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This, plus the Meteor is much faster from NYP to Jacksonville than the Star, given the latter's roundabout routing via Selma. From New England and Albany, the southbound Star requires a very early morning departure, and the northbound requires a late night -- plus the risk of missing the last...

There are elevators up to the Moynihan hall on all of the platforms used by Amtrak, including tracks 5-6. These elevators are at the far west end of each platform -- so at the rear of the train if you're coming in from Albany. How long a walk it is depends on how far forward they pull the train...

Changing our development pattern is really the key to making rail and transit useful to a much bigger chunk of the population. But in many communities developed since World War II, local zoning laws effectively prohibit the kind of density needed for walkable neighborhoods -- by restricting...

Oh, thanks for fixing it -- and for the site, which I find wonderfully useful.

The Boston Acela trains for some reason have disappeared from the display of Amtrak Status Maps on my phone, though I can find them if I click on one of the regional trains and then click the "map" link.

Just think what he would have to say about "flexible dining."

I assume Amtrak notifies people with reservations on the affected trains, and perhaps they also posted something on the former Twitter, although I don't have access to that. Still, it does seem that if they have an outage affecting multiple days, it would be respectful of potential riders to...

Traffic was very heavy. We had originally planned to head to the Burlington area, but there was a layer of clouds approaching from the south and west, so we changed our destination to northeastern Vermont. We were a bit behind the biggest crowds, arriving at our destination about 2:45, after the...

The Vermonter seems to have been cancelled north of Springfield most of this week. It ran on Monday, but maybe not at all since then, and the southbound is cancelled again today. Does anyone know why? I couldn't find any explanation on Amtrak's website.

We drove with a van full of family/friends and got a great view from the campus of the Vermont State U at Lyndonville. Didn't hear about it in advance, but the Vermont Rail System ran a special train from Rutland to Burlington to deliver eclipse watchers to the Burlington waterfront by 12:30...

It really depends on the particular trip and the transfer point. In general on cross-country trips we plan stopovers at places where we have family, friends or places we want to see. If the train connections are awkward or dicey, though, we will sometimes plan to spend an extra day or night...

Yeah, the fact that it has a plate is a clue that it's not a flex meal, which in my experience would be served in its original plastic or aluminum storage tub. Of course, Amtrak Vacations is not Amtrak.

In the Moynihan train hall, the red cap station is in the ticketed passenger waiting area on the east side of the hall. There's a counter there where you can tell them you need assistance getting down to the train. Alternatively, if you have access to the first-class lounge (such as through AGR...

My advice at NYP would be to get a red cap to take you and your luggage to the train. They normally get the track number in advance and can take you down to the train before the general boarding announcement. Then you have your choice of seats, whether in coach or business, for at least a few...

The seats in Empire BC are definitely nicer than regular coach seats. But the BC section is limited to the back half of the cafe car, so the overall number of seats is five or six rows. It's a 2-and-1 seating pattern, so there's only one pair of double seats per row. The chances of getting seats...

I remember that era well. At one point in the mid-90s, in a story about the supposed need for widening the Maine Turnpike, the head of the Legislature's transportation committee told the Portland Press Herald that, as far as the proposed Portland-Boston train service was concerned, "we need less...

Not good, but better if you act quickly at Philadelphia, where a lot of people are likely to get off. Of course, lots more will board there too.

The Official Railway Guide, as it was called in latter years, continued to publish at least into the 1990s. Sometime after Amtrak's creation, it was divided into passenger and freight editions. The passenger edition was geared toward travel agents; the few copies I have from the late '70s and...

Just out of curiosity, do you by chance have any recollection of roughly the time of day/night you left Chicago and/or arrived into Albany?

Yes, I have a few of those SPV atlases, and they are impressive -- particularly for their detail in showing long-gone ghost lines.