United Rail Passenger Alliance

Volume 2, Number 4

Founded over 35 years ago in 1976 by the late Austin Coates, URPA is a nationally known policy institute which focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Virginia, Texas, New York, and other locations. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents and a compendium of This Week at Amtrak, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org.

URPA is not a membership organization.

Here in warm, sunny Jacksonville, Florida this past weekend we had two coinciding events in the railroad world.

Jacksonville is the headquarters city for CSX Transportation, short line mega-operator RailAmerica, and the Florida East Coast Railway. We’re a railroad town, with thousands of local denizens contributing to the Railroad Retirement Board instead of Social Security. We’ve got everyone from corporate presidents to conductors and engineers and diesel mechanics. We even have an Amtrak station which entrains and detrains 75,000 passengers a year. We used to be Amtrak’s Southern Division headquarters before it was recently moved to Miami.

So, it was no surprise both events of the weekend were well attended.

Amtrak’s 40th Anniversary Exhibit Train rolled into town for the weekend and set up shop at the Amtrak station, making good use of the former mail and express facility for booths and boarding the train.

Those of us who have been around for a while were able to see the highlights from Amtrak of the past four decades in a succinct, pleasantly displayed environment of four very spiffed up and nicely dressed up baggage cars with a little bit of everything, including a store in a converted lounge car.

What is surprising is the huge opportunity Amtrak missed by not having a coach, Viewliner sleeper, dining car, and lounge car as part of the display train so visitors could walk through and see what current equipment looks like and could test the seats. All of the seats on display in the Exhibit Train had signs requesting visitors not sit on them. Certainly, in Amtrak’s dwindling roster of over 1,400 pieces of active rolling stock it could have found one example of each type of equipment for a very inexpensive, yet every effective marketing effort.

Consist open houses are always popular with the traveling-and-hope-to-be-traveling public so they can see what it’s like to be on a “real” train. While Amtrak did a great job with the Exhibit Train, it really missed an opportunity to hang four other cars onto the consist to be able to show off its current wares.

The second event was the Southeast Railroadiana Collectors Railroadiana and Model Train Show held at the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center in downtown Jacksonville. The convention center is the former Jacksonville Terminal, built in 1919 and used until the early days of Amtrak when a new, smaller prototype station was built in 1972.

The convention center is named for Prime F. Osborn III, the founding chairman of the board of CSX Corporation and a longtime Atlantic Coast Line/Seaboard Coast Line/Louisville & Nashville attorney and senior executive. Mr. Osborn, a genial southern gentleman with a great love of college football, made sure the mothballed Jacksonville Terminal wasn’t torn down by short-sighted real estate people, and made arrangements for the entire complex to eventually be turned into Jacksonville’s current convention center, while completely preserving the terminal’s headhouse.

Current long term plans calls for the convention center to be split into dual uses, with the original headhouse being returned to use as Jacksonville’s passenger train station serving the area which used to be run-through station tracks of the Florida East Coast, and the present convention and meeting space which sits on the sprawling area which was originally stub-end terminal tracks, the area the Unites States Post Office used for mail cars, and the former REA Express facilities will remain in use as meeting space.

The railroadiana and model train show had good crowds (At $7.00 per person entrance fees and free parking, it was an inexpensive afternoon’s entertainment.) and lots of things for sale. The show certainly proved the old saying of “what is one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.” Lots and lots of old railroad bits and pieces were for sale, and collectors were buying just about everything.

One notable author present was also a good conversationalist and he posed the important question, “Look at all of the gray hair here. Where is the next generation which is going to embrace trains and passenger trains, and keep not only the railroad industry alive, but the love of trains?”

What a question. Whew! Looking around the show, there was much more gray hair (including this writer’s) than anything else. Yes, small children were there, and at the Amtrak Exhibit Train, too, but more of the children seemed to be with grandparents than parents.

William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona, former writer and editor of This Week at Amtrak and occasional contributor to this space is a man in his mid-forties, not yet with the gray hair of the rest of us. But, he’s also a gentleman who never knew what it was like to ride a long distance passenger train in the United States prior to Amtrak. The Brothers Carleton, David and Daniel, current writers and editors of This Week at Amtrak, are similarly aged as Mr. Lindley, and don’t have much gray hair, and are the scions of a notable railroad book publishing family. Their personal knowledge of railroad history is astounding – and usually correct when recalling myriad details – but, because of their ages, were very young when Amtrak was created, so they, too, don’t have a “on the scene what it was like memory” of long distance passenger railroading. Fortunately, they were well-schooled in the background, and have as deep of an understanding of passenger rail as anyone, with or without gray hair.

But, Mr. Lindley and the Brothers Carleton aside, what about the next generation? The next generation doesn’t know about the joys of a dome car on Northern Pacific’s Vista Dome North Coast Limited through the Cascade Mountains, the Turquoise Room on the Santa Fe’s Super Chief, a dome diner on Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles, the Pullman Sun Lounge on Seaboard Air Line’s Silver Meteor, or the fashion show on Atlantic Coast Line’s Florida Special. They certainly don’t know that a real Pullman Company mattress in a pre-Amtrak sleeping car was 10 times more comfortable than those thin pieces of foam Amtrak uses today in sleepers, claiming they’re real mattresses. They don’t know what real white linen service was in a dining car, with meals served with real silver tea and coffee pots on real china dishware. Especially, they don’t know the consistently high level of service from fully trained, fully accountable Pullman Porters who were the best in the world.

All the current generation has is Amtrak for comparison in the country. One has to travel to Canada to ride VIA Rail Canada to still experience much of the service of the dearly departed Pullman Company to understand real sleeping car, or dome car service, or non-prepacked food service in a dining car.

This is going to be the challenge of the current generation of passenger railroad entrepreneurs. Fortunately, for many future passenger train riders, they are going to have a blank canvas to paint on.

Amtrak currently represents just a very tiny fraction of our nation’s transportation output. The federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in the 2011 Pocket Guide to Transportation, cited the latest figures available for the various modes of transportation in the country:

As you can see, Amtrak generates one third of the passenger miles per year that motorcycle riders do, even though Amtrak passengers aren’t required to wear helmets and the wind and rain and snow and sleet don’t bother them.

What will the current generation of passenger railroad entrepreneurs do to create better ridership and better load factors?

They will do a better job of maintaining equipment, both locomotives and passenger cars. They will have staffed stations with knowledgeable and friendly employees. They will have enough daily frequencies that passengers will have choices when to depart and arrive. They will have amenities and real classes of service, more than calling a service “business class” and handing out a free cup of coffee and a free newspaper. And, they will have real, undisputed advertising and marketing campaigns, and won’t remain America’s best kept secret as Amtrak has done for four decades and counting.

The current generation of passenger railroad entrepreneurs will be profit-motivated, and understand private on-going concerns always outshine government run businesses which have no profit or accountability component. The entrepreneurs will be partners with unions, with a common goal to increase employment because there will be increased routes and frequencies and services, all requiring the human touch as opposed to the sterile “passengers are on their own” attitude found today. Yes, there may be an option for an automated ticket vending contraption in the station as can be found in many locations today, but there will always be the option of a real, live station agent ready to dispense advice, answer questions, and greet passengers in a proper, pleasant manner.

Part of the responsibility – yes, let’s repeat that word, responsibility – of the railroad entrepreneurs will be to continue the education efforts which were started by the pre-Amtrak private passenger train operators to teach upcoming generations about trains. Passenger trains have a rich, fun, and exciting history to be told and learned by eager young minds. While the history of propeller and jet aviation is equally fascinating, there isn’t the richness of fabric – of nation building – that accompanies railroad history. Any marketing/public affairs budget which doesn’t include teaching history in some sort for building for the future will be sorely amiss. Never forget the lessons learned from the goliath McDonald’s fast food empire. Grab the kids when they are young and impressionable, and you will have them for life. It’s tough to find anyone under the age of 50 who doesn’t know the flavor of a McDonald’s french fry.

Back to the Jacksonville railroadiana and model train show and the inquiring book author, we have to get through another few years and allow the passenger railroad entrepreneurs to get their projects up and running, and we will see a new generation of Americans interested again in passenger trains.

If you’re hungry for a taste of what the railroad entrepreneurs have in store for us, visit The Pullman Sleeping Car Company [link updated 22 February 2012] and make sure, without fail, you see “the vision” page. Much more on this later.

Gil Carmichael, former FRA Administrator during the Bush I years, and former Chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council, as well as the Founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver has started a new series of reports, entitled the Gil Carmichael Report, Investing in Interstate 2.0. The reports are free, informative, and a must read for anyone serious about the future of railroads in the United States. Contact the report distributor at geoff@jdmandassociates.com for your very own copy.

J. Craig Thorpe, noted Amtrak and railroad illustrator is available for all railroads, railroad-related companies, and organizations for his dramatic illustrations on a custom basis. Mr. Thorpe’s impressive gallery of work and contacts for engagement may be viewed on his web site, which is listed below.