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As I've discussed elsewhere, I currently live in Costa Rica, a country with a small rail system that I have used as much as possible. In my thread talking about Costa Rica, I talked about the difference in size between Costa Rica and the US---Costa Rica is roughly the size of West Virginia. I've...

This might seem like a minor question, but I think it is interesting, and might have important implications. In another thread, I happened to mention that Amtrak doesn't own many of their stations---and I got curious, and looked it up, and apparently Amtrak owns almost none of their stations...

The other day, I posted an old cartogram I made in another thread. I started thinking about cartograms and wondered what a cartogram of Amtrak's ridership would look like. So, using the 2022 figures, I made this: I know the aesthetics and organization are a little confusing---but basically I...

I read a fascinating article from Rolling Stone on Joby Aerospace, a company that is developing eVTOL (electronic Vertical Take-Off and Landing) helicopters. The Rolling Stone article goes into detail about the biography of the founder, and for a Rolling Stone article, it seems less cynical than...

I was almost going to call this thread "How to do rail anti-advocacy"? Of course, I am a big rail advocate, both for Amtrak, other long distance rail, and local and commuter rail. But a lot of my transit experience has been in areas that can't support rail. And I sometimes have discussions with...

I've mentioned this concept a few times in the past, but I got the idea to do some research and make a post about it specifically. The word "rural" gets used a lot, so often that it isn't always useful, because for people from different areas of the country, rural can mean very different...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/us/alaska-airlines-flight-diverted.html This article is surprising and a little confusing to follow, but apparently, an off-duty airline pilot who was ferrying inside the cockpit of a flight tried to shut off the engines but was restrained from doing so, and...

As I alluded to in my Willamette Valley thread, I was planning on moving. And I have moved, to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. I am going to be studying Spanish here for 10 weeks (or more), and of course, I will also be riding the trains, as much as I can! Much as I did with the Willamette...

Adventures off of the Amtrak Cascades This is a quick guide to what towns and cities of interest can be reached from the train stops on the Amtrak Cascades line (which are also, for the most part, the Pacific NW stops of the Coast Starlight). This guide is intended for “adventure travellers”...

This was a very intense trip that lasted a little over 48 hours, leaving Friday afternoon and coming back Sunday afternoon. I have done two day trips where both nights were spent on a train before, both times going to the Bay Area on the Coast Starlight. But looking at schedules, I saw that the...

First off, I am not quite sure where to put this thread, and it might be moved. In the past few years, train and transit YouTube has become a popular niche, and there are countless videos of people sharing their personal travels, as well as history and theory behind rail and other transport. In...

I just finished a five day, four night long trip, and I have a lot to talk about! I will be editing and posting videos for each day, probably about once a day. This is my video showing my trip northward, on May 27th. I took a city bus from Corvallis to Albany, took an Oregon POINT/Amtrak...

Martinez, California is located in the Eastern San Francisco Bay region, and is a station for four separate Amtrak routes: the California Zephyr, the Coast Starlight, the Capitol Corridor, and the San Joaquin, as well as the Thruway service that goes through Humboldt, Mendocino, and Sonoma...

I have a thread where I talk about the Portland MAX, but here is a trip report from travelling it! The entire thing! The Portland MAX is five lines (or maybe four), and has 60 miles of track, and I rode all of them in one day! And it was a long day. From a train and transit point of view, the...

First, I guess the title is a bit of a lie, since I didn't actually manage to ride all the systems---no ACE or SMART! But I rode a circle of trains around the Bay Area. I had this idea a while ago, and when I first had it, it seemed like it was just a wild idea---but the more I thought about...

This is mostly a theoretical question, but it has some real implications. If you could take one Amtrak long distance route that has daily service, and double it, which one would you choose? Presumably this second service would be at about the opposite time of as its current service, but not...

I am guessing this is the proper forum for this: This is the Corvallis Depot Suites, an extended stay (over one month) hotel for people in Corvallis Oregon. It was at one time the depot for a minor railroad that mostly served to haul freight between the coast and Albany, Oregon, which is where...

As many people have pointed out, Amtrak is often being beaten not just on speed, but on cost, by budget and ultrabudget airlines. The question is...how? When I try to do some envelope math, the numbers don't seem to add up to anything close to profitability. I am not an expert on this, and I am...

After a year in which I mostly took local trips around Oregon, I took a long distance trip to California by Amtrak, first by the Amtrak Coast Starlight, and then by Thruway bus. I made a video of it, which even at 25 minutes, basically only shows the outline of the trip: One of the things that...

I don't know exactly which forum this belongs in, but I think it will be interesting to some people here who are interested in rail history, and architecture as well. Just the subject line hopefully piqued some interest! In 1905 the Bitterroot Valley in Western Montana (just south of Missoula)...