Amtrak thread

What are Sup Forums's thoughts on America's abortive attempt at nationalized rail?

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Garbage. Completely worthless. Most people have cars and would rather take a flight somewhere.

I was about to start a thread on this, passenger service doesn't make a profit and thus has to be subsidized by govt.

I like trains but it's more expensive then flying or driving and takes longer.

Very expensive, it's cheaper and easier to fly.

It's basically kept around as a less painful alternative to flying (at least when it comes to security checkups).

It's also not profitable because Amtrak gutted existing rail service as soon as it was created and has been trying to get back to that ever since.

Yeah my family was going to take a train on a pretty long journey but airplane was cheaper. It blows my mind that something subsidized by the government can still cost so damn much. Freight railroads move shit for pennies on the dollar.

I just went on Amtrak's website to run a scenario of how much it would cost to have a bed for a 87-100+ hour trip going from Oregon to Florida and it costs nearly $2k after everything is said and done.

Moving people is a bit more complicated than goods that don't require toilet facilities, baggage racks, disabled seating, and dining cars.

But I see your point.

From what I've read, the major roads didn't even want to continue the passenger services. They were basically forced to by the govt until finally they just formed Amtrak. For example Penn Central intentionally made their passenger trains shitty as fuck until people just wouldn't ride them.

amtraks are cool, I dig them. I just dig trains in general, but I can only imagine how boring staring out a window all day could be.

I think everyone knows by now that the easiest way to get a huntsman spider to stop coming in your house is to flip it over and suck its dick.
Hear me out.
Carry a spatula around and when you see one, flip it onto its back. They're surprisingly docile once they're in that position. Then, all you need to do is gently press on its abdomen to retract its penis. It will be small; approximately the size of a thin pencil eraser. Use the tip of your tongue to manipulate it to full erection, then suck with your lips until it ejaculates; usually 30-45 minutes later. If you don't feel the rush of semen, you will know by its legs scratching playfully at your face when it gets oversensitive afterwards.
The main trick is not to swallow the spider semen. Trust me, I know it will be tempting. But no, pick up the spider and let him outside, then drool its ejaculate material near the entrances to your house. Spiders are highly promiscuous, and its semen mixed with your saliva will signal him to move on to another house. Spiders do NOT like to get their dick sucked by the same person twice.

Seems I have more in common with the huntsman spider than I thought, thanks for the informative post faggot.

From what I understand, Penn Central's bankruptcy was the final straw that basically ruined private passenger rail and led to the creation of Amtrak.

Also, some routes like the Panama Limited, Super Chief, and most Southern's trains managed to retain their quality right up until Amtrak's formation.

Santa Fe actually barred Amtrak from using the name Super Chief because of how shitty it had become.

Yeah and the fact that they're never on time because they share the rails with freight trains among other reasons. Plus the Amtrak crews/workers are notorious for being dick bags. I'm pretty interested in trains and I've heard nothing but bad reviews of Amtrak service.

Problem with Amtrak is simply ownership. The only stretch of Amtrak track that's actually owned by Amtrak is the NE corridor between I think it's DC and New York, and as you may have noticed that's the only line that Amtrak is able to actually operate effeciently and make money off of. The rest of the track is owned by private freight companies, the feds mandate them to let amtrak use their shit but with no provisions they can't be Jews about it, as a result they charge amtrak exorbitant fees (this is what Jack's up the prices so much) and give all of their freight trains priority (it isn't unheard of for an Amtrak train to sit idling for eight hours while they wait for the freight traffic to clear up).

Perhaps this is a dumb question but would have PRR and NYC fared any better if they HADN'T gone ahead with the merger? It seems that they hadn't resolved their almost century-long rivalry was really what undermined them.

I really love trains myself. I wish I could have the time and money to spend on a nice trip on Amtrak but like what you said, they're never on time and the only route worth taking on Amtrak is the Acela NE Corridor and it's just one line.

We need high speed rail like the Japanese bullet train to come to America

That is one awesome looking train, and fast too

The attendant in my car was a pretty nice guy tbqh. Albeit most are still assholes.

If you're ever traveling South of Mason-Dixon and want to bring your car, try the Autotrain. It's actually one of Amtrak's few very profitable long-distance lines.

I ride Amtrak up and down the Northeast Corridor and sometimes to Florida too.

It's cheap if you get a coach seat and are willing to be in the same car as a bunch of poor niggers, but if you want your own room, it costs a bit.

Most of the 'name trains' were kept to a high standard because they were the face of the company in those days. With that being said, they were only as good as the railroad operating them and let's face it the railroads (like most American industries) eventually got run down and worsened over the years. It's really sad to look back at trains like the zephyrs, city of New Orleans, the daylights, etc and compare them to what they became as the years went on.

Is that cost effective? It sounds like a larger effort on Amtrak's part to transport a vehicle

I'm actually in FL

have you heard of the new Brightline train yet?

It's cost effective for me if I want to sit in a coach seat from Florida to NY. Sometimes it'll only cost $100.

Anything else though is pushing it. A small room is the same price as a hotel room, transporting your car will cost you a couple hundred extra.

Hard to say really, they had both started to falter by the time of the merger. Both in their heyday were two of the greatest RR's we ever had in the U.S. But I'll be damned if they didn't try to destroy each other intentionally. Some say the merger could have worked out if it was taken more slowly and actually done right. They tried to just jam the two systems together overnight. Compare that to mergers like chessie system who took a lot of time and care to make sure things were done correctly and meshed smoothly. Also PC was the result of the corporate execs taking the money the railroad made and siphoning it off to other interests (the private jet debacle) instead of reinvesting in track maintenance and new rolling stock.

I was on one from Virginia to Florida. I wanted to kill someone. There's nothing to do. There's only one tv in bar car and it's always hogged by some drunk 75 year old. Every other person is beyond old. Every worker is black. The ice cream is fake. It sucks.

>What are Sup Forums's thoughts on America's abortive attempt at nationalized rail?
for niggers. not just to travel, but for more government jobs.

all around federally-funded niggermobiles.

not too bad

have you heard of the new highspeed rail that is privately funded that is linking Miami-Orlando?

gobrightline.com/

Not really a fan of the Japanese aesthetic, but we could still use their high speeds and efficiency.

Maybe we could combine the two. Pullman service on a Japanese-style high speed line aesthetically modeled after its American predecessors (Pioneer Zephyr, M-10000, Green Diamond, etc.)

True, the mega merged railroads we have now are the ultimate Jews. But again it's not a recent thing that the freight roads hate passenger trains. It does seem a bit silly for them to hold up Amtrak which can do like 80+ on most trains for a goddamn coal drag doing 35. It's just how they are though. Railroad people tend to hold on to past grudges like no other industry.

It's funny too

Literally the only reason they can't get it done is because of mismanagement. No law is preventing them, they aren't short on money, or engineering talent. It's literally just mismanagement.

It's sad too, because being a huge country with a lot of open spaces America needs it more than anyone.

This is something you notice over and over again about the American government in particular. Crippling, soul-crushing waste, mismanagement, and bureaucratic slog. It's a key reason why Americans in particular hate government

Can you ask the bartender something for me? Digits and you have to

It's even more tragic to compare them to their Amtrak parodies.

The Coast Daylight was three hours faster 80 years ago when it was being hauled by a steam engine than the Starlight.

Rail only works is when you have a huge supply of passengers going to a similar location. That's why it's perfect in Long Island and Connecticut

I once took the California Zephyr from Chicago to Salt Lake city.

It was horrible.

Got off the train a while ago (Amtrak=/=internet).

Why does America's rail system suck so much? It shouldn't. It should work well and be affordable for everyone. It's so annoying now. Why can't the states just get together and create some high speed tracks with all kinds of other supports?

Source: I lived in and around NYC for ten years.

There seems to be a pattern of government guaranteeing business to companies who then take advantage of it. Hmm

It was basically run down by WW2 and all the government funding went to airlines and highways instead

Damn, use your phone next time? It'd be interesting to see if you could get her number by asking her questions from us.

It hasn't always been shit my German friend. These bad boys used to be the pinnacle of luxury and style.

I used to take train vacations in the shitty sleeping cars. It was pretty fun getting drunk on the train but having to wait for every stop to smoke fuckin sucked

We were waiting in sidings for at least 90 minutes today (for a fucking Pacific Surfliner train and a UP freight no less)

This

It's waaaaaay too expensive to get smashed on a train.

Fuck those midget bottles of alcohol, let me bring that real shit on board.

We're not in an airplane, get the fuck out of here with that shit.

>tfw you'll never get to ride behind a GS4 highballing at 100+ mph
Feels bad man. How can we do so much worse with 'better' technology?

You can still smoke in the dining cart on a Thai sleeper train, it's worth the flight over just for the train trips.

Tried that,

Large portions of the Coast Starlight's line lack any form of cell coverage too (San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara most notably). Despite the fact we're running by farms who presumably have some form of cell service like any modern household.

That's just retarded. Cars have more costs for everyone. Trains are cheap and comfy. When will Trump MAGA and restore the trains???

Human flight started in the US. Don't be a traitor. Only yuropoors take trains.

You mean local Thai trains or the really nice one they have for tourists?

Kys nigger

This is one of my big complaints as well. I know cigs are death sticks but damn let me kill my self without having to get completely off the train. I've heard that employees could smoke on baggage cars and used to let normies do the same but I doubt they allow smoking at all anymore. I guess it makes sense though, the cars are all connected so smoke would probably drift throughout the whole train.

it coast 61 dollars to travel from San Jose to Los Angeles so how the fuck is that expensive? theres no hassle taking a train seeing how theres no security checks so how is flying easier?

youtube.com/watch?v=XcvkjfG4A_M&spfreload=10

of course a kraut would defend that shit, the reich probably condones those abomination fun size bottles.

Wait, why the fuck you are not allowed to bring bottles in a train?

When we go to Montenegro we always bring 2 bottles of rakija with us, and we always drink half of one bottle during the trip

do you get a bed in an airplane? how is that a reasonable comparison?

So, what you're really looking for,
is a way to make America great again?

I road a train from AZ to boston 15 years ago

It took 8 days 4 days of which were in terrible hot ass texas

Shits pretty gay and boring as fuck. Maybe if they made it more like a driving hotel it might be cool but nope

Because they want you to buy these stupid 50 milliliter bottles.

It's a damn unamerican scam is what it is.

If Donald tweeted tonight that he was bringing back streamliners and reasonable cross country rates, I'd build the fucking wall by hand by myself for his orange ass.

>1st Transcontinental Railroad by built by the US
>1st country to offer luxury rail service (Pullman service) at reasonably affordable prices was the US
>1st country to transition from steam to diesel and electric was the US
>1st country to manufacture cars on a large scale was the US
>Largest rail network on the planet is still somehow the US

We basically invented modern transportation nigga

i rode on a train before. it seems like it would be easy for you to get away with bringing your own beer but getting drunk while traveling on a communal train is degenerate. kill yourself.

at one time they used to be like hotels on rails

I'd like to see anyone travelling to Montenegro sober. 500km and the train travels 12-20+ hours to get there

That Amtrak looks a lot nicer than when I rode on one wtf

Same tbqh

Yeah but flying is so much faster. If I have to put up with other peoples' shit, I want it to be for the least amount of time possible, otherwise I'd rather drive.

Coast Starlight's Palour Cars. Old Hi-Level from the Santa Fe-era coaches rebuilt to service sleeper patricians and normies like me who are only going as far as the Bay Area and buy Business class

>4 days to take the train through a single state
wtf america

I live in the northeast and I enjoy taking amtrak/Acela if it fits my travel needs. One problem I see is that the tracks are privately owned and Amtrak is shelling out a lot of cash for leases...(so why improve them if they've paid for themselves countless times)
I was a young kid in 2003 when the widespread blackout happened on the north east coast and I was on an outbound train from NYC. We were stranded for about 10 hours it was terrible :(

Also I cum buckets over the TGV
(Pic taken while going 300km/hr)

As far as I'm concerned, they ought to just scrap the fucking Genesis locomotives and have GS4s and J-class pull everything.

If we're gonna lag behind the rest of the world in high speed rail, we might as well have some fun and Make Steam Great Again.

Trips of Truth.

>Why Trains Suck in America

youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

>you will never ride a train to your friends house
>you will never enjoy a nice cold oranżada with your przyjaciel on a pociąg

I love how liberals are suddenly fucking harping on that President Trump's proposed slash in DOT funding will kill long-distance Amtrak service (as if they ever gave a shit before) when those same trains are the only rail service to a lot of Republican states who will never vote for it.

wow i cant believe how much of a nigger you are. seriously? you cant bring you're own laptop to entertain yourself? ive been on a 10 hours train before and could easily do 20 without any alcohol

I love the old style locomotives

Have you heard of the new Train Sim that is designed around CSX freight trains?

There is/was a project for a high speed train in commifornia from la to san francisco,i know because I was told by my company if I wanted to volunteer and go in case the project goes on and our company is selected

yea.... went all the way across it

Railways were a huge part of the 19th century USA and at that time our railway corporations were not only profitable, but were among the best in the world.

Then the early 20th came along, some ruthless guy named Rockefeller started a company called Standard Oil...and everything went to shit.

Its actually amazing how much one man cucked the USA, and in some ways the entire world. He's not Rothschild tier, but he's pretty close.

Anyway, the USA doesn't want to use less oil, because guys like Rockefeller wanted to use the most oil possible. He not only helped kill/restrain our railways, but he also battled Henry Ford over making sure automobiles ran on oil instead of corn grain alcohol (which would have made more sense in every way)

All this shit we have now. The Global oil market, Saudi Arabia controlling the petrol dollar, etc etc. It can all be traced back to Standard Oil (Rockefeller)

E85 burns cleaner, is renewable, and the USA grows the most corn in the world.
It might also help prop farmers up so we dont have to use unhealthy corn syrup in food.

But no, we couldn't have that completely logical timeline. Because greedy men didn't want it.

So we prop up the Middle East while our own infrastructure remains stuck in the past, and we have to prop the corn farmers up somehow so we use corn syrup in all of our food which is making us hilariously fat monstrosities.

I think it's safe to say Amtrak came at literally the exact wrong time and that's a major reason why we don't have high speed rail in America.

If private passenger rail had lasted another decade, the Oil Crisis of the 70s and the rise of high speed rail in Europe might've saved it. Unlike Amtrak, private passenger rail would've had the capital to potentially invest in building high speed trains to compete with airlines (Amtrak dabbed around with the Turboliner a bit but it ultimately failed to be the game changer it should've been).

If Amtrak had been formed a decade earlier, before the decline in passenger rail became so severe that they had to abandon 2/3rds of the rolling stock (this was actually a meme in early Amtrak advertising) and dozens of routes, it might've been able to build up the capital on its own to invest in high speed rail.

Like most things, it would work really well if it were properly funded.

Berlin-paris takes about 10 hours, which means that back and forth itd take 20 hours which is a greater distance than going 'all the way across it'
Youre welcome retard

>la to san francisco

They ain't even building that one first (despite the fact the Daylight route was in its heyday is the most profitable train in America). They're building it from fucking Bakersfield to Sacramento first, fucking idiots.

It's not like they would need to build a brand new line from scratch to restart the Daylight. All they'd really have to do is maybe buy some new conventional diesel powered trains (i.e. Brightline), fix some track, arm-twist UP into giving them priority and they could probably have a route twice as fast as the Daylight running by 2020 instead of HSR which won't be ready until 2030.

There's more to it than that, take 8 minutes and watch this

That's pretty slow. I took a train across Canada when I was younger and it only took 7 days.

>when the Leafs were smart enough to buy up all your streamliners and you're stuck riding Amfleet and Superliner garbage notorious for it's unreliability and rough ride.

I've driven across Texas multiple times. Trucker.

That's a long haul. You can't do it in a day. same with Montana.

America is big. And there isn't a whole lot in between cities out west. And fuck you if you think we want to contribute to a nationalized high-speed railroad that will not serve us. It will all be back east or in Cali. Fuck those guys. Use airplanes like normal people or pay for your own fancy passenger-only railroad your own goddamnselves.

Freight rail is another story. The US is the world leader there as far as ton-miles by rail. Our railroads are second to none. Coal from Wyoming. Wheat from Kansas. Corn from Iowa. Cars from Detroit. Iron ore from Minnesota. Oil from North Dakota. Lumber from Idaho. Etc. Toot-toot.

Realistically, the problem is probably too institutionally entrenched for Trump to fix even if he put it at the top of the to-do list.

>Railways were a huge part of the 19th century USA and at that time our railway corporations were not only profitable, but were among the best in the world.
What do you mean "were"?

They still are. They just don't haul passengers.

Southwest Airlines has them beat. Hands down. Hauling coal out of Gillette Wyoming, they are fucking aces.

>That's a long haul. You can't do it in a day. same with Montana.

Oh bullshit.

I've been from starting just west of TN in AR to the Ozarks in the NW corner of AR before heading over a bit to OK and finally running straight down to Corpus Christi.

One day, including a few hours eating and fucking around.

The track needs to be made new,high speed trains operate on a mostly different kind of track (the sections are usually longer and the unions have a lower tolerance so the ride is more comfy/no accidents)the japanese bullet train actually means new track 新幹線,that's the main difference between fast trains and high speed trains,you can use the same locomotive but still you need the tracks to be capable of dealing with higher speeds (also the curves need to be thought for those speeds etc etc)you can do with a fast train using the old tracks certainly I would have recommended that for spain since the population density ain't enough to sustain the massive high speed investment we undertook,but high speed construction was politically motivated in spain (muh regions)
I don't know how the construction progress is all I know is i was recommended to volunteer for the project,I dunno since I also have the whole meca to medina thing being built...

BTW, I live 4 blocks from the UP and 2 from the BNSF railways. Shit moves through here on the freight rails like crazy.

And fuck you Amtrak for sounding the horn like bloody murder for the level crossings at 3AM every night when the Empire Builder goes through.

Yo train bro, what's your thoughts on the Alaskan Railroad?

I-10 from Louisiana to New Mexico. You can't do it legally.

I'm a trucker. 11 hours per day driving for my logs per the federal guidelines. Max. Anthony, TX (NM border) to Orange, TX (LA border) is 878 miles.

You can't do it in a day.

I-90/94 from Beach, ND to Lookout Pass across Montana is 705. Speed limit is 65. At 8 hours we are required to take a 30 minute break.

Not legally possible.

Like I said, I have been there.

Sick as fuck in NorCal. 10+ trains a day from SF to Sac. Not as many for destinations further down the Central Valley.

MUCH BETTER THAN DRIVING. There's a bar. There's chicks. Buy one a drink & you're in.

Long distance takes a fuck ton of time, but first class cabins exist if you're not poor.

Furthermore an excellent option if you don't want to get molested by TSA

commuter trains and light rail options in larger metro areas such as chicago are quick, inexpensive, and on time. amtrak is fucked except for a small sliver of decency along the northeast corridor from new york city to washington dc. americans prioritized cars and planes, and theres no going back now unless there's a FUNDAMENTAL change in attitudes and funding from both the american public and private business.

>Not legally possible.

I'm not a truck driver though.

Nor did I bother much with the speed limit for that matter.