New member Rachel in Tennessee

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Welcome to AU! Sorry there isn't a station in Nashville; there used to be.

Everyone is here to answer any questions and provide ideas and dreams alike.
 
KO4WUS said:
New member. I heard about the forum from a fellow ham operator.

Love trains. Unfortunately there's not a station in Nashville

Hello all
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Welcome!

One of my college friends was a ham on the Berlin MARS station in 1969-70. He was an obsessed Morse operator and on occasions I would drop by the radio shack during DX contests to make sure he was still alive. In conversation with a British ham the two of them agreed that the only people crazier than hams were tramway enthusiasts. In brief, they ended up introducing me to a British activist in the Light Railway Transport League, and we had an enjoyable exchange of visits. Later, my British colleague helped me with information as I worked on the Portland and then Edmonton light rail projects. So, in addition to all the well-known projects that hams work on, a couple of hams helped get rail transit projects underway.


The Berlin Military Amateur Radio Service station.
BerlinWinter69-70 031.jpg

BerlinWinter69-70 033.jpg
 
KO4WUS said:
New member. I heard about the forum from a fellow ham operator.

Love trains. Unfortunately there's not a station in Nashville

Hello all
Click to expand...
Welcome! Have fun and interesting conversations in this forum.

As some already mentioned, you could catch a train in Nashville in the future, what we all hope. A line from Atlanta to Chattanooga and further to Nashville is under consideration.

If you would like to ride a train now, you could take the City Music Star from Nashville to Lebanon :)
 
Welcome to the forum Rachel, I enjoyed talking to you on the radio, and am pleased to see that you took up my suggestion of joining Amtrak Unlimited.
Please beware that train fans can be as "over-enthusiastic" as elderly radio hams are! :D

radio ham (2).jpg

My radio station as a school boy, back in the 1960's. Sorry about poor photo quality.

All ex-military WW2 radios, R208, CR100, and 19 Set.

73's Ed.
 
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GoAmtrak said:
Welcome! Have fun and interesting conversations in this forum.

As some already mentioned, you could catch a train in Nashville in the future, what we all hope. A line from Atlanta to Chattanooga and further to Nashville is under consideration.

If you would like to ride a train now, you could take the City Music Star from Nashville to Lebanon :)
Click to expand...
Thats great news, I've done the one to Lebanon, cant wait to be able to go to chicago from nashville
 
caravanman said:
Welcome to the forum Rachel, I enjoyed talking to you on the radio, and am pleased to see that you took up my suggestion of joining Amtrak Unlimited.
Please beware that train fans can be as "over-enthusiastic" as elderly radio hams are! :D

View attachment 27344

My radio station as a school boy, back in the 1960's. Sorry about poor photo quality.

All ex-military WW2 radios, R208, CR100, and 19 Set.

73's Ed.
Click to expand...
This is the greatest photo i've ever seen, it was great talking with you. Thanks for telling me about amtrak forum
73s
 
Willbridge said:
Welcome!

One of my college friends was a ham on the Berlin MARS station in 1969-70. He was an obsessed Morse operator and on occasions I would drop by the radio shack during DX contests to make sure he was still alive. In conversation with a British ham the two of them agreed that the only people crazier than hams were tramway enthusiasts. In brief, they ended up introducing me to a British activist in the Light Railway Transport League, and we had an enjoyable exchange of visits. Later, my British colleague helped me with information as I worked on the Portland and then Edmonton light rail projects. So, in addition to all the well-known projects that hams work on, a couple of hams helped get rail transit projects underway.


The Berlin Military Amateur Radio Service station.
View attachment 27342

View attachment 27343
Click to expand...
This is excellent, I'm also part of the high speed rail association. I'm excited to join
 
There are two railroad stations in Nashville. Alas, Union Station is now a hotel. It is a beautiful building. It was the main station and after the end of Tennessee Central service in the early 1950’s, the only station. It was well served with trains up until the early to mid 1960’s. In that time frame I was in and out of there to Louisville, Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Memphis, although by that time Memphis was only an overnight mail train. The station faces Broadway between 10th and 11th Avenues. The tracks which were under it are long gone, presumably since not long after Amtrak’s Floridian disappeared. At least there is nothing on the location where the tracks were except parking lots, exccluding the station building itself, so in theory at least the tracks and platforms could be relatively easily be replaced. Should passenger trains ever return to Nashville, this would be the logical location for the station.

Then there is the station for the Nashville – Lebanon commuter service. This is on the old Tennessee Central railroad line, and the station is where or near where that of the TCRR was located. It is just southeast of Broadway on the riverfront. When being planned and built it was called the Music City Star, but apparently it is now being called just the Star or the WeGo Star. (I consider changing the name a dumb idea.) Here is their schedule with fares and other related information:

MTA001917_Mrr_StarRideGuide_14x8.5-8.indd (wegotransit.com)

Apparently, it is now down to a weekdays only commuter service with no mid day or evening trains. My impression was that it was intended be much more. One of these days I would like to get up there and ride it. When being planned and built, they were a good example of how to develop and build a commuter line at low cost. This was not by any means the highest potential demand corridor for commuter service into Nashville, but it was the “low hanging fruit” as it was on a line owned by the state and by far the lowest cost to implement. My impression is that the ridership has been somewhat of a disappointment, that is, high enough to keep, but not high enough the encourage implementing additional routes.

If you have not been there, another place worthy of a visit would be the Tennessee Railway Museum.

When people talk about Nashville – Atlanta service, I regard this as near hallucination. The current railroad line is 287 miles of what is for the most part a very curvy and indirect route. The best ever schedule was just over 6 hours for trains that were the company’s pride so they were virtually given the railroad to run their schedule. Anything under about 8 hours given current realities would require megabucks in order to happen. To have anything that would get anywhere near driving time would require a nearly complete new alignment, plus double tracking most/all of any of the current alignment that would be used.
 
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KO4WUS said:
I heard about the forum from a fellow ham operator.
Click to expand...
Welcome from a fellow ham KC1EFW. I also live far from Amtrak territory (about a 4 hour drive). I do have family members that live closer to Amtrak territory though.

Lately I have been doing mostly 2 meter stuff on the local repeaters but I do fire up my ICOM IC-718 occasionally, mostly on 20 meters.

Willbridge said:
In conversation with a British ham the two of them agreed that the only people crazier than hams were tramway enthusiasts.
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Uh oh, I am both a ham and a member and operator at Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine. I guess that makes me off the charts crazy :)

73
 

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