Are you referring to the train that's on-time 80% of the time?
So i was thinking. If you were in-charge of renaming Amtrak's routes, what would you rename them? For example, I would rename the Coast Starlight to the Pacific Starlight, like my username.
Or the Coast StarLATE
Yes, bring back the Broadway Limited, but make it a PREMIUM Train again!
Keep in mind it is not really the route that is named but rather the individual train. Most of the names Amtrak uses today were actually names of historical trains before Amtrak.So i was thinking. If you were in-charge of renaming Amtrak's routes, what would you rename them? For example, I would rename the Coast Starlight to the Pacific Starlight, like my username.
Or the Coast StarLATE
Oh, I think it sounds better, too. But you have to consider that Empire Builders is it self a nickname given to James R. Hill, thus the justification for what is kind of an awkward name.
With a through sleeper and through diner to Florida via NOL.
I believe if you broke it down, more tax dollars go to airline operations than Amtrak by far........So i was thinking. If you were in-charge of renaming Amtrak's routes, what would you rename them? For example, I would rename the Coast Starlight to the Pacific Starlight, like my username.
Or the Coast StarLATE
As I live in an area not served well by passenger rail, I would name all the trains "Inconsequential" or "Marginal". Unfortunately, I'm one who travels the country regularly by plane, because Amtrak to me, is best described by the good ol' Maine expression "Ya can't get there from here"! Wish I could travel by train, but, it's simply not possible, so, I don't really care what they call the trains, I'm stuck on 100+ airplanes a year, paying for airlines through fares, and trains I can't use through taxes!
The Sunset Occasionally
If you're getting that statistic from Amtrak you might want to consider rephrasing it. Amtrak's published on-time records are an intentional deviation from objective reasoning. That is to say, they're only true if you ignore every intermediate stop and only count the first and last termini of the entire route. Unfortunately that means they're not much use for honest discussion of actual performance.
Taxes pay for planes, trains, and automobiles. They also pay for pedestrian and bicycle lanes. Your airfare (including sales taxes, PFC's and 9/11 fees) is woefully inadequate to pay for everything involved in designing, servicing, directing, and inspecting the planes and related infrastructure needed to host the largest and busiest domestic airline market in the world.
I'm not sure I could support a train with a name as inharmonious as "Dixie Flagler." That is a seriously unfortunate development. Absolutely nothing about that name sounds the slightest bit appealing to my ear.
I love it! :lol:
Although Americans may consider California a rare anomaly, if it were it's own country it would probably have more in common with the majority of first-world democracies than the rest of America does at this point.
That I'd be down with!!
Padding at the end of the trip makes that possible. For example, train #14 is allowed 1:36 to go the 39 miles from TAC to SEA (for comparison, train #11 is scheduled to make the same trip in the opposite direction in 0:46). Similarly, #11 is given 27 minutes to go 14 miles from Burbank-Bob Hope Airport to LAUS in 0:27, while #14 is supposed to make the reverse trip in 0:19 (which is at least a lot closer to the southbound timing).
I respectfully disagree. Naming all the trains on one service -- City A to City Z making stops B, C, D, etc. inbetween -- with a single name is more useful to the traveling public. It helps people think of the trains as a single service with the various frequencies reinforcing each other. "If I miss the 7am Lincoln Service, I can catch the 9:25 am Lincoln Service." Stated another way, a traveler needs to know that the Empire Builder is not a Hiawatha, the Texas Eagle is not a Lincoln Service train, and the Coast Starlight is not just another Pacific Surfliner, but what does a traveler gain from knowing that the 7am train from CHI to SPI is the Ann Rutledge but the 9:25am train between the same cities is the State House?
If you are referring to the fact that they are broke, I agree.
In an era where the richest country on earth is so clueless and clumsy with their finances that they have already piled up $15,298,329,567,617.00 worth of debt, merely being "broke" is almost like being rich. :lol:
I agree. There should be a single name for a corridor train service. A series of different names may have worked back in the day when people were knowledgeable about train travel and schedules and knew what the different names meant. They also knew their railroads and who ran what. In this day and age, using different names for corridor trains traveling the same route will confuse some customers. Northeast Regional or the Acela tell people traveling on the NEC what they are getting.I respectfully disagree. Naming all the trains on one service -- City A to City Z making stops B, C, D, etc. inbetween -- with a single name is more useful to the traveling public. It helps people think of the trains as a single service with the various frequencies reinforcing each other. "If I miss the 7am Lincoln Service, I can catch the 9:25 am Lincoln Service." Stated another way, a traveler needs to know that the Empire Builder is not a Hiawatha, the Texas Eagle is not a Lincoln Service train, and the Coast Starlight is not just another Pacific Surfliner, but what does a traveler gain from knowing that the 7am train from CHI to SPI is the Ann Rutledge but the 9:25am train between the same cities is the State House?
IIRC, there's only two places on Amtrak where trains of the same corridor service making the same stops have different names: the Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr and the Illini/Saluki. IMHO, the State of Illinois (which pays Amtrak to operate those trains) needs to decide on one train name for each of these services and stick with it for all the trains on that service.
That said, I believe that the long-distance trains should be individually named -- the two Silver Service trains already have different names, and if any other long-distance route ever has two or more trains a day, each one should have its own name. I also would have no problem reusing the Twilight Limited or Lake Cities names for new routes or services.
