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The July issue is on this page.

The June issue is available on this page.

The May issue of Amtrak's employee publication has been posted here.

This piece is written by Steven Harrod, who teaches operations management at the University of Dayton: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/21/harrod.high.speed.rail.trains/?hpt=T2

I'll have to read this in detail later...too busy at work right now. http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/04/13/high.speed.rail.fact.check/

The April 2011 issue has been published here. It should download or open as a PDF file. Enjoy!

After reading recent discussions on this board about train cleaning (where, how long, how well, who does it, why not done better, comparisons with airlines), I was interested to see an article in Amtrak Ink's March 2011 issue about the opportunity to "deep-clean" the cars during this winter's...

Columbia mayor is interested in rail link to Charlotte. This is so prospective and tenuous that I can't even hear a distant locomotive horn yet. Our city struggles every year to operate the bus system and it's only a few months from a possible shutdown now. On the other hand, it's the first...

In this Newsweek editorial posted 2/27/2011, Will posits that liberals love trains because rail travel will pry people from their free-thought-engendering automobiles, letting the progressives proceed to take over society. I've never thought of it from quite that perspective, I must say. Why...

Tomorrow, 2/3/2011, my partner and I will drive 1.5 hours to Charlotte, NC, and board the northbound Carolinian for that mid-winter vacation paradise, Washington, DC! :lol: I will plan to update this post with a trip report as our journey progresses. We really are going for a vacation...to...

Hey, all you fans of Monty Python and steam locomotives: go find Michael Palin's New Europe travel video series, episode 6 entitled From Pole to Pole. He sits at the controls of a steam locomotive for a regularly scheduled run in Poland. The segment made me appreciate the complexity of operating...

Can anyone share their experience (or opinion, of which there are probably many :) ) about how safe a car would be in the CLT parking lot for several days? I'm aware of the neighborhood and have parked overnight once or twice, but never for a longer time. I live 1.5 hours away from...

I just read an opinion piece on bnet.com entitled Train Envy: Will We Ever Get High-Speed Rail in the U.S.?. The sole commenter to the article focuses on Amtrak's unprofitability and on the need for trains to offer cross-country trips at speeds similar to airlines in order to be useful. It...

During the reservation process, amtrak.com offers me hotels that show no name or location. This is at the bottom of the "PASSENGER DISCOUNTS / PROMOTION CODE" page where a few hotels and rental car options are show. I clicked "More Deals>>" and several lodging choices appear that don't have a...

I seem to recall once being able to create an itinerary on amtrak.com, then save it before buying tickets and come back to finish it later. Is this feature gone? I can't find it now after logging into the site. Feel free to tell me it's operator error :lol: just show me how to find it if it...

My question: is Columbia SC (CLB) in the same zone with DC (WAS)? On the AGR site's zone map, they show both 'regions' and 'zones'. The two stations are clearly in the same region, but not in the same zone as delineated on the map (WAS is in Northeast zone). So, does "zone" = "region"? If so, I...

What's a "run-through train"? Amtrak Ink for Feb 2010 says the following: It's on page 7. More explanation follows in the article but I don't quite get the point. How does the new operation differ from how they were operated before? And it's apparently not the same "run-through" as a...

This link was posted on the Yahoo group Carolina Passenger Trains: http://www.bytrain.org/quicklinks/pdf/refurb_rebuild.pdf I think it's especially interesting in light of threads in this forum about refurbishing old equipment (à la VIA) versus buying new. Lots of good photos of cars that I've...

I'd love to hear others' feedback on this post that came up today in my Google "high speed rail" news feed. Some main points I took from the article: don't pretend that passenger rail needs huge subsidies while highways and air do just fine with none carbon emission savings for the proposed...

Can anyone share the background of this organization? From the name, I thought it would be an organization of rail passengers, similar to NARP. But their web site says it is not a membership organization and no outside funds can be donated. Is it more of a "think tank"? What have been some of...