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TRAINS: A travel choice Americans want

Segmenting Overnight Trains Won’t Work

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

(Ed note—Now back to train talk!)

During his December 5 lecture at Rutgers University, Amtrak Chairman David Laney suggested that some long distance trains could be restructured into a series of connecting day train segments. Apparently he thinks that Amtrak’s passengers would be willing to take days longer to travel, including inconvenient overnight hotel stops.

Let’s take the California Zephyr route as an example. As now operated, the train uses 2 locomotives, baggage car, crew car, 2 sleepers, diner, lounge, and 3 coaches as a normal consist. With 3 days westbound, an overnight service turn at Oakland, and 3 days eastbound this requires 6 train sets or a total of 12 locomotives and 54 cars. Even if Amtrak undertakes its ill-conceived “right sizing” of the train by dropping the baggage car, crew car, and combining the diner and lounge into a single car, it would need 12 locomotives and 36 cars, not counting any spares.

Now, if the train were chopped into daytime segments, short coach trains would ply between Chicago-Omaha, Omaha-Denver, Denver-Salt Lake, Salt Lake-Reno, and Reno-Emeryville. Given typical running times and the spacing of these major communities, no other daytime patterns seem possible. A trip from Chicago to California would require 5 days and 4 nights instead of just 3 days and two nights. Coach passengers would have the added expense of taxis and hotels, and the inconvenience of toting luggage back and forth at each layover. Sleeper passengers would simply not put up with this nonsense. Amtrak’s passenger base would shrivel, and some of the new day trains would quickly be abandoned, breaking the so-called “connectivity” between the segments. In simple and understandable terms, the plan is a disaster from the passenger service standpoint because there would not be many passengers to serve. Some daytime segments might pick up new local coach travel, but not enough to overcome the significant loss of higher value, long distance tickets.

What about the equipment side? Five daytime segments, each with a train of 1 engine and 4 cars (3 coaches and a diner-lounge) would require 10 trainsets, 10 engines, and 40 cars. Protect engines probably would be needed at some of the overnight terminals, and 2 engines might be required on the mountain segments. So, there would be virtually no savings of equipment – until the reduced passenger loads result in abandoning some segments entirely. Cars running on segments in the middle of the route would rarely get important shop time at service yards that are in Chicago and Oakland.

Logistically, Amtrak would need to support the daytime train concept with additional commissary/food supply sources, crew base facilities, and overnight storage and servicing facilities. Since it might not be able to turn the equipment at every terminal, it might have to resort to push-pull operation (requiring Superliner cab cars that don’t exist) or even use of a second locomotive. Savings from this bad idea evaporate when you take time to think it over.

Thinking “outside the box” is admirable, but this ill-conceived concept of “consecutive” day trains on national routes is merely a subterfuge to end these national services entirely. Mr. Laney needs to put on his thinking cap and start over. A good place to begin is a fresh examination of who rides the current train network—specifically, where they ride from and to.

Daytime trains with overnight hotel stops simply don’t cut the mustard.

—Robert Glover, NARP Treasurer

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Congratulations, David and Amanda!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Congratulations and best wishes to NARP Assistant Director David Johnson on his engagement yesterday to Amanda Bechtel (no relation to the construction giant). Their three-year friendship survived two years of geographical separation (June 2004-June 2006), while Amanda was getting her M.S. degree in Art Therapy at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee.

Amanda moved back east in June and she is an Art Therapist at The Center for Eating Disorders in the Sheppard Pratt Health System in Towson, Maryland. They live in Laurel from whence he walks to the MARC train and she of necessity drives to work. Her family lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, his in Newport News, Virginia, so he has logged a lot of airline and Amtrak miles over the past three years. She enjoys art, knitting and crafts, and reading; David loves riding trains (of course!) and is a big soccer and hockey fan. They both enjoy bicycling.

And, most importantly, David reports that he is getting her warmed up to train travel: they have taken several trips in the Northeast Corridor and have ridden Chicago-Washington on the Capitol Limited (with another trip on that train planned in January).

His NARP colleagues wish them much happiness!

—Ross Capon

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Happy 75th Birthday, Joe

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

My wife, Louise, and I were privileged to attend an extraordinary “celebration of Joe Horning’s 75th birthday” on December 16 (his birthday is December 25!). Horning served as NARP treasurer from before my arrival in Washington in 1975 to 2004.

For the event, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill was transformed into “Lynne’s Salon” (Lynne is his wife). The evening began with a full length concert, including premieres of poetry by Joanne Hoover and a musical setting of some of that poetry by Frances Thompson McKay commissioned for the occasion. Despite the elaborate preparations, Lynne managed to keep the event a secret until Joe walked into the church. One fellow attendee at this remarkable event was heard to remark, “I can’t wait until I’m 75.”

Joe is a much-loved Washington philanthropist active on the boards of several non-profits. He is also a successful entrepreneur. To quote from his company’s website “Horning Brothers has worked hard to earn and maintain its reputation for quality construction, thoughtful design and professional management.”

—Ross Capon

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Farewell to Milton Jaques, train-lover and quintessential newsman

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Milton Jaques, who died August 9, was a NARP member (and my uncle by marriage).

His passion for trains was described in a special, second memorial service at the National Press Club September 30 attended by many people in the news business. Well-known attendees included Helen Thomas, the Hearst Newspaper columnist and White House Press Corps member who for 57 years covered the White House for UPI; Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst who is the liberal side of the NewsHour’s Friday ‘point counterpoint’ discussions; and Eleanor Clift, Newsweek contributor editor whose weekly “Capitol Letter” is posted on Newsweek.com and MSNBC. She is also a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a political contributor for Fox News Network.

Here are some of the comments they heard (from Frank Kane who as Washington correspondent for the Toledo Blade shared an office with Milton): “Milton wisely bought a house in Edgewater near Annapolis years ago, but even after U.S. 50 [Washington-Annapolis super-highway] was built, he argued that it would have been much better to build high speed transit. He was a great fan of the railroads. He would have banned cars and trucks in the city. He was clearly not a great friend of either the auto or energy industries.”

Uncle Milt was the Washington correspondent for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (1969-1983) after which he founded and ran a speakers bureau for reporters. He was a long-time, active member of the Gridiron Club.

—Ross Capon

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Internal Combustion: a book by Edwin Black

Monday, December 18, 2006

Ed Note—In his previous blog post, I failed to properly introduce Jim. He is a NARP Vice President and board member since 1983. He is a salesman for Cadillac, but strongly supports preservation and expansion of passenger rail. Quoting from the September 2000 NARP News, “The 1970’s oil crises stimulated his interest in rail; he bought his first Metroliner ticket when odd-even gas purchases were instituted. A short ride to Baltimore led to familiarity with a broad range of rail issues, and travel on trains in 27 countries.”—DRJ

A few weeks ago, in a sort of ironic twist, I was delivering our largest SUV and, being an XM radio fan, happened upon a show featuring one Edwin Black touting his new book, Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives.
In the show, Black referred to a history that even rail and energy policy watchers often miss—the story of National City Lines and the dismantling of electric railways in America.

In his book, he superbly defines the history of energy, politics and the unfortunate historical realities of greed and exclusion that so ignominiously has come to describe the human condition. I really never recognized the value of wood as energy power and its place in the world’s energy and politics. (I do remember some Tolstoy reference to the family fortune of some trees in The Brothers Karamatsov, but the point did not register with me).

Black tells of the historic relationship between ownership and/or “mis-stewardship” of energy throughout history in ways I, and I would think most people, simply have never comprehended.

I highly recommend this book to rail advocates and think it might be a worthy item as a holiday treat to rail advocates and those of us who have come to understand the impacts of public policy.

Jim Churchill
NARP Vice President
Written and sent to the NARP office while traveling at 125 mph on board Acela Express #2255

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Positive outlook on new Congressional Leadership

Thursday, December 14, 2006

The outlook for committee chairman and members is promising for the 110th Congress. Most importantly, the chances look better than they have in a long time for an Amtrak reauthorization.

Highlights include:

House T&I Railroads Subcommittee
Corrine Brown (D-FL), Steven LaTourette (R-OH)

House Appropriations Committee
David Obey (D-WI), Jerry Lewis (R-CA)

House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee John Olver (D-MA), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI)

New Democrats on the House Ways and Means committee—which has been the stumbling block to approving the “funding guts” of a reauthorization bill, include Earl Blumenauer (OR), Ron Kind (WI), William Pascrell (NJ), Shelley Berkley (NV), Joseph Crowley (NY), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Kendrick Meek (FL), Allyson Schwartz (PA) and Artur Davis (AL).

Jim Oberstar (D-MN) will chair the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Unfortunately, the Ranking Member will be John Mica (R-FL), a long time Amtrak critic. Democrats will be in the majority and his ability to outright kill something will be limited. No doubt, however, he will provide us with many more anti-Amtrak soundbites.

—Dave Johnson

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