Recent content by rs9

Sit on the left side if you can. You'll get views of the Hudson River to Albany, and if the weather allows, sunset views of the Mohawk River after departing Albany. There's not much to see nature-wise in the morning before arrival into Chicago.

The display screens for passenger/conductor info sounds like great technological improvements. Not to be Mr. Negative, but the Siemens Venture Midwest cars also have digital display boards in the coaches. I have yet to see them actually in use (in fairness, this is an anecdotal sample).

The premium coach and solo suite options definitely meet gaps in Amtrak's offerings. Excited to see how this proceeds.

I understand the historical reference, but there already is an Amtrak service named "Hiawatha." For folks who are not Amtrak buffs or regular riders, I don't think having multiple services named Hiawatha would be of good use. Although there have been solid improvements, Amtrak's signage and...

Without being too cynical, it would be really interesting to learn where the equipment is coming from for added daily departures (if that ever actually happens).

According to Amtrak's initial ADA-compliant design ideas, only particular parts of a long distance train are proposed to have wheelchair-wide aisles, and those sections have 1x2 seating (which may be coach, "business class" or something else). As always, design renderings are not final.

For the single-level fleet, are there any manufacturers that currently produce oblong, airplane tube-shaped rail cars? For the bi-level fleet, are there any manufacturers that currently produce rail cars with second-level gangways and mid-car staircases, as opposed to end doors and gangways at...

Thank you for saying this. I'm in no way an expert on railcar procurement, but I am baffled by the desire to simply replicate Amfleet, Viewliner and Superliner cars for a future order. The rest of the world has moved on! This reminds me of Metra's (Chicago) RFP for essentially an exact...

I traveled from Chicago to Washington on Southwest Airlines to start my trip for the Christmas/New Years holidays, as booking coach on the Capitol Limited is a fool's errand if you're not drastically far in advance. Tickets were nearly twice the cost of my flight when I booked it (got a good...

Seats are something tangible we can debate, but I don't think that should be a limiting factor to comfort. Having ridden in the Illinois Venture cars, I found the seats to be generally fine - not great, not terrible - but far more important, the smooth and quiet ride of the cars is a huge...

For the Lake Shore Limited, I think part of its decline may be the gradual settling of airfares from post-COVID peaks. My most frequent LSL trip is CHI-ROC. Airfares were frequently $400+ for a while but have settled into the $250-300 range.

I don't know if this happens on the NEC, but a good example of this is on the Lake Shore Limited, especially when it runs with five coach cars. Passengers are informed they can "only exit where a uniformed Amtrak employee is present." It's up to you as a passenger to figure out where this is...

The trains in Norway with specific lie flat cars have 23 seats in a 1:1 configuration. This is about half the capacity of an Amfleet II coach car. With that said, these are very much in the design of a first class airline pod. I would be curious if there's a more simple model of basically a...

I saw this quote from Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/11/21/23971484/amtrak-ridership-thanksgiving-holiday-empire-builder-chip No paywall, but you have to sign up with email to read the article. Not to bash endlessly on Mr. Gardner, but is this claim actually...

If I can offer some thoughts on the seats: I haven't ridden the Venture cars on the Hiawatha, but I have ridden them on other Midwest routes. I think there's a lot of rather large assumptions being bandied about that "because I don't like the seat, therefore others don't like it as well." I...