Well, this was a first for me: sitting in my hotel room here in Chicago while a thunder storm occurs overhead. Believe me, it’s a singular experience. The claps of thunder get down into the canyons between these 60- and 70-floor buildings and bounce around, amplified and taking on an almost unearthly metallic sound from…
Chicago has always been a railroad town with, as far as I know, more rail activity than any other U.S. city. For decades, passenger trains left Chicago and headed off in every direction. And, of course, the same trains arrived in Chicago arriving from every direction. Passenger rail ain’t what it used to be,…
One of the giants in retailing—it may have been F. W. Woolworth himself—once said, “I know I’m wasting half of my advertising dollars. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.” A couple of days ago, I mentioned Amtrak’s decision to stop staffing the railway station in Hastings, Nebraska, all part of the big-picture…
CHICAGO–The ride here from Boston on the Lake Shore Limited was really enjoyable. For one thing, the train passes through countryside that starts all my old New England genes clanging around, especially the stretch from Springfield through Pittsfield to Albany and then west from there until it’s too dark to see much. Furthermore, we had…