USA by Rail #1 - Intro

Earlier this year my friend Greg & I spent 3 months travelling around the the United States and Canada. We travelled primarily by train, mostly Amtrak and also by VIA Rail when in Canada The Amtrak system was formed in 1971 and is owned by the US government. Whilst recent years haves seen an increase in passenger numbers, Amtrak use pales in comparison to those choosing airlines or car travel for inter-city journeys. Nevertheless Amtrak serves over 500 destinations across the US, providing vital transport links for many small communities.

Our plan was to fly into New York, head South from there to New Orleans East to California, from there North to Vancouver, Canada and then back East through to New York, navigating the country in a clockwise direction.

We arrived in New York on the 5th February and were spending 6 nights there before moving on. Our first couple of journeys, from New York to Philadelphia and then on to Washington D.C. were to be by coach as the journeys were only short and it was much cheaper. This didn't stop us (or me, a least) checking out some train-related in New York stuff before our first Amtrak journey a couple of weeks later.

We had a look around Penn Station, which is pretty uninspiring, but also popped into Grand Central Terminal. It certainly lives up to it's name, it has to be the most stunning station I have ever seen, this photo shows the remarkable main concourse.


I also headed over to Ellis Island to visit the museum there. Inside there was an exhibit based on railways, remarking on how people reached their final destinations after arriving in New York. I was particularly taken by this map. It isn't that easy to make out from the picture, but the US was once covered by passenger railway lines. In the same way that the Beeching Axe so radically altered the UK rail landscape, the Amtrak system today is a shadow of what railways in the US once were.


There was also a large collection of old timetables from the period. I was to come across similar collections in various places as we travelled around, but this was undoubtedly the largest.


With our first journey a couple of weeks away it was interesting to take in some of the history of the railway were about to travel.