For the last 6 years I have been making a bi-yearly trek down to Georgia to visit an old college friend who had wound up getting stuck down there. Ever since the first trip I have taken a somewhat circuitous route using Train 79, the Carolinian, to first travel to Greensboro, NC then transferring to Train 19 the Crescent. Well on the verge of ( Read more... )

With the partial opening of Phase III of the New York Central High Line it was time to plan another trip to New York City to photograph it. Usually during the holiday season I am in an around the city for Nostalgia Train purposes, but this year I was interested in a bit better transit service and to hook up with some fellow Subchatters who prefer ( Read more... )

Early last December I was presented with an oppurtunity to take a supplimentary trip to Chicago and since it involved a rare (for me) weekday hotel stay I finally had a chance to get some video of a METRA Aurora Line express run. Like the LIRR and NJT, METRA now runs a zoned express service on its popular Aurora Line. The outermost zone starts ( Read more... )

One might expect that the photos from my annual Labour Day trip to New Englande, but this time I took a side trip to visit fellow Subchatter Lexcieeee who happens to live in Ossining which gave me an opportunity to take some photos and videos of the Metro North Hudson Line. The first photo stop was at Oscawana Island, which is that place in ( Read more... )

So if you recall my last few posts I wasn't just riding the Coast Starlight for my health. Unlike many of my cross country trips I actually had a genuine reason to head out to the west coast in the form of a computer security conference in San Diego. Now I've been to San Diego before, for about 24 hours in 2013 and then a longer stay in 2009. ( Read more... )

The majority of the Coast Starlight run actually takes place in daylight hours, with the longest stretch being from the Bay Area down to the LA Basin via the Southern Pacific's Coast route. In our last segment we left off at Gilroy, about 75 miles below Oakland an at the southern limit of the Bay Area commuting area. In this segment I will cover ( Read more... )

California's Capitol Corridor extends from Oakland to Sacramento, however there is also a southern section running down to San Jose. I had previously covered the main portion of the Capitol Corridor both in 2012 and 2014, but my Coast Starlight trip provided me with the opportunity to cover the less visible southern portion. Also included in this ( Read more... )

So some weeks before my Coast Starlight trip kicked off we got one of those Amtrak e-mails explaining how there would be a surprise service modification in the form of a Bustitution between Portland and Eugene due to a UP maintenance blitz on the Brooklyn Sub. Now I have experienced this type of Bus Bridge before and it actually didn't cost much ( Read more... )

2014 was a special year because I took not one, but two big Amtrak trips, the second of which was a unique opportunity to ride the Coast Starlight on a trip from Seattle to San Diego. Unfortunately there was a small problem with Union Pacific track work that would result in a bustitution between Portland and Eugene, Oregon, however this turned out ( Read more... )

Last August I was planning to attend a computer security conference in San Diego. I had already completed that year's coast-to-coast Amtrak trip and was basically looking forward to some fun in the sun eating fish tacos, but then a travel buddy suggested that we could use this as an opportunity to take the Coast Starlight. Checking the airfare I ( Read more... )