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Trains and Railroads:
I love trains but don’t know much outside of the basics. I am learning more each month or day though. Trains Magazine is cool. You don’t see it at my bookstores/places. I live in a metro area of 1.5 million and we are serviced by Norfolk Southern, they have two yards here, one of them is huge and just ½ mile from my house. We also are serviced by CSX who have a yard on the cross dressers part of town, Parsons Avenue . I would watch trains more but gas prices and time have got me strapped. Some years when I go out west, I go through Nebraska for hours of train watching just simply driving on US30, which is almost always in view of the main line of Union Pacific going west of its Omaha , Neb. headquarters.
As in the November issue of Trains, I like to see that Powder Ridge area of trains in eastern Wyoming . It’s so busy, they’re making a third or even fourth track in some areas. It is between Orin and Gillette , Wyoming following State Route 59. They carry coal from the nation’s leader in coal, a third of all our coal.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH PASSENGER TRAINS AND WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT.?
Amtrak does get action, in the busy northeast but the rest of us? As gas prices are going up, car travel is getting hard. Trips cost 60% more than they did just in 2003 when $1.75 gas in California was viewed as expensive and $1.50 here was a bit much. Airline travel is ass too because of delays and the ways of security, “every one is a criminal”. Flying to some places is more than driving. Rail travel for passengers outside of the northeast covers SO little ground. Columbus is Amtrak-less despite we have a decent system of rails here that go to Portsmouth , Cincinnati , Toledo and a single track to Cleveland . If I want to go to Montana , I’m stuck to the north part of it, hundreds of miles north from where I want to be along and under I-90. Wyoming ? Plenty of rails, including coal trains and Union Pacific’s main that follows US30/I-80 but no Amtrak at all. Getting on a bus to get to a station is no excuse. Also, the cost is insane and there are not enough trains. Say I want to ride to Denver and stay in a motel and see the town. You’ll have to wait a couple days for the next train. In Columbus , you are either 140 miles away from Toledo or 110 from Cincinnati . We used to have a station here. I don’t want to drive to within ten miles of Meatchicken or park my car in a very crappy and “crimey” part of Cincinnati . Bush needs to cut the funds for this war against the people that terrorized father Bush and get to funding the rails of the country. Europe and Japan do it and not only do it but high speed-do it. A poll says 90% of us want rail travel.
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