Amtrak President Sure Has a Way With Words

I’ve mentioned here several times about Amtrak’s pressing need for new equipment. At an appearance before a Congressional subcommittee several weeks back, Amtrak President Joe Boardman put things into a pretty simple perspective:

“ … imagine that you bought a Chevy El Camino back in 1977 and proceeded to drive it from [Washington] D.C. to New York and back again, every single day since then, with a day and a half off every month for maintenance. That’s how hard we run the Amfleets and they are neither the oldest not the hardest-run equipment in the fleet.”

Amfleet coaches are used in the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston, up and down the east coast in the Florida trains, on the Crescent between New York and New Orleans, and on the Cardinal between New York and Chicago. They’re also used and on some mid-western routes. And “used” is certainly the right word!