Robert Pence

Historic town with nice bones. Excellent photo tour.

The first year that I reached 5 weeks' vacation entitlement (20 years) at GE, and insisted on using all of it (not all at once, just two weeks here, a week there, a few days here and there), my boss always tried to get me to change my plans at the last minute. I gave in and changed them a couple of times and then figured out his game and refused to play; from then on, I stuck to my dates. I got written up for it on my evaluation; "Puts personal objectives ahead of team goals." He jerked all of us around in every way he could think of. I'd already had about all I could take, and that put the finishing touches on it. I started a job search, and early the next year I got a good offer. I tried to give my boss plenty of notice, but he kept putting me off when I tried to get a minute with him. So, I scheduled two weeks vacation, and when I left work on the Friday before my planned vacation, I dropped off my resignation on my boss's desk. He had already left the office for the day. I found out later that he had left the following Monday on a business trip and hadn't read my letter until he was on the plane. The best part was that the company had a hiring freeze, and he couldn't hire a replacement.

Rob, who wrote that article and when? Written by Jonathan Kwitney for Harper's in February, 1981. A co-worker who knew of my interest in transit copied it and gave it to me, and all these years I've somehow been able to hang onto it.

I provided the link some time ago to KJP and he posted it in a forum. It's been quite a while, though, and some of the newer forum participants might find it interesting reading: Go here

That looks a lot more like true BRT than some of the other stuff out there. It's running on a dedicated ROW that possibly cost less than rail, vehicles don't cost much more than street-only buses, speeds are fast compared with operating in traffic, and vehicles are interoperable between guideways for fast, longer-distance express and city streets for local connections. Implement dual-mode buses, and they could run from catenary on the guideways and have diesel in street operation. Existing hybrid technology would drop right into that niche. My only gripe with buses for local transit is that in major cities the routes are often underserved and the buses overcrowded and dirty, and there's no effort to eradicate the thugs and hooligans who tag, cut seats, scratch windows, and generally create an unpleasant and intimidating environment for respectable riders.

Looks like a wonderful neighborhood, offering most everything one would need. It'd be possible to avoid the suburban-looking area if you didn't need gas for a car, or didn't experience a sudden craving for greasy carryout. Improved Order of Red Men. A fraternal organization of the nature of Masons and Odd Fellows. Once in a while you'll see a turn-of-the-century (20th) building with a carved stone emblem identifying it as I.O.R.M. They're still around, still active, although like many such groups, their membership is aging.

To get back on topic, another selling point to the public that was mentioned earlier (by KJP, maybe?) is that 3C connects at Cleveland with the rest of Amtrak's national network. On some European trains, through cars are run to various destinations on multiple trains so that passengers don't have to transfer between trains. With enough demand and with compatible equipment, a traveler might book sleeping-car accomodations in Cincinnati for travel to New York. When his train from Cincinnati arrives in Cleveland, nevermind that it's the middle of the night. Unless he's a train nut like me, he won't even wake up when is car is uncoupled and switched into a different train. Passengers crews can make that move with nary a lurch nor bump. As an added convenience, set-out sleepers can be used. It was common practice on many railroads in their hey-day. In Fort Wayne, the Nickel Plate parked a Cleveland sleeper on a siding at the station, connected to station power and heat, and with a car attendant on duty. Passengers could check in any time after 8pm, and then either board or go for dinner or drinks or a movie at any of the many nearby attractions, and then turn in whenever they pleased. When the train arrived from Chicago, the sleeper was coupled in. In Cleveland, the car was set out at the station, and the train continued eastward. Passengers had until 7am to clear out. Roomettes and bedrooms all had washbasins and toilets, and in most major stations one could rent a dressing room to freshen up before the day's business, if necessary. As speeds and frequencies increase, there will be less need for sleeping cars, and trains might be five cars instead of the twelve to fourteen that are common with today's heavy, conventional-speed, once-daily or thrice-weekly long-distance trains. One train might run Cincinnati-Columbus and then diverge through Lima and Fort Wayne and run all the way to Chicago. Another might diverge at Columbus and run to Pittsburgh, and yet another might run all the way to Cleveland and then continue to points east on the Water Level Route. As ridership increases, demand will bring improvements in speed and frequency, and those will encourage more people to ride. The 3C Bus discussions, at least all the comments that I've read, are based on the estimated ridership at startup. The potential for growth of train ridership on 3C, I think, far outstrips anything that might be expected for bus ridership, and possibly could overwhelm a bus service's ability to accomodate it.

You might be surprised. I have a vivid memory of a ride on Trailways between Milwaukee and O'Hare in the early '90s. I was in the right front seat where I could see the driver and dashboard. Once he got to the Interstate, he pretty much turned 'er loose. I watched the speedometer needle hang right on 90mph almost all the way, and most of the trip was in the left lane. The only times he took his foot out of it was when he came up behind slower car traffic that he couldn't pass, and then he'd ride their bumper and blast the horn. I think it was a case of road rage that day, but the bus handled the speed just fine; very steady ride. The intercity buses used to be built with big slab of concrete between the frame rails for stability. I don't know if they still build them that way, but I wouldn't be surprised. The Eagles that Trailways used to build in Texas in the 70s - 80s were a German design created for autobahn service, and the drivers often didn't go for the top gear until 70mph. When I was in my early twenties, our neighbor was a state trooper. We lived just off Indiana 1, part of the route that Trailways used for multiple daily runs Detroit-Memphis. Neighbors all complained about how fast the drivers went in those big, tall GM coaches with the fluted stainelss-steel sides and tiny windows up high. The troopers said they didn't bother them so long as they kept it to 80 or below (on a well-maintained two-lane, asphalt-paved highway). One of the drivers I rode with said they averaged 9mpg with 37 passengers. Amazing machines. I know. Off topic. Sorry. :|

A day in my hometown:

I don't know anything about orchids, but that butterfly sure knows how to color-coordinate. What a sense of style!

I can't trade clothes with my brother any more; he outweighs me by at least 80 pounds, and he's about the same height. When we were kids, he was skinnier than I was, and that's skinny!

Beautiful shot, Calvin. The starkness and the transition of color temperatures, from sky to ice, makes it an unusual scene.

HaHa! David just said he wants to get into Jeff's pants! :-D

Sorry. I picked a switch and took us down a siding. One last wrap-up comment on Auto Train. You're right. I was talking about ancient history (I watched dirt being invented). The P30CH locomotives entered service around 1974, had already proved their unsuitability and mostly had been relegated to heavy trains that required a lot of horsepower by 1980, and the last ones were scrapped in 1992. Nobody even kept a gutted carbody for museum display. I haven't read anything negative about the P42DC. GE got their act together finally, and it's a sophisticated design with substantial improvements in performance and efficiency over its predecessors. I love the rumble of the 4-stroke diesel.

The horsepower requirements of Amtrak's long, heavy long-distance trains have been a logistical problem from the outset. The SDP40F, a six-axle EMD with a steam generator for train heat, was supposed to be an interim solution, but after a couple of derailments at speed and reported roadbed damage because of weight and bad tracking, the host railroads started banning them. The P30CH, GE's counterpart with head-end power, was plagued with mechanical reliability problems. Crews despised them, and their last Amtrak bastion was the Auto Train. A bunch were leased to SP/CalTrain to pull bi-level commuter trains out of San Francisco. The last one I saw was years ago, sitting fire-gutted at Amtrak's Beech Grove shops. The E60, 6,000 horsepower electric was intended to haul the long-distance trains over the electrified Northeast Corridor portion of their runs. Again, derailment problems including one at 104mph that tore up track and ripped down catenary, led to their being sold to Conrail and re-geared for use as freight haulers. The European-designed AEM-7s took over successfully, but now are nearing the end of their service lives.

The delays for switching and loading/unloading vehicles on a short-to-medium-distance train make the idea of car carriers unfeasible, and then there's the added cost of rolling stock and the staging facility and staffing. Auto Train requires check-in not less than 1 hour before departure (no exceptions) for standard automobiles, and not less than 2 hours for motorcycles and other vehicles. They allow no exceptions. So, add an hour each at departure and arrival waiting for your car to be loaded/unloaded, plus a minimum of 20-30 minutes switching time if the crew is really proficient and committed, considering actual origin-to-destination travel time? Won't happen. That's what local transit, taxis, and rental cars are for. You think that'll be a GOOD thing? :lol: Now if they had Graeters in the dining car, THEN we're talking. I've had Graeter's; it's among the nicest things I've ever done for my taste buds. I never tried Skyline, though. I was afraid I might experience an interaction between it and the Graeter's. Edit: While we're talking about the cafe car, don't forget the goetta. And there should be a good selection of Ohio beers.

Despite giving lip service to passenger rail because he now sees political expediency in doing so, Governor Daniels still is committed to roads. He continues to promote the southwest extension of I-69 as a boon to job development in Southern Indiana, but I think he really sees it as a way to leverage federal dollars with state dollars to pander to voters who resent being stuck behind slower traffic on curvy, hilly two-lane roads en route to Wal-Mart in the next town 25 miles away. I don't believe Daniels' personal goal is to promote the long-term best interests of Indiana's people; I believe his long-term strategy is to grow his political capital in order to get to Washington, D.C., possibly first as a politician and later as a lobbyist or consultant. I don't think the long-term implications of competition between Indianapolis and Ohio cities are even on his radar. Amtrak operates non-stop Auto Train service between Lorton VA (Washington, D.C.) and Sanford FL (Orlando). They've had that service for many years.

A major US-headquartered corporation that I worked for in the seventies had client relationships with some offshore companies whose boards of directors were made up primarily of the corporation's employees. They used those relationships in various ways to skirt domestic tax laws.

I think we should welcome their participation, irregardless!

The cost analysis would be an interesting exercise for which I don't have time. I think you'd lay out $300K - $350k each, minimum, for good used Prevost or MCI coaches five years old or newer, with restrooms and 55 seats, if you could find enough of them. I don't know what the price would be for new ones, but I'm guessing close to a half a million each. The demand probably wouldn't be spread evenly over 24 hours, so it would require considerably more than 1 departure per hour during high-travel times of day. Add in turnaround time to dump toilets and clean buses, and that would take a lot of buses and a bunch of people to do the work, plus a large, capable service facility somewhere in the system. I don't know of there are any statutory hours-of-service rules for drivers, but you'd have to schedule your drivers so they'd be back in their home depot for downtime, in order to avoid paying per diem for meals and lodging. Motorcoach travel time might be competitive with 3C startup travel time, but as 3C evolves I think train trip times will become shorter than any that can be attained legally and safely with rubber tires on pavement. Buses do offer flexibility to adjust service levels over different route segments according to fluctuations in demand between weekdays and weekends, but for the longer rides they can't begin to match the comfort of train travel. Compared with trains buses are claustrophobia-inducing, and if you end up with a seatmate who smells bad or is obnoxious, it's not as easy to get up and go somewhere else. If both types of transport were to provide stations in equally-convenient locations, I think rail would hands-down win the competition for ridership. Rider preference for rail over bus has been proven in many commuter and local-transit systems, and probably would be even stronger with longer-distance travel.

That needs some park benches and a cart vendor selling hot dogs and soft drinks. :-D

In some places Amtrak provides dedicated Thruway Bus Service to connect major-city stations with outlying destinations. I've used it, and it works well. Typically it's an across-the-platform or right-outside-the-front-door transfer with nice, clean, comfortable buses. It's not like getting packed onto a Greyhound with smelly drunks and squalling babies. A significant market for 3C trains may be people who now fly between destinations in the 3C Corridor for private or public business purposes, or who used to fly but switched to driving after the hassles of air travel became too inconvenient. As someone pointed out earlier, they're already accustomed to driving to airports that aren't near the city core or residential neighborhoods.

Intermittently sluggish this morning. After I clicked on the "Forum Issues" topic, it took 20 seconds to open. There have been other instances, too; that's the only one I timed.

Dang! And all these years, I've been looking for serious long-term commitment. I should have just said, "Screw it" and moved to Cinci. :-o Oh! Oh! Now we know why you're so hot to relocate there! :-D

Welcome, jeffinmichigan! I live in Fort Wayne, and I'm one of the people who would very much like to have passenger trains again. I think the proposed MAW routing into Fort Wayne from the east makes the most sense, too. My comments about it upthread were not to disparage the route, but only to point out that the ROW exists mainly as real-estate at this point, and will need massive work to bring it up to passenger-train standards. Some expensive, time-consuming environmental assessment work will precede the bulldozers. As you mentioned, the former PRR between Lima and Fort Wayne is projected to be part of a future Columbus-Lima-Fort Wayne-Chicago link. I think the South Bend-Elkhart area needs to keep some Amtrak service over the Water-Level Route, too. Admittedly, they're connected with Chicago via the South Shore, but they're in a pretty big metro, and they need to retain rail connections eastward, too. There's been some early speculation about extending the South Shore eastward to Elkhart, but in my opinion they'd have to improve speeds and comfort quite a lot for that to be viable. Not saying it can't happen; I just don't think it stands a chance in the present economy, especially on Mitch Daniels' watch. I think that even though the effort to get South Shore commuter service to Valpo didn't get funded by the state the last time around, it, too, eventually will happen.