It actually ran from summer 2009 to summer 2012, with a several month break during the 2011-12 winter.A similar situation occured with Atlantic City, NJ.A special train (ACES) was built for the line, but it only
ran for one year - on Friday, Saturday & Sunday.
I did not hear the financial implications, but I can surmize
there were significant losses. The casinos were paying
the bill.
Welcome to Amtrak Unlimited!I live in Ocean City and grew up here. My grandfather used to be the station agent there before the 1933 hurricane took out the railroad bridge across the bay, ending train service.
All my life I have wished that we could have trains back again here. I'm just about old enough to go on Social Security (not a kid); we've always had to drive more than a hundred miles in any direction just to get near a passenger train. I really envy those folks who live close to Amtrak service.
Don't suppose it will happen in my lifetime, but I can continue to dream and hope!
PaulS
Thanks for the information!To The Davy Crockett:
Thanks very much for your kind welcome; I've lurked here for several years and just recently joined up. In answer to your question, the train station in Ocean City was on Philadelphia Avenue between Wicomico and Worcester Streets, I believe, and yes, the 1933 storm was the one which cut the inlet, about two blocks to the south of the station. I understand there was a steamboat from Baltimore to Kent Island at Love Point, and from there my Dad said the trains made pretty good time down to the ocean. The men used to let him ride around in the switch engines when he was a boy. Next he carried telegrams because my grandfather was also the telegrapher (had a remote sounder in the house which went all night...) Next he got a job cleaning out the Pullman cars for the return trip, but that didn't last long. He wouldn't say exactly why except that it wasn't very pleasant. That was before there was even a highway bridge to town. The RR bridge was planked over and the old flivvers ran across, being pretty careful to check that no smoke plume was in sight.
The states probably won't do it unless it is an obviously huge market. DET-CIN and CLE-CIN come to mind.To answer the question on studies: For the most part, studies seem to work under the assumption that only one to three trains per day will be run during the initial service, with possible expansions from there. There are a whole host of reasons for this (operating expenses, equipment issues, etc.) I've actually never seen a proposed (non-commuter, government-subsidized, and not a major HSR plan) rail service where the plan was to seriously dump 5-10x daily trains on a corridor in the first year or two and just see what happens.
If nothing else, part of the reason definitely has to do with a state not wanting to be stuck with a half-dozen equipment sets they can't use; on an 8-car Regional basis, that would be somewhere around $100-150 million in losses to deal with. But there's also the fact that improvements tend to run $100m/slot as a rule, so for a 6x daily service you'd be looking at $600m in trackwork plus $150m in rolling stock (assuming you could get one round trip out of each set)...that's a lot of money to throw down on a bet.
Enter your email address to join: