Hello, (guess we have to all start somewhere) 
My unique story on how I got here, lets see. Was born and spent half of my time in the SF Bay Area and Modesto, where the family had a ranch and I could see the freight trains on what's now the BNSF line on the west side of town (near the then Hershey factory in Oakdale). I wasn't that enamored with trains that much as a child, my father was a mechanical engineer by trade and was into amateur auto racer (still does autocross) so that's where my interests centered around (as well as travel & computers). I did spend summers (and my High School years - DHS Class of 91) in Dunsmuir, CA and that's a area (Dunsmuir/Mt Shasta) I truly adore and try to go back to as often as possible. So seeing the Santa Fe/Southern Pacific/Amtrak trains go thru town was a way of life. (although seeing the downgrading of the Dunsmuir Amtrak "terminal" from when I first remembered it in the early 80's was noticeable)
What peaked my interest in trains was traveling in Europe in the late 90's - Mainly in Norway, Germany and the low countries. For various reasons, I never rented a car when in Europe (why when the mass transit is so good?) And DB had me hooked traveling thru Germany. I could sit in a ICE train working on my laptop from Frankfurt to Hamburg in comfort in a couple of hours. And that was more convenient than a short haul flight (and this was before 9/11).
I have had a couple of false starts with Caltrain back home, when I lived in San Jose, I took the train to Redwood City, but being in the go-go lifestyle, I felt it took too much out of my day (this was when Baby Bullet was still a dream ~40min train ride from Tamien to RWC) and stopped after a couple of months. (tried mitigating that with the Ricochet radio wireless service, but that service wasn't long for this world :angry: ) So it was back into the car, until recently. I have since moved up the peninsula, and one of my new years resolutions was to take mass transit at least 3 days a week (and I chose Caltrain) I bought at&t's 3G data service to deal with the longer trips to SF and SJ (yes, at&t's 3G doesn't have the coverage of the EVDO networks, but international roaming (GSM) is important to me, and the fact that they have the iPhone 3G will, I hope, spur them to fill in some of the outer-lying areas - their coverage in metro areas like the SFBA is just fine for what I need).
As for Amtrak - I have only really ridden mainline once (from Oakland to Dunsmuir on CS when I was in High School) and Amtrak California (San Joaquins) in the late 80's. After returning from Germany on one trip, I declared I would support Amtrak. I signed up for AGR soon after it was established, thinking that I would be using trains as a significant part of my travels. And I still haven't ridden it since then, esp. once I saw that it would take almost 11 hours from SJC to LAX (granted, shave a couple of hours if I wanted to sit on buses for half the time - but if I wanted that, I would ride Greyhound.h34r: ) I still travel internationally several times a year (for work and/or pleasure) and have seen what a nightmare dealing with airline have become in the last several years. I am lucky in that as long as I am online, I can have my office most anywhere (provided some planning before hand), so being on a train for 24 hours as long as my 3G modem is working (in EDGE mode is fine for email/chat) works for me. (and I tend to chat on our corporate chat server rather than be on the mobile phone thank goodness). Yes, I would rather see HSR, but you have to start supporting it somewhere, and not just wait for HSR to arrive on it's own.
So with that being said, I would like to steer a quarter (or a third) of my domestic travel to Amtrak/trains, esp. for trips on the west coast (Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, LA, perhaps even Denver); anything further east will probably because of time restrains (and possible cabin fever) require me to be on a plane. I long ago lost my AGR member number, but today I called member services and was able to verify I was me so was able to use my AGR membership again w/o opening up a new account. And for my birthday, I am taking BART from Millbrae to Richmond then RIC-TRK on the San Joaquins to visit family (and take the last train back that day) $38 for a RTT (and just over $10 for the BART ride RT) And I get to work and not worry about driving all the way thru.
I would love to take CS back to Dunsmuir for one of my (all to infrequent) trips back there, but the problem is how to get around once I am there. :angry: The family that lived there has since moved on (as well as most of my friends - life in a small town) and the local bus service (STAGE) is rather limited (understandable as Siskiyou County is so sparsely populated). There's not even a Enterprise Car Rental in Mount Shasta... (if anyone has any ideas, I am all ears)
Anyway, that ended up being a bit more wordy than I originally planned... Apologies for the verboseness Hope to be able to get (and give) some advice during my visits here...
My unique story on how I got here, lets see. Was born and spent half of my time in the SF Bay Area and Modesto, where the family had a ranch and I could see the freight trains on what's now the BNSF line on the west side of town (near the then Hershey factory in Oakdale). I wasn't that enamored with trains that much as a child, my father was a mechanical engineer by trade and was into amateur auto racer (still does autocross) so that's where my interests centered around (as well as travel & computers). I did spend summers (and my High School years - DHS Class of 91) in Dunsmuir, CA and that's a area (Dunsmuir/Mt Shasta) I truly adore and try to go back to as often as possible. So seeing the Santa Fe/Southern Pacific/Amtrak trains go thru town was a way of life. (although seeing the downgrading of the Dunsmuir Amtrak "terminal" from when I first remembered it in the early 80's was noticeable)
What peaked my interest in trains was traveling in Europe in the late 90's - Mainly in Norway, Germany and the low countries. For various reasons, I never rented a car when in Europe (why when the mass transit is so good?)
And DB had me hooked traveling thru Germany. I could sit in a ICE train working on my laptop from Frankfurt to Hamburg in comfort in a couple of hours. And that was more convenient than a short haul flight (and this was before 9/11).I have had a couple of false starts with Caltrain back home, when I lived in San Jose, I took the train to Redwood City, but being in the go-go lifestyle, I felt it took too much out of my day (this was when Baby Bullet was still a dream ~40min train ride from Tamien to RWC) and stopped after a couple of months. (tried mitigating that with the Ricochet radio wireless service, but that service wasn't long for this world :angry: ) So it was back into the car, until recently. I have since moved up the peninsula, and one of my new years resolutions was to take mass transit at least 3 days a week (and I chose Caltrain) I bought at&t's 3G data service to deal with the longer trips to SF and SJ (yes, at&t's 3G doesn't have the coverage of the EVDO networks, but international roaming (GSM) is important to me, and the fact that they have the iPhone 3G will, I hope, spur them to fill in some of the outer-lying areas - their coverage in metro areas like the SFBA is just fine for what I need).
As for Amtrak - I have only really ridden mainline once (from Oakland to Dunsmuir on CS when I was in High School) and Amtrak California (San Joaquins) in the late 80's. After returning from Germany on one trip, I declared I would support Amtrak. I signed up for AGR soon after it was established, thinking that I would be using trains as a significant part of my travels. And I still haven't ridden it since then, esp. once I saw that it would take almost 11 hours from SJC to LAX (granted, shave a couple of hours if I wanted to sit on buses for half the time - but if I wanted that, I would ride Greyhound.
h34r: ) I still travel internationally several times a year (for work and/or pleasure) and have seen what a nightmare dealing with airline have become in the last several years. I am lucky in that as long as I am online, I can have my office most anywhere (provided some planning before hand), so being on a train for 24 hours as long as my 3G modem is working (in EDGE mode is fine for email/chat) works for me. (and I tend to chat on our corporate chat server rather than be on the mobile phone thank goodness). Yes, I would rather see HSR, but you have to start supporting it somewhere, and not just wait for HSR to arrive on it's own.So with that being said, I would like to steer a quarter (or a third) of my domestic travel to Amtrak/trains, esp. for trips on the west coast (Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, LA, perhaps even Denver); anything further east will probably because of time restrains (and possible cabin fever) require me to be on a plane. I long ago lost my AGR member number, but today I called member services and was able to verify I was me
so was able to use my AGR membership again w/o opening up a new account. And for my birthday, I am taking BART from Millbrae to Richmond then RIC-TRK on the San Joaquins to visit family (and take the last train back that day) $38 for a RTT (and just over $10 for the BART ride RT) And I get to work and not worry about driving all the way thru. I would love to take CS back to Dunsmuir for one of my (all to infrequent) trips back there, but the problem is how to get around once I am there. :angry: The family that lived there has since moved on (as well as most of my friends - life in a small town) and the local bus service (STAGE) is rather limited (understandable as Siskiyou County is so sparsely populated). There's not even a Enterprise Car Rental in Mount Shasta... (if anyone has any ideas, I am all ears)
Anyway, that ended up being a bit more wordy than I originally planned... Apologies for the verboseness
Hope to be able to get (and give) some advice during my visits here...
