Coast Starlight

Why is this train service always late? I%26#39;ve been tracking it for the past week, it%26#39;s ALWAYS late.

Coast Starlight

Lots of reasons but main one is that the railroads that own the tracks give their freight trains priority.

Coast Starlight

Passenger rail in the Western US is much worse than the main East Coast corridors and much, much, much worse than Europe.

I concur with eephus. Passenger rail is the redheaded stepkid of the railroad system in the US, especially in the West. I tried to figure out a way to ride the Zephyr to San Francisco with my kids for our visit... drive to Salt Lake, park at the train station (in an extremely questionable part of town) and get on the train at midnight.... if the train is on time.

Needless to say, we drove!

Pug

Taking the train in the West is strictly for retired folk and students with a lot of open time between academic sessions. If the trip is for the journey, not the destination, and you have an open-ended time block, this may be the mode of transportation for you. Being on the train, seeing the landscape from the rails, and all that entails has to be the primary goal.

For many of us, it is not. We can%26#39;t, or if even if we can, it is not.

Planning is futile, except to plan for the train to be late by several hours, and then whether you can afford to do that.

heh, heh...I used to work at a So. Cal amusement park, back in 1980, that had a train ride, and had a friend that worked there, that was a train buff...and he used to always call it the

Coast StarLATE!!!

lot of oil refined