A Civilized Way to Travel

I realize that blogging about trains is up there in dorky boringness with, say, expounding on coin collecting or a collection of photos of Boston from the air. Um. Anyway. A long travelogue of the Boston-to-New York Acela journey follows. Incidentally, I might be accused of ripping off the title of this post from this blogger, but I did actually think of it independently.

This was actually the first time I have ridden the Acela Express (i.e., the real, high-speed Acela, as opposed to a rebadged "normal" Amtrak). I wasn't really in a rush, but the ticket price difference was pretty small, so I said, "Hell, I have to try it out!" It was $79 for the 11:10 AM - 2:45 PM (2:35 trip time) Boston South Station to New York Penn Station train (one way).


Speaking as an experienced air traveller, I have to say that this was the thoroughly civilized, practically luxurious, way to get from Boston to New York. Nice roomy seats, lots of cargo bin space--and that's even with a full train (filled up at New Haven). The chance to get up and wander up and down the aisles; no need to check luggage or take off your shoes going through security. Hell, no metal detectors at all--a plus for a guy like me, who carries around a pocketknife all the time. Electric power for my laptop, no need to turn off cell phones. No worries about how bad road traffic is on the weekend before Christmas. A ride that was dead-bang on schedule (I believe that Amtrak has their shit together on this run, unlike the rest of their system). The fact that you start and end the journey right in the middle of town, as opposed to having to haul ass out to the airport. The fit and finish of the cars were great--as nice as what I have ridden in Japan and Europe. I found it pretty noticeable that they had upgraded to all-welded rails: no ca-click, ca-clack, ca-click, ca-clac--just a smooth ride. Nice big windows to enjoy the view.

The scenery included a few hundred miles of the backs of decrepit industrial buildings & big box stores, highway underpasses, and building supply yards. The tracks usually went through the parts of the city with rollup steel doors or grates on every opening. While some might consider the neighborhoods that the tracks pass through unpleasant, I find a certain charm to the hidden infrastructure that makes the rest of life possible.


But the ride was also interspersed with views of quiet neighborhoods, snowy open fields, and the Connecticut coastline, while periodically passing through city centers.


We got to get a few bursts of the vaunted Acela high speed (125 mph); however, a lot of the ride felt like an unfortunate klunk through the older and winding sections of track in cities (e.g., New London). But getting to experience the car tilting mechanism was pretty cool, when it got to open up the pipes on some parts of the ride. You almost felt the train impatiently wanting to unleash its speed at times. The Times article below described the track modernization work: To reach that goal, Amtrak repaired bridges, replaced wooden ties with concrete ones and electrified the track from New Haven to Boston. But it did not have the billions of dollars required for changes that would allow trains to travel over 150 miles an hour consistently: constructing straighter tracks and replacing aging overhead electric lines.

Coming in to New York, I really love seeing the Hell Gate Bridge--a spectacular, 1916 railroad arch bridge from the north into Queens. According to the Wikipedia article, it would be the last New York City bridge to collapse if humans disappeared, taking a least a millennium to do so, according to the February 2005 issue of Discover magazine. Most other bridges would fall in about 300 years.


Incidentally, despite this good experience, I am by no means a knee-jerk defender or even a fan of Amtrak—they seem to have incompetence as almost an institutional pillar. I love the concept of high speed rail network (in areas that are dense enough to support it)... but I don't know if Amtrak is up to the job. Many of the growing pains of Acela are detailed in a New York Times article from 2005: “The Acela, Built to Be a Savior, Bedevils Amtrak at Every Turn”. The article details the development of the train--they took parts of the Alstom TGV, but then had to re-engineer them to meet US crash standards (because passenger rail runs on the same beds as freight... ugh)--thus doubling the weight. This likely contributed to the many problems with cracking of moving parts that shut down the entire fleet for a while around 2002. Holy crapbuckets--what a difference in speed too--TGV has reached 357 mph, and normally run at 200 mph. In addition, somebody seriously misengineered the tilt mechanism: During construction, Amtrak also discovered that the coaches were four inches too wide to use their full tilting mechanisms, which allowed the trains to speed around curves. As a result, trip times were slower. Also, I have doubts about the profitable portions of Amtrak (i.e., Acela accounted for a quarter of Amtrak's ticket revenue last year) being weighed down by the lovely-but-dead-unprofitable touristy trains out West (e.g., Sunset Limited--pretty views, but don't ride it if you need to be anywhere on time).

Anyway, a nice ride... I'd recommend it to anyone doing the New York to Boston trip, if cost is not the top priority.