On 12/1/08, Rick Womer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks, Brian. > > Passenger railroads almost disappeared in the US with commercial aviation > and the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s. Spending 18-24 > hours on a train from St. Louis to New York lost its appeal when one could > fly there in 2-3 hours; and taking a train a couple of hours north to Chicago > could not compete with driving one's own car. So, by 1970 there were only 3 > trains a day through Union Station, and it was too expensive to maintain for > that amount of traffic.
Amtrak operated out of a mobile home (for all practical purposes) in St. Louis from 1979 until this year. Looks like they have a new facility now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_(Amtrak_station) Considering the inbred bureaucracy in St. Louis, I'm surprised it got built at all. > The only places passenger rail is in half-decent shape in the US (which is > only quarter-decent, by European standards) is in the "Northeast Corridor" > from Boston to Washington DC, around Chicago, and on the California coast. Tell me about it. The only train service out of Harrisburg consists of two Amtrak lines. One from Pittsburgh to Philly, and the other from Harrisburg to NYC. Both are "commuter" lines and do not accommodate any sort of checked baggage. Which means I can't bring my bike on the train. Grr. -- Scott Loveless New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, USA http://www.twosixteen.com/fivetoedsloth/ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
