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Not clear to me how smooth the transition from freight to passenger service is -- but there a substantial number of people who have been laid off from freight service in the past year who wish they weren't.

If 'first experience' means 'first ride', mine was my parents and I being driven from Idaho to Salt Lake City by my grandfather, to board the westbound CZ (when it still used the UP station.) I was disappointed I couldn't ride Pocatello-SLC first, but nobody else but the little boy wanted that...

I think that's a big part of what frustrates a lot of us with this new map. It's not so much a map of what Amtrak would do with more federal subsidy as a map of which states they hope will pay for local service. I dream of seeing a bill pass, along the lines of guaranteeing them their penny's...

We are on the same page then. It may well be they do always sell it when it is needed now. (You're making me feel old, remembering riding when they were Hi-Level transition coaches, not sleepers, which were rather rarely sold - they put the crew only sign on the outer door rather than at the...

I don't recall ever seeing more than the transdorm and two full sleepers (and a second coach) on the Seattle section. Not saying it's never happened, but am quite sure it wasn't routine in the 90s and isn't now. (All bets off for the 17 years I lived in Alaska in between). I imagine the...

My impression is that there is still a large Seattle-Whitefish ski business. That's the only reason I can think of why winter Builders occasionally run with two Seattle sleepers... when I rode in mid-November (in 17,18, and 19) the Builder feels like a ghost of 1968, one coach and one sleeper...

You aren't missing anything much. $700 is particularly bad, but it always costs more to fly from here to Seattle or Denver than from the hub to Fresno or Phoenix or Orlando or wherever. Similarly (much) more from here to New York than from New York to Europe. That is why my work (which will...

I am glad to see somebody at Amtrak marketing is aware that Montana to West Coast is a market where they are very competitive - easy "ride all night, arrive the next morning" schedule. I hope they follow up on it with some actual sales. As for Whitefish vs. Kalispell - the airport somehow...

You are having an extremely good day if you succeed in making it from Havre to Seattle in 5 or 6 hours. I have had to fly from Portland to Kalispell, on a day when there was no sleeper space on the Builder. That took an uncomfortable 7, even with an hourly shuttle between Portland and Seattle...

I am glad to hear that was the plan. It seemed to me that the logical solution was to run the Desert Wind through Wyoming, and continue to join the Pioneer and CZ in Salt Lake.

For the Builder, in my experience when the transdorm roomettes are being sold to the public, the sleeper adjacent to the transdorm is fairly reliably 'roomettes forward' so that 1-10 in the sleeper are immediately next to 11-18 in the transdorm, and passengers board through the sleeper door even...

The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority -- and the way it has attracted national attention but zero interest from state government -- is once again in the news: https://www.kpax.com/news/missoula-county/big-sky-passenger-rail-authority-grows-and-the-nation-is-watching-but-is-the-legislature

Significant LD schedule improvements happened a number of times in the (now-ancient) past. The most recent that comes to mind was the Cardinal between Indianapolis and Cincinnati in the first few years after it moved onto that route in 1986. Small improvements have happened on many of the...

I am of the same opinion. I think that the post-9/11 rule changes should have required providing free checked baggage service on every flight. They claimed at the time that they wanted to reduce congestion, both at the security checkpoints and while boarding/deboarding, as well as reduce the...

An IMO better version of these is in widespread use in western Canada. The signal is flashing green, not dark, when not in use. When a pedestrian pushes the button they first turn solid green, then yellow and red for the normal length of time. I don't believe the Canadian version uses flashing...

I have doubts that Edmonton-Camrose is a big enough market for commuter service... and the rails are gone most of the way from Camrose to Drumheller. (If you meant using CN all the way, well, I suppose one could - but I can't see any upside to making the trip an hour longer and bypassing all the...

I had the impression that there was some sort of temporary suspension for a short time in early 1984, but that regular service had resumed before the spring 1984 timetable was printed, and continued until fall of 1985. (The Super Continental appears in the June 85 timetable and Calgary-Edmonton...

They already do, and have been doing so for a long time, at least on the Empire Builder. I don't know if this is the practice on the other western LD trains or not.

I would suggest that that is why it disappeared: the Super Continental came back so the Regina-Saskatoon, Saskatoon-Edmonton, and Edmonton-Calgary local service that "replaced" it and allowed Edmonton and Saskatoon passengers to reach the Canadian was no longer needed. I rather suspect that...

I too rate the 1981 cuts as deeper than 1990, in terms of how much service was lost. The difference was that there was enough of an outcry after the 1981 cuts that a good portion of the lost service had been restored by 1985 or so. Ironically, some of the restoration a campaign promise by...