Over more than 20 years, I’ve racked up a lot of miles on Amtrak. And I can think of just four incidents where I personally witnessed a passenger causing trouble. That’s not to say there aren’t people on board many trains that are potential problems. It’s just that Amtrak conductors are very, very good at…
When you take a train ride – whether one of Amtrak’s long-distance trains or one of the short haul routes – you soon become aware of the whistle. On many routes, it seems as though it’s blown constantly. I had taken several train rides before I noticed that the engineer was using different whistle patterns. …
At the rate of about one-a-day, collisions occur between cars and trains somewhere across the U.S. There are two absolutes when it comes to these incidents: (1) every one if them is avoidable, and (2) the train always wins. In addition, there are a tragic number of injuries and deaths when people walking on train…
Someone once told me that the most frequently asked question on an Amtrak train is, “Why are we stopped?” That may or may not be true, but it does point out an aggravating problem that also happens to be my pet peeve: conductors who don’t use the train’s PA system to keep passengers informed about…