I’ve been riding AMTRAK since they started. I live on the Coast Starlight Route and have seen it go thru much changes. With the exception of the introduction of business class...

The current Coast Starlight route is a good one and should be kept because it services Eastern Oregon from Klamath Falls to Chemult and is connected to Bend Or via a bus service. The route I’d like reestablished is from Davis CA (Sacramento) to Eugene OR via the original Southern Pacific...

I’ve been speaking about a daylight train from Sacramento to Eugene via the I5 corridor. It would leave SacValletStation and turn north at Davis, following the west side SP track which is under utilized. At Tehama Y North of Corning it would move to UPSP track. Red Bluff, Redding, Dunsmuir are...

From personal experience the European rail experience is far better than AMTRAK . I live in Northern California about 45 miles from the Oregon border. My nearest AMTRAK station is 8 miles away in Dunsmuir CA. I have traveled the entire west coast ( Canada too ) and across the country to the East...

Switzerland has the best example of train connections in the world. They built their system with the goal of providing transit from almost every place not just the big urban centers. In fact according to Railways Explained there are more Swiss living outside the major city centers than in the...

My personal experience in Europe was that a trip that involved rail and bus was pretty easy to make happen. Electrical power is the way to go even here in the US. Cost of electrification is the crutch that America uses to stay invested in diesel powered locomotives. Switzerland has a total...