Welcome to NAME THAT FEST!

North Carolina/Virginia RailFest seems like a rather long name, and by including a Jacksonville trip as well we travel well beyond that area. Adding Jacksonville or Florida to the name only makes it even longer. Keeping the VRE Fredericksburg trip falls within Virginia, but there is a way to do both JAX and FBG if we do the trip on the right days of the week.

So the next thought would be to make it another Southeast RailFest since that is the general area of the country. But do we want another SERF in 2013, and would it be confused with SERF 2011? We did have multiple AppleFests and BARF events for many years in New York, and there were several fests with the name PARF in Philly. But with a second SERF it would be completely different places, even one of the rare summer events that doesn't touch Chicago at some point.

There is no one train we would use that we could name it after. The planned trip would include the Carolinian, Piedmont, Silver Star, Silver Meteor, and some Northeast Regionals (most likely not in that order).

So, assuming a Fest that would visit Jacksonville, Raleigh (just to change trains), Charlotte, Richmond (just to change trains), Norfolk/Tidewater area, and the Washington DC/Northern Virginia area, can you think of a suitable name (a name that ties things together) for a Fest for next year?

Well Amtrak calls all those trains Atlantic Coast Service so who would we be to question that? So I propose the Atlantic Coast Fest

Stole my idea LOL

How about silver fest since we are using silver service trains for parton it.

Nah I just reserved that name this morning for 2035 when we will ride light rail from St. Petersburg to Tampa over the Howard Frankland Bridge. Since I'll be 75 then, it will refer not only to the trains but my hair as well -- although it's on its way already.

Piedmont Palooza?

I like this one!

My ordinary idea was going to be Mid-Atlantic Rail Fest, but I think I like Piedmont Palooza better.

the Midamerica fest?

Well no, because Charlotte would be as far west as the Fest would take us.

Southern Rail Fest

More of a CSX Rail Fest than Southern Rail Fest I am afraid

After considering these ideas for a month, out of the aforementioned suggestions I think the best one is Atlantic Coast RailFest. (Gotta keep the word "Rail" in there to distinguish it from anything else search engines might find with similar names related to non-rail events.) It would span a good portion of the Atlantic Coast, not just the Southern or Mid-Atlantic portion. (We did BTW have a Mid Atlantic RailFest in 2006, which just included Baltimore and Philadelphia.) And yes, as mentioned it does match the generic name given to all Southeastern Amtrak service as shown on the combined timetables that include the trains we would ride. So although its acronym pronunciation is awkward, ACRF it is.

ACRF = Ack-Ruff

Homepage & itinerary have been updated with new name, new URL's.