Has anyone here been on one of these?

on a beautiful day, York to Scarborough is a great train trip i'll tell thee for nowt

I'm pretty sure we've done this before. Because I rember talking about the lovely bit between Derby and Chesterfield.

That Trains is the Acela Express it Goes from Boston to Washington at 150mph. I think its a derivative of the german ICE but I could be wrong. 2:45 NYC-Washington. $119 Dollars single and I bet you can fly for less

I think it is probably cheaper to fly Boston-DC but this way you probably save on cab fare and travel time getting in and out of the cities.

my favorite railway journey is over the Manhattan Bridge on the Q/W line at night. Really nice views of the city.

the worst: riding hard seat on long chinese train journeys

Nevertheless, officials did not give up on the idea of a direct rail link to JFK. After a series of abortive attempts over the past three decades, New York City, New York State, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey finally agreed on a direct rail link from Jamaica to JFK in September 1997.

In April 1998, the Port Authority awarded an initial $930 million construction contract and a $105 million to a consortium of companies. Construction of the three-line elevated rail system known as "Airtrain" began five months later. The three separate lines were developed as develops:

A two-mile rail line will link Kennedy's nine terminals to each other.

A 3.4-mile line will link the terminals to parking lots, rental car agencies and the Howard Beach subway station.

A three-mile elevated line running up the center median of the Van Wyck Expressway will link the airport at Jamaica Station in Queens to the Long Island Rail Road, the E, J and Z subway lines, as well as to numerous bus lines linking Queens and Nassau counties.

The $1.9 billion construction contract and a $105 million, five-year contract to run and maintain the line was awarded to a team of companies: Skanska USA, the U.S. division of a Swedish heavy construction company; Bombardier Transit Corporation, a Quebec train manufacturer; and Perini Corporation of Framingham, Massachusetts, a construction company.

The 8.4-mile Airtrain project is about one-fourth the price of a proposed 22-mile railway linking Manhattan, Kennedy Airport and LaGuardia Airport that was deemed too costly in 1995, one of 21 proposals that have stalled over the past three decades.

Once Airtrain is fully operational, commuters will be able to take a 45-minute, one-transfer rail trip from Penn Station in midtown Manhattan to Kennedy Airport via the LIRR-Jamaica station. Currently, the trip from Manhattan to Kennedy Airport can now take more than two hours by car or bus, or subway and bus, along sometimes congested routes.

chicago-seattle on amtrak
chicago-LA on amtrak
new orleans-LA on amtrak

http://images.jlist.com/c2/kittyvib5_small.gif

Hey now, be nice to us Astoria types, since no one comes to visit anyway. You can see the Acela in our neighborhood, crossing that one railroad bridge by the Triboro.

Railroad trips: been from St. Louis to New Mexico three times. Seattle to Portland twice. When I moved to NYC last fall, I took the train from Chicago. And I've taken the train all over Spain, but only high-speed from Madrid to Seville (took about 2 hours - they played The Odd Couple in Spanish on the TVs).

The problem with trains in the US is the distances are too great between the major cites, except for the Northeast. Amtrack actually makes a profit in that area, but loses money on its other routes.

http://www.partyweb.org.uk/images/services/inflatable/bouncy%20from%20p%20and%20j/rodeo%20bull.jpg

TGV paris-marseille 300km/h => 180mph between just south of Paris and just north of Marseille more or less.

http://biedekarken-chr.bei.t-online.de/ice.jpg

It took a bit over an hour (it's 2.5 hours by car). It's cool, but the way it leans into turns makes your stomach feel funny.

I've also taken this from Paris to Köln:

http://212.120.99.236/weblog/archives/thalys.jpg

That was FAST!! Very cool indeed.

Also in Prague did you ever notice how the plastic lower rim on 500ml or litre bottle caps always fails to remove itself from the main cap, ensuring you can't close the bottle properly. I mean, "what's up with that" *snare drum*.

I took Amtrak from Milwaukee to Denver once--a 20 hour ride, but I ended up sitting next to an interesting (and cute!) guy and we talked for a lot of the time. Otherwise I'm sure it would have been pretty boring. The scenery for most of it ('cept the cute guy) was not great except when approaching the Rocky Mountains.

http://www.citynightline.ch/img/img_dernachtreisezug/pic2_liegewagen.jpg

Sleepers are swish but expensive, nuff said. I love the big deep blue sleeping cars in Europe. I would love to ride one of these double deck sleepers but they are way expensive.

http://www.citynightline.ch/img/img_dernachtreisezug/pic3_deluxe.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/andrew.chaplin/train.jpg

Googling just brought up this, why has in never happened? ANS: Privatisation and because brit rail is rubbish.

Isn't Acela a really shit name for a train. Suzy was speculating that it was probably pronounced A-sella as in A-sella-rate. Which makes it even worse.

I love train travel, but it's so annoying that for the past 10 years we've had British trains that can do 140mph, but nowhere with a line speed higher than 125, apart from a short-lived experimental patch.

(that's since the mid-80s at least - in the late 70s and early 80s the Bristol-London route unofficially had no upper speed limit for late-running High Speed Trains, and they regularly travelled up in the 130s mph.)

Great things I've discovered on recent train journeys - the Root Vegetable Crisps they sell in GNER buffets.

What's even worse is that they had trains running at 125mph in the 30s when we were kings of the railway world and that nothing has improved speedwise since then.

In the 30s, one train touched 125mph, going downhill with a special train; there's no way it could have been kept up regularly. One of the current trains managed somewhere around 165mph in similar circumstances (and at the same location) - only 20mph less than a TGV.

The thing is, last time I looked the trip from NY to Chicago went through Memphis, which is kind of, um, not on the way. NY to DC = ~3.5 hrs. The US is unfortunately not built for rail travel, save on the eastern commuter distict DC-Boston, so other train routes are not the most efficient. And, like Ed said, it is kind of far.

Uh, you must've been looking at a very different route than the one I took from Chi to NYC. It went south around Lake Michigan, through Cleveland, Buffalo and Rochester, basically following I-90 'til Albany, at which point it switched south and followed the Hudson River (I got to see my alma mater Bard from the window of my sleeping car compartment!).

from chicago, the only place memphis is on the way to is....

...

new orleans!

...and there was a big derailment a few years ago on that route just south of Chicago, in lovely Bourbonnais. Some dumb trucker got stuck on the tracks.

the trip from philadelphia-chicago went through pittsburgh (with a 90 minute or so layover there). i left philadelphia at 3pm, and got into union station chicago at around 11 the next morning (cst) ...

This is great, but hasn't been going for years, while they repair the bridge:(

There's going to be a new TGV/ICE line running your way and on to Munchen and Zurich soon. SNCF just ordered the stock.

Very convenient for future integrated Paris-Munich-Zurich-Baghdad line.

Via operates what we call high speed trains (maybe 110 Km/h or 65 mph) along the busiest strip of track from Windsor through Toronto (the hub) to Montreal with branches to Ottowa and Quebec City. If your going east to Halifax or from Toronto to Winnipeg you get the real train. Their are also real nice 'tourist' trains operated out of Toronto by Northlands Rail through the Canadian Shield and from Halifax to Syndey out east. They have one that runs through the Rockies out west but I dont know where it ends or splits off.

Smoking cars always attract the weirdest creatures but they very rarely have children in them, which is why I'm so pissed off that they've removed them from the Midland Mainline.

Firstly they didn't have my tickets ready for collection on friday.

Secondly the train on sunday was late because the train coming in was late. I don't know if MML are the worst but they realy upon incoming trains to turn round in 20minutes or less to make outgoing trains. So delays just get worse throughout the day. My train was nearly an hour late when it arrived. Due to getting stuck behind a stopping slower train as a result we 'lost us path.

Not helped by the fact that the direct line between Derby and Sheffield was closed as per usual on sunday because its not heavily used enough for Network Rail to keep it open. So the train has to reverse out of Derby and go Halfway to Nottingham before heading towards Sheffield.

They could solve a great deal of their problems by leasing a couple of extra trains and making incoming trains into the next service but one to go out or even going with the sensible european system of taking trains out of the staion to be cleaned and prepared for the journey. Unfortunately this can't be done because most of the UK's valueable stocks of coaching and goods yards have been sold off to become further pointless shooping centres.

As a result I've booked myself on a trains via Doncaster for the next time I go to london. Its 10 minutes quicker and I get to go on GNER's Eurostars. Its costs an extra tenner though and that pissses me off even more.

Sybian for Women

I want my innocence back.

http://www.telcom.es/~jcastjr/trenes/talgo-1.jpg

Caitlin - I *highly* approve of the way your mind works.