New trainsets have come to Amtrak for its Acela higher-speed service on the Northeast Corridor (NEC). The NextGen Acela trains manufactured by Alstom made their debut in a ceremonial run with trainset
In a way, the rail scene in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast has come full circle, within a few days of the 20th anniversary of one of the worst
This report comes to you from New Orleans where, at this writing, a new Amtrak service started Monday, Aug. 18. Following a celebratory Aug. 16 run, Mardi Gras Service got officially under
As I pack for a trip to New Orleans, La., to cover the inaugural run of Amtrak Mardi Gras service between New Orleans and Mobile, I am thinking about state-supported passenger trains
RAILWAY AGE AUGUST 2025 ISSUE: For 115 years after Railway Age began publishing in 1856, passenger trains were operated by private-sector railroads. That changed in 1971, when Amtrak was formed to keep
“They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob.” Thus began the song that became the anthem of the Great Depression. It was about an
Riders on New Jersey Transit’s rail lines had to do without their trains for four days in the middle of May, due to a strike by engineers represented by the Brotherhood of
“California Dreamin’” was one of the iconic songs of the sixties. It was about an Angelino enduring a New York winter and dreaming about his warm hometown (the inverse of the scenario in Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”). Barry McGuire recorded the original version in 1963, and the 1966 version by The Mamas & the Papas with Bud Shank’s flute solo defined the song. Nostalgia aside, there seems to be a new custom in part of the Golden State: “California Starvin’” as practiced on Amtrak’s San Joaquin trains between Bakersfield at the south end and the Bay Area and Sacramento at the north end.
Most “transit railroads” in the United States (and GO Transit, which serves Canada’s Toronto area) provide a full span of service on most or all their lines, although there are a few
Amtrak’s long-term closure of one of the tunnel tubes (Amtrak calls them “lines”) under the East River between Penn Station and Queens remains controversial. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, other elected officials in the Empire State, and rider-advocates in New York and New Jersey have called instead for the work to be done on nights and weekends, similar to the way the L-train tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn on the subway system’s Canarsie Line was repaired in 2020-21: in only one year and without having to resort to a 15-month complete shutdown, which area residents feared.
