Liveblogging National Train Day

Saturday, May 10, 2008

The first annual National Train Day is underway at stations all across the country today. Amtrak originally conceived the event to make a marketing splash in four of their biggest cities, but thanks to the tireless work of rail advocates and civic boosters working on the local level, communities all across the country are celebrating National Train Day as a call to action to increase train travel options in cities large and small. Google News current shows 255 articles on the event, a sign of the great interest it has generated.

NARP Vice President Jim Churchill and I are staffing our table at Washington Union Station today. I’ll be updating this entry as the day progresses. If you’re in the area, please feel free to stop by! And if you have photos or tidbits from other events, please feel free to e-mail me at mmelzer (at) narprail.org.

UPDATE, 10:32 AM: Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant opened the event with a brief speech thanking the event partners, including NARP. AAR President Ed Hamberger remarked on the environmental need to move more goods as well as passengers by rail. But the crowd was mostly anxious to get a photo with Al Roker!

UPDATE, 11:19 AM: The turnout so far is great, with many families who are not traveling. The line to tour an Acela trainset and private cars is stretching well into the station. Amtrak’s ARTE environmental mascot and Screech, the Washington Nationals mascot, are greeting fans. Amtrak also has computers with Microsoft Train Simulator in Acela mode set up.

—Matthew Melzer

Posted by NARP | (1) Comments

Next entry: Liveblogging National Train Day, Part 2 Previous entry: Oil consumption since 1980: U.S. way up; Europe down

Comments

I suppose National Trains Day wouldn’t be complete without a catenary-caused power failure near Newark. My 82 year old mother called to say that she was taken off of train 162 in Newark, was going to be shuttled to NYC where another train would be found to take her to NHV. More than a half hour after I heard from her, Amtrak’s web site still says 162 will be 6 minutes late arriving into NHV, and a phone call to Amtrak yielded no other info other than “your mother knows what’s going on better than anyone else.” Nice!

When Amtrak runs on time, which it does on a good percentage of its routes (I recently round-tripped to Florida with nearly flawless arrival times and great service) there is no problem keeping track of the trains progress, but when problems like this arise, good luck finding out what’s going on. Better communications with passengers and the public are desperately needed when things go awry.

Comment by Bruce Gerber on 05/10 at 10:06 AM

» Please login or register for an account to post a comment.

©2005 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website

» Recent Entries

» Blogroll

National & General

Regional & Local

» Terms of Service for Comments

You may register to post comments in response to NARP-generated postings on the Blog. By registering you agree 1) that all comments will be relevant to the respective posting and 2) not to post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, or that violate any laws. We reserve the right to permanently block postings from any user who does not abide by the above terms. NARP reserves the right to remove, edit, or move any messages for any reason.

» Monthly Archives

RSS 1.0 | RSS 2.0 | Atom
What is RSS?

National Association of Railroad Passengers on Facebook