Well, if you don't have a reservation and you were hoping to be on an Amtrak train outside of the NEC you are pretty much out of luck. Almost 100% of Amtrak's capacity is booked through until Sept 21st, and even then it is still quite busy. NEC trains have been running full, and suprisingly there is more traffic in the west with most trains being standing room only. Amtrak has said all equipment it can get on the road will be on the road. If you try and access the AMTK. site (www.amtrak.com) you may have trouble as it has had ALOT of traffic since the terrorist incident in the US. Via rail has had an increase in traffic, too, but no where near what is being expierenced on Amtrak. Happy Railroading! Dane
I for one am pleased to hear that people are finding railroads again and that will do a lot for Amtrak. Now if only Amtrak will smarten up and start running trains on schedule. A Canadian journalist tried to travel by Amtrak but the train was going to be two hours late. The station staff reported that this was the norm. What a way to run a railroad!! People these days want service and if they don't get it, they will find alternative means of travel.
This will all do just fine until the next de-railment/accident. The way Amtraks bad luck seem to perpetuate upon itself, you know it's only a matter of time. Then the US news media will jump all over it, scaring the hell out of perspective passengers in their never-ending quest to tell the story to the average Joe who couldn't possibly understand the complexity of life without their every day injection of moronic advise. Don't get me wrong, I do not wish for anything bad to happen. I just hope Amtrak can shake their run of bad luck in this country's time of need. The less the media has to exploit, the better off this country is and you know they love transportation disasters.
I have a feeling that the sudden rush on train travel can be attributed to the recent terrorist attacks on the United States. Many people are probably putting the airplane aside as a main form of fast, point-to-point transportation, and are seeing trains as a fast, clean, and affordable means of transportation. This is not exactly a good thing, as those big, empty Amtrak cars were so great to relax in. Now they'll be quite a bit more crowded.
