SACRAMENTO–Wow! It’s enough to make a seasoned rail traveler dizzy … and first-timers really, really confused. First we have the Lake Shore Limited, beset by temperatures in the way, way below zero range and finally trundling into Chicago 12 hours late. And next we have the California Zephyr, departing Chicago on time, falling…
CHICAGO–The Lake Shore Limited starts out as two trains. One section leaves Boston about noon and heads across Massachusetts, passing through Springfield and Pittsfield, arriving at Albany, New York, about 5:30. The other, bigger section departs New York’s Penn Station at 3:40 in the afternoon, heads up the eastern bank of the Hudson River,…
Amtrak has been under pressure from Congress for years—it seems like forever—to cut costs in order to achieve what no other national passenger rail system in the world had been able to do: break even. As it is, Amtrak has made remarkable progress, to the point that they are recovering something like 90% of…
From time to time, I’ve complained here about the folly of operating trains on a less-than-daily schedule. Amtrak has two such trains in its long-distance system: the Sunset Limited running between New Orleans and Los Angeles, and the Cardinal, which takes a southerly route between Chicago and New York. Both trains run in each direction,…