First of all thanks to everyone for travelling to New England to take part in our Fest. We had two full weekend days of riding the rails in the Boston area and between Exeter and Maine, and a smaller group also got to ride the branch to Foxboro and explore that area on Friday.
I turned it into parts of 6 days for myself, but now that I'm home the work begins. The Fest homepage is now written in the past tense. The itineraries are complete, with the word "Tentative" removed. The Foxboro itinerary reflects that we only did it on Friday. Also added was a timepoint for Back Bay Station, since three of the five detrained there. The regular itinerary shows that on Saturday we found alternate means to get from South Station to North Station due to the Red Line closure. Thankfully that was the only real deviation from our plans; everything else went well.... the substitute bus for the Downeaster notwithstanding, but at least we expected it.
On my main homepage, the Boston RailFest 2023 is finally un-highlighted as a working Fest, and it's now a part of our long history. That entry was highlighted in purple for over THREE years as we endured pandemic, line closures, employee shortages, my busy schedule, and other reasons why it was not prudent to hold this event until now. And speaking of history, the Fest History page which details all 54 of our events since the year 2001, has been updated with a blurb about what we accomplished at this event.
Next, the participant list. It also is no longer tentative. We had 7 people total. It would have been 8, but I know that Jishnu would have been there had he been able to. I removed Monday participation since everyone except me had left Boston by Sunday night.
Now let's move to the Fest Scorecard to see what we accomplished in Boston. All MBTA commuter rail lines and rapid transit lines have now once again been totally ridden by various iterations of our group, during our 2002, 2007, 2008, 2013, and now 2023 visits. BUT....remember that as long as something is under construction, our work is never done. The South Coast Rail project, once it opens for revenue service, will once again represent something incomplete and beckon us back to Boston someday.
With all that work done, the subject did some up aboard the Green Line trolley.... Where to next? My answer was noncommittal. What I'd like to do and what I (and we) may be able to do might be different things. Sometime in the summer I would like to have a group two-day trip to Burlington, VT using Amtrak's Ethan Allen Express. I've done this myself but it would always be fun to do in numbers as well. I have ideas for a large trip involving several Texas cities as well as Oklahoma City, A Midwest Fest is possible too, from which we can use Amtrak Hiawatha and Wolverine trains to ride to Milwaukee and Detroit respectively and ride their streetcars.
In the East, we have the LIRR Eastside Access finally at our disposal, plus there has been some interest in riding the longer branches such as Montauk to the end, which as we know is an all-day activity. SEPTA has the WaWa extension beyond Elwyn. And down in Florida, but sometime this summer there should be Brightline service to Orlando. A trip involving Miami could also include the MetroRail Orange Line which we haven't ridden yet as a group, as well as the MiamiMover people mover to Miami International Airport and maybe any future diversions of TriRail other than the legacy route between Mangonia Park and the Miami Airport station. And in the Washington, DC area, we now have the outer portion of the Metro Silver Line to ride to Ashburn. Possible trips to Charlotte (to get the Streetcar and the northern half of the light rail line) and Atlanta might be possible too (although tough with the current Amtrak northbound timetable with poor time in Atlanta).
