Jim Cameron Jim Cameron 8-2-16

Headed South, Snowbird? Consider Packing Your Car on the Auto Train

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Since 1971, you’ve been able to travel by train to Florida with your car, avoiding the mayhem of Interstate 95. And although the service is now run by Amtrak, it actually started as a private enterprise. How It Got Started
Trains carrying passengers and their cars have been used in Europe for decades, but in the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Transportation conducted a study of long distance rail travel to avoid the problems of the oil crisis. In 1971, Eugene Garfield took the idea and started the Auto-Train Corporation, buying his own fleet of locomotives, Pullman sleepers, dome car-coaches and dining cars. Most important, he acquired 62 bilevel autorack cars.

Jim Cameron Jim Cameron 8-2-16

Historic Dreams of Big Trains: Supertrain, Superliners, Taggert Comet, Breitspurbahn — Cameron on Transportation

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What do Ayn Rand, Hollywood and Adolph Hitler have in common? They all dreamed of building super-trains. Maybe it was because their visions for giant, high-speed trains came before the era of cheap flights moving large numbers of people over great distances, but each of them had a grandiose vision of fast, luxurious rail travel. In her 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand made the construction of a coast-to-coast train, “The Taggart Comet,” central to the plot of her dystopian America set some time in the future. In an era of crumbling infrastructure, the construction of an 8-mile rail tunnel under the continental divide saw mismanagement lead to a fatal passage, killing all on board.

Jim Cameron Jim Cameron 8-2-16

A New Acela This Way Comes — on Amtrak’s Outdated Northeast Tracks: Cameron on Transportation

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I’m a big fan of high-speed trains, which means I often ride Amtrak’s Acela to Boston or Washington. It’s the best train in North America, though it pales in comparison to true HSR (high-speed rail) in Europe or Asia. While Acela can hit a top speed of 150 mph, it does so on only 34 of the 457 miles between DC and Boston. Over the entire run, with congestion and station stops, it only averages about 70 mph. But its 20 daily runs are highly popular, especially with business travelers on expense accounts (the fares are roughly double usual coach fares).