July TRAINS; What an "Ambash"

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GBNorman

OBS Chief
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
573
I can't recall a TRAINS issue taking Amtrak to task as this July issue.

Starting with Fred Frailey's column (the food; "Contemporary and Fresh" notwithstanding) to a Bob Johnston article on the V-II debacle, there does not appear an encouraging word within.

Of course, DPM was less than happy during later '67 when he know it was "game over"; when the SP downgraded the Sunset so that it was Coach and Automat only and the ICC imposed service standards, DPM was "understanding". On this, I can report that the SP lived up to their word. In exchange for reducing Daily to Tri-weekly, they restored Sleeping and full-service Dining. They even participated in an NY-LA Sleeper line.

Based on a December '70 trip NO-El Paso I made, they held about an hour for a late L&N connection, made a stop at closed Carrollton Ave station for the "connects" such as myself, and had pretty well whittled down the deficit by San Antonio.

Oh, and the full service Diner was "just great".
 
Dissidence is patriotic. You can be an Amtrak supporter and not support the way it's going. Just like you can be an Amtrak supporter and support the way it's going. I do not support the way it's going because Dick and Gardner have effectively made my 20-30,000 a year job into a 5-10,000 a year job.

And I think everyone can understand why I'm justifiably irked.

But I also believe that being vocal about things you don't like is a good thing. It might not enact change but it keeping your mouth shut definitely won't enact change. So if you ask me I would rather see people out there in the arena making noise because it might get something.

An interesting dichotomy in this country is how we lament that people do not get involved in the process of advocacy, or politics. But then when they do get involved and we don't like what they believe we lament that they didn't stay inactive. You can't have it both ways. I also believe that both sides are right in regards to somethings. But both the vocal supporters of Amtrak, and the lets not rock the boat supporters of Amtrak need to find some common ground.

A lot of the outrage I believe is stemming from the "well this is how it's always been done" reply. As someone who is always showing new people the ropes at work. I find this to be a really bad answer/attitude issue. Sure that may work but explain why it doesn't work, because it only builds discontentment and more radical action. Most people are rational and can understand when spoken to at their level why something doesn't work.

So let's not attack the first time vocal supporters let's bring them into the fold because let's face it were all on the same train with this one. It's national or nothing and we need people to stand with us. Splitting the advocacy community is only going to weaken us as we go forward. And I say this as someone who is disillusioned with the advocacy community.

It's national or nothing. And all advocacy is good advocacy because at least they are politically active.
 
Bob Johnston has always done an outstanding job of covering Amtrak and he has been quite critical of management on a number of occasions. He seems to be riding trains constantly and probably has a better handle on what's actually going on with riders and employees than any Amtrak executive. Gilbert's OP seems to reflect that Trains over its history has usually sided with railroad management on many issues, but recent actions (or inactions) by Amtrak needed to be called out.

I have mixed feelings about Fred Failey. He's a good reporter and quite knowledgeable about railroads, but I often feel he is overly impressed by railroad executives, perhaps because he spent many years at Fortune magazine, which just loves CEO's and big stockholders.

Over all, this month's Trains has some excellent articles on Amtrak. Johnston's ideas for deploying the CAF cars is every good (many of the ideas have been expressed by AU contributors). Keep up the good work, Bob.
 
bmjhagen9426 said:
Seaboard92 said:
I do not support the way it's going because Dick and Gardner have effectively made my 20-30,000 a year job into a 5-10,000 a year job.
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I know very well who Dick is already, but I do not know who Gardner is. Is he a member of the Board of Directors?
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He's the executive Vice President. Initially he was over the NEC and his previous background is over on Capitol Hill. He's had a personal vendetta against my industry for years. So I blame both equally for what has befallen us.
 
Anderson said:
Who is DPM? The only name that comes to mind is Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
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Believe it's David P. Morgan, long time former editor of Trains magazine....famous for his article: "Who Shot The Passenger Train?" among other stories...a pretty gifted writer, IMHO...
 
railiner said:
Anderson said:
Who is DPM? The only name that comes to mind is Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
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Believe it's David P. Morgan, long time former editor of Trains magazine....famous for his article: "Who Shot The Passenger Train?" among other stories...a pretty gifted writer, IMHO...
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That is correct. Having been deceased for probably 30 years, many of the younger generation are unfamiliar with him. Yes he was well respected if not occasionally controversial....
 
Haven't there been complaints about Trains being a bit too nice toward Amtrak in the past and not rocking the boat (or in this case, trains, of course)?

Even the columnists in my most recent Passenger Train Journal, who always have seemed very even-tempered and calm, were upset with Amtrak.

They seem to have taken on Don Phillips (he has left Trains, and that seems to be a whole other issue worthy of a load of speculation and small-town-type interesting gossip). But when I tell you that Don seemed to be the calmest of the lot of them (in his photo, he even looks happy!
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), you'll understand how annoyed at Amtrak the others were!
 
Perhaps the most interesting 'take away' I got from the Trains articles was that Amtrak is focused on 'cut, cut, cut' in it's 'glidepath to sefl-sufficiency'. Not a WORD about improving revenue, improving ridership & sales, improving the travel experience, or even improved customer satisfaction.

Sadly, most businesses today have the same narrow focus. The inevitable result will be that we will soon be left with fewer choices and a lower standard of living.

PS...now if I can only get faster than 2-3 minute wifi response time aboard NEC train #141 where presently am....
 
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One thing that I have found about most American railroads related magazines is their poor editorial quality and lack of attention to detail and accuracy, when compared to British and other European publications. And those publication publish plenty of extremely well researched, fact filled articles critical of the railroads there. I fervently wish that the American magazines would would improve in that department and at least get competent copy editors.

At this point being annoyed at Amtrak, in addition to being somewhat appropriate if done in moderation, and grounded in facts, is also something that will enhance sales. So given the American magazines, general lack of interest in details and correctness it makes sense to join the charge of the light brigade with whatever pitchfork one can find handy.
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They definitely do a better job with photos. So does Railpace and actually Railpace does those nice somewaht in depth description of a specific railfanning area in each issue, significantly better that what Train does in half a page. But I am yet to see a real technical in depth article about anything in PTJ. There seems to be great dearth of people to write such articles in this country for whatever reason. Maybe there is a lack of interest in readers about such things here. Who knows?

PTJ went through a very difficult period and was shut down for a while. I am glad that it got resurrected. But it, or anything else here comes nowhere near the likes of Modern Railway in quality and depth.
 
jis said:
One thing that I have found about most American railroads related magazines is their poor editorial quality and lack of attention to detail and accuracy, when compared to British and other European publications. And those publication publish plenty of extremely well researched, fact filled articles critical of the railroads there. I fervently wish that the American magazines would would improve in that department and at least get competent copy editors.
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I’m in the journalism field, and sadly, no magazines but the most read and the most competitive for adverts can even afford adequate staffing of copy editors. The same is true for newspapers and websites. It infuriates me. The advent of blogs means journalists are expected to be photographer, writer, copy editor and publisher all at once—called “backpack journalism.” Less staff, smaller payroll. Unlike Amtrak, there are no journalist unions to keep separate jobs for separate specialists.
 
Well you also have to remember where a lot of the writers come from. They either come from railfans who don't understand technical pieces because they don't truly understand how the railroad works. And they think they do because they have a little bit of knowledge.

Then you have railroaders themselves who understand operations and how things work. But might not be good at explaining things. This group also can't write things publicly as easily as the railfans. Someone line Thirdrail7 would probably write amazing articles but can't because of fear of losing their jobs.

I myself have just penned an op Ed I'm trying to get into Trains but I'm using a fake name because it's bound to offend a very vocal subset of the railfan community. But it won't get me in trouble from a work stand point. I just don't want to land in the fire I'm attempting to fight because no one else is fighting it.

Trains is a good periodical but you aren't going to get technical pieces because most American railfans also aren't interested in it. So it's partially based off the writers, and partially on the market.

But I'm also less likely to oppose something if the check doesn't bounce.
 
I stopped regular reading of rail periodical's many years ago...just an occasional issue, here and there...

IMHO, the trade magazines were little more than printer's of railroad press releases. And the rest were just to satisfy railfans. None were what I what call true journalism. And even the mainstream journalists usually were not well versed enough to understand railroads....
 
Mystic River Dragon said:
Haven't there been complaints about Trains being a bit too nice toward Amtrak in the past and not rocking the boat (or in this case, trains, of course)?

Even the columnists in my most recent Passenger Train Journal, who always have seemed very even-tempered and calm, were upset with Amtrak.

They seem to have taken on Don Phillips (he has left Trains, and that seems to be a whole other issue worthy of a load of speculation and small-town-type interesting gossip). But when I tell you that Don seemed to be the calmest of the lot of them (in his photo, he even looks happy!
default_tongue.png
), you'll understand how annoyed at Amtrak the others were!
Click to expand...
I thought it was interesting in the most recent issue of Trains, the editor's letter included a brief sendoff to Don. Just did not explain why he left, would love to know the story behind that decision...

As brutal as this issue was, it'd be interesting to see what it'd be like if they had seen the latest reply from Anderson to the private car folks explaining how the long distance passenger trains "need to be re-examined" as they're not reflecting current travel patterns. Perhaps if we advertise something other than the NEC and increase train sizes, it'd be much different. The article on the uses for the new dining cars did a nice job of laying out how so many trains have become capacity constrained, and are artificially deflating passenger counts.
 
The most recent letter by Anderson has been reported on in Trains. I know for a fact because my best friend wrote the story for it and posted it. I don't have the link on me.
 
It was referenced in their "Newswire" internet news posting earlier this week. But it missed being in the paper magazine edition that we were talking about. Fun times.
 
Concerning the "Viewliner Vision" article by Bob Johnston, I'm a bit confused by the "How to use the cars" section. He advocates combining the Silver Star and the Carolinian north of Raleigh. I fail to see what the problem is and what that solution does. He adds a dining car to the train - I get that one. He adds sleeping cars to the train, but I don't see how combining the trains at Raleigh would be required to do that.

Combining 80 and 92 at Raleigh, and splitting 91 and 79 at Raleigh would be a bit of a mess. The combined train would be about the length of 16 cars (more if the new sleepers are added) and 2 engines. I don't think that would fit on the new station platform at Raleigh. It would be so long that it would be difficult to handle everywhere else.

The baggage cars would have to be at both ends of the train (unless complex switching were to take place). So north of Raleigh, the train would have to work both baggage cars.

I suppose there would be crew savings but I don't see how the service would be enhanced.

jb
 

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