2 replies to this topic

[RailHaRRy]

OTOL member Bill Purdy and his wife Betty traveled in August from their Blue Ridge, Georgia, home to New Orleans and back via Amtrak's Crescent. Bill has given us a detailed report of the rail trips, and some insight into the way modern railroading works. You can read all about it here.

[bill haithcoat]

Interesting trip summary. I have made that trip many times and frequently notice a delay northbound between Anniston and Atlanta and have never figured out why it happens so often. Glad you were able to make up 10 minutes over the same track. Yep, the train and bus together are called MARTA, and that does confuse a lot of people. I'm glad you were able to get that couple to their hotel in Smyrna. I can tell you another confusion: one morning I was at a MARTA bus/train station, boarding my train into work and a guy with luggage asked me if that was the train to New Orleans. He obviously thought he was at Amtrak. I did help him with his luggage and got him on the #23 bus which does indeed stop by the Amtrak station. I agree with you abut the problems with the Amtrak Station. In case yo do not already know this, realize that it was a former SUBURBAN stop; the two large downtown stations were torn down years ago. The only trains left in the early 70's happened to serve both one of the downtown stations and that small suburban stop.....so it was simple enough to reconfigure the little suburban station as the "regular" train station and tear down the others.

[bill haithcoat]

Oh yes, glad they made some attempt to pacifiy the passengers who were not able to ride in sleeper, with free meals, two seats each, etc, etc. About the best they could do. A refund, too, of course. Believe it or not I had the exact opposite thing happen to me once, pre-Amtrak. In my case the railroad ran out of coaches and put us in a sleeper, without charge. It was an old section sleeper, we got no blankets, etc, but we could bring down the beds if we could figure out how to do it, it etc, etc. A novel experience. I used my raincoat folded back for a pillow. This particualr train did not have any sleeper cars in revenue service at all, so this sleeper was fully serving as a coach.