From 1948 through the late 1960s train travel in the United States was very comfortable, convenient and safe. The major railroads were ordering lightweight, streamlined equipment from the manufacturers as well as phasing out steam locomotives for the new and more efficient diesel engines. Air travel was moving ahead, but the trains still offered the luxury of private Pullman rooms in which to relax, read and watch our great country pass by the train window.

The railroads touted their streamliners in large print ads and were boasting speed, safety and sightseeing.

By the end of the 1960s the automobile ruled travel using great highways and the airlines, with improved aircraft and jet engines, changed our method of travel. The railroads were now operating passenger trains at a deficit and letting the once great streamliners fall into disrepair with poor service and schedules. Finally, the government came to the railroads’ rescue in 1972 and formed a government funded AMTRAK corporation to run most passenger train operations in the United States. AMTRAK got off to a slow start with the old equipment it inherited as it tried to tie the large American network together into a workable, useful passenger-oriented operation. In the more than three decades since it began operation, AMTRAK has been underfunded, but has carried the fight to improve service forward to today with considerably improved equipment, service, food and schedules.

AMTRAK now has a new CEO, Joseph Boardmen, who has helped acquire more operating funds to better the corporation. The new stimulus bill will provide additional $8 billion dollars to purchase new equipment improve tracks and build on the high-speed Acela service now operating in the Northeast corridor. In the future, high speed rail is planned for the San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco segment. Imagine getting on a comfortable train in Los Angeles and getting off in San Francisco two-and-a-half hours later. This would be city to city service without airport hours of waiting. Other high-speed service is being looked at in the central Midwest out of Chicago, as well as through Texas and Oklahoma. Other high-speed services will probably include Washington, D.C. heading south into Florida.

Today, AMTRAK offers services up and down the West Coast, across the U.S. between Seattle and Chicago, Oakland to Chicago, Los Angeles to Chicago, as well as north and south routes out of Chicago and Chicago east to New York. There is also frequent service from New York and Washington, D.C. south into Florida. There are additional routes that can be traveled by train today, but the above are the principal ones.

A couple years ago, AMTRAK decided to experiment with service improvements and began with the Coast Starlight, which travels between Los Angeles, the Bay area through Portland into Seattle. This is a beautiful route up many miles of California coastline, then into Northern California’s mountainous country into Oregon and Washington State. This is a two-day, one night passage in either direction. The train consists of Superliner two-deck equipment with Pullman and coach service. Pullman service passengers have a private room with enclosed facilities, included meals and access to the train’s glass dome roofed lounge car. Movies at night are also available along with a tavern facility. Coach passengers enjoy wide, stretch-out seats with leg rests, car attendants and may use the dining car and lounge facilities as well. Food is prepared onboard per order which is new for AMTRAK.

This is one of AMTRAK’s premier trains now.

Another fine train is the Empire Builder, which travels between Seattle, through Glacier National Park, on to Minneapolis and into Chicago. This train also uses the Superliner equipment and offers about the same amenities as the Coast Starlight.

For those of us in Payson we can drive to Flagstaff and board the Southwest Chief early in the morning heading east through Albuquerque, Kansas City into Chicago on what was the old Santa Fe tracks. If you wish to go to Los Angeles by train, you can also board the same train heading west out of Flagstaff in the evening with morning arrival in Los Angeles. This would then connect with the Coast Starlight at which time you could head north to the Bay area and beyond.

If you are going to Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio or Houston, board the Sunset Limited in Maricopa, about 30 miles from Phoenix, and head southeast. The Sunset Limited will also take you to Los Angeles on an overnight schedule.

I yearn for the day when I can board a nice train and just ride for a few days through our beautiful countryside seeing America from a train window while enjoying fine food and a good night’s sleep in my private compartment and being rocked to sleep with the wheels clickety clacking down the rails. I can almost hear the conductor say “All Aboard”!

The government of Canada also took over passenger rail service a couple of decades ago and they call it VIA Rail. Several years ago VIA Rail completely refurbished their Budd built, stainless steel rail cars, which had been placed in service back in 1952, and are now using them in deluxe service between Toronto and Vancouver. They have retained the wonderful dome and round end Pullman and lounge cars. They call the train The Canadian, which is what the equipment was principally used for back in the ’50, ’60s and ’70s. Now, The Canadian offers very upgraded services with included meals for first class passengers and other fine amenities. This is actually a land cruise today.

There are a few tour companies that are offering some very interesting tours that include train travel. One is Train Holidays, which has a nice trip that visits the Copper Canyon in Mexico. This fully escorted vacation begins in San Diego where passengers first board Holland America Line’s Oosterdam for a sail down the Pacific Coast to Mazatlan. After a short stay there, you’ll board the Chihuahua Pacifico Railway for the trip to the spectacular Copper Canyon. There are stops along the way for sightseeing and some overnighting and the tour ends in El Paso. The 10-day tour departs Oct. 9 and Nov. 20. Fares begin at $2,495 plus taxes. Call: 1-800-543-2846 for more information and reservations.

Another very reliable tour company specializing in train tours is Uncommon Journeys. It is offering a 13-day train tour in the Canadian Rockies departing May 14. This fully hosted trip features an overnight stay in Niagara Falls as well as Toronto, then boarding VIA’s deluxe The Canadian using first class sleeping cars with meals included. You will cross the prairie and enter some of the most beautiful scenery in North America, the Canadian Rockies. The tour has scheduled a four-night stay in Banff, a visit to the Columbia Icefields, Lake Louise, an overnight stay in Jasper National Park and then by train to one of the most beautifully situated cities in the world, Vancouver. The tour provides a wonderful city tour as part of the itinerary. This great trip is priced from $3,895 plus taxes. Phone: 1-800-323-5893.

Vacations By Rail arranges other great train vacations. It offers a National Parks of the Rio Grande lasting 11 days. It travels through New Mexico and gets into a detailed itinerary in that state. You can check them out by calling: 1-877-929-7245. It also provides quite a few specialized tours using AMTRAK.

Look at The Society of International Railway Travelers at www.irtsociety.com or call 1-800-478-4881; this company features some of the most exotic rail journeys on the planet. One that interests me is a Zambezi Steam Express aboard Rovos Rail’s Pride of Africa train. This 1,300-mile journey begins in Pretoria, South Africa to join the Cape to Cairo Railway that uses the route through Botswana, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls with stops for game viewing in the velt. You’ll have a ride on the Victoria Falls Safari Express before departing for London and home. You will never forget a trip like this, believe me. It has been my good fortune to have enjoyed rail travel through South Africa in the past using the famous Blue Train as well as some of the others. This is a special part of the world to be enjoyed by all.

There are fine trains all over the world. Check into them, for it’s a great way to see the world. At home, you can dial AMTRAK at 1-800-RAIL. Or visit with your favorite travel professional. Happy railing!

Source: by Ken Brooks Payson Roundup

Source Link: Windsor Star

Tuesday’s federal budget acknowledged the importance of pumping money into Via Rail to make passenger service more comfortable and reliable in Ontario and Quebec.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised an additional $407 million in cash to upgrade infrastructure and make the necessary capital improvements.

But he fell woefully short of making the long-term investment in high-speed rail that would put Windsor in the loop, and that’s unfortunate. It has long been accepted that the only logical way to improve rail travel is to create a seamless high-speed route in the corridor from Essex County to Quebec City. Instead, he chose to focus on creating a “triple-track” system between Montreal and Toronto.

Flaherty boasted it would provide for two additional express trains between those two cities and reduce the trip times, “thereby making it possible to travel between these major metropolitan centres in approximately four hours.

“Trip times between Ottawa and Toronto,” he said, “will also be reduced by up to 30 minutes.”

That’s all well and good for those “metropolitan” travellers, but it won’t help those people living in the rest of southwestern Ontario. Nowhere is that oversight more obvious than in Windsor, which sees throngs of travellers from Michigan and Ohio flock to its antiquated station each year.

Those people are eager to explore the sights and sounds along the rail route, often stopping in Stratford and London on their way to Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City. They bring with them plenty of cash and a willingness to spend it.

Ironically, Flaherty acknowledged Windsor as one of Via’s “key” stations, right up there with Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. That tells us someone in the non-partisan rail caucus knows full well how important this area is to creating a quick and efficient rail corridor. There’s no question it should have been included in the project to link together major centres.

And while he did say there would be funds to “modernize” our station, Flaherty did not specify what we could expect. We trust it will be a traveller friendly new one to replace what’s become a tired old eyesore.

Along with this, the government must rethink its infrastructure plan so that it includes high-speed rail — which has been endorsed by the Ontario and Quebec governments. Any modernization project should include upgrading the rail line now, not later.

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro is a big advocate for high-speed rail service between some of Canada

Source Link: By David Akin, The Gazette

OTTAWA — The MP who leads the non-partisan “rail caucus” in the House of Commons is pushing a new high-speed rail plan — a super-fast tri-city train link between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

“If you were to start a line that connected these three major centres, you would have a line that would be well-supported, would offer significant economic benefits, and, obviously, you’d have significant environmental benefit,” said Dean Del Mastro, a Conservative MP from Peterborough, Ont.

Del Mastro said that, given the geography such a line would run through, the trains would probably be limited to speeds of about 240 kilometres an hour but that would still cut the rail ride between Ottawa and Toronto, which now takes a little more than four hours, down to about two hours.

It would trim the hour-and-forty-five minute trip between Ottawa and Montreal to around 40 minutes. An express between Montreal and Toronto could take travellers from downtown to downtown in about two-and-a-half hours. The fastest ride now takes about four-and-a-half hours.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest, at last fall’s First Ministers Conference here, was trying to sell the federal government on the merits of a high-speed rail line from Quebec City to Windsor, Ont. using the corridor that runs along the shores of the St. Lawrence River and then Lake Ontario.

It’s an idea that’s been around for about two decades but various levels of government have balked at the multi-billion dollar price tag for such a service.

In most earlier formulations, such a high-speed line, which requires its own dedicated track, would service Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston, Ont., Toronto, London, Ont., and Windsor, Ont., but Ottawa would get left out of the picture.

Del Mastro believes that a less ambitious project that avoids the lakeshore right-of-way in favour of a sweeping curve north through Ottawa makes more economic sense.

“I think we’re seeing around the world that rail works, that it makes sense,” said Del Mastro. “It’s a good way to flow goods and people.”

Del Mastro said he and Transport Minister John Baird have not yet discussed the idea. Instead, Del Mastro hopes that those currently studying the viability of high-speed service in the Quebec-Windsor corridor consider his alternative. Last January, the federal government along with the governments of Ontario and Quebec agreed to jointly cover the costs of updating feasibility studies on high-speed service between Quebec and Windsor. Two earlier studies had been done in 1992 and again in 1995.

A spokesperson for VIA Rail said the company would not have any official comment on a Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto high-speed line until a feasibility study on future high speed services is completed.

“We are all waiting very impatiently for the results of these studies and then we will probably have more information,” said Nadia Seraicco, a VIA Rail spokesperson.

Transport Canada was unable to say when those studies would be complete.

But documents obtained by Canwest News Service using access to information laws show that Del Mastro’s idea is a plan that was being pushed last summer by VIA Rail’s president, Donald Wright. Wright met with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on June 16 specifically to discuss a high-speed link between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto.

Officials in Flaherty’s office were not immediately available for comment.

Meanwhile, high-speed rail enthusiasts say they’re getting impatient with yet more studies. They say it’s time for governments to commit to the kind of high-speed rail lines that are now common in many countries in Europe and Asia.

“In 20 years, there has never been more potential for a high-speed rail project and for rail renewal,” said Paul Langan, founder of the advocacy group High Speed Rail Canada. Langan’s group has organized a symposium on high-speed rail projects in Canada to take place later this month in Kitchener, Ont. “There is no logical argument not to have high-speed. The question just boils down to the political or public will.”