Another Record Train Year

Amtrak ridership nationwide was a record 30.2 million in the federal fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

Just about every year since 2005 Amtrak has been setting records, even with not being able to add cars or build new routes and lines.  Nevertheless, Gen Y is killing the auto, quickly in Europe and slowly but surely in the U.S.

Comments

[D. P. Lubic]

Trailers--looks like one I'll have to try to see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR-kP-olcpM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKT1C1Ro ... re=related

[D. P. Lubic]

Hmm--the original post on the above movie keeps going away for some reason; anyway, you can look at the movie review that was supposed to be here at the link below:

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32578

[D. P. Lubic]

More on the debate on trains; despite Mr. Plous's comments in the movie review above, I sometimes wonder if Generation Y has the time to wait out the deaths of sufficient members of the TEA party crowd:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-19/riding-high-speed-rail-to-a-u-s-recovery-john-rosenthal.html

Going to the other end of the rail scale, we have an item about trolley cars:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2011/10/streetcar-named-desire/380/

Also from The Atlantic, an interesting development–opponents to street railways have shifted their complaints that trolleys aren’t too noisy–no, they are too quiet!

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2011/10/streetcars-serenity/285/

Ironically, it almost seems the critics may have a point (which sadly has apparently resulted in fatalities), as summarized by a railfan site:

http://www.trainweb.org/cemt/archives/quiet.htm