A total of 183 passengers were stranded for more than 36 hours after their train got stuck in a remote and snowy part of Oregon and food supplies ran out.
The Amtrak train set out from Seattle for Los Angeles on Sunday night but got blocked by fallen trees.
Bad weather also cut power to the nearest town, Oakridge, so the passengers were forced to stay on the train for their own safety.
So much so that they should spend trillions to build a truly national network for high speed trains…..
At TGV speeds it would take a train about 14 hours to travel from Los Angeles to New York. That’s without any stops at all, flat out all the way. So let’s call it 16 or 17 hours for the journey.
Anyone demanding ‘high-speed’ rail in place of aircraft should consider if they would spend 17 hours sat on that train.
Of course, they won’t, but they still support it because they are idiots.
On the plus side – everybody who rides Amtrak outside the NE Corridor are retirees who had nowhere to be anyway
So, yeah – they would be willing to stay on the train for 17 hours. After all, *someone else* will be footing the bill for the trip anyway.
Eco-freak shite is the global elites plan to impoverish ordinary folk. That is why it is amongst the first turd laid on the kids forced into scum-state indoctrination centres.
The bug-eyed bitch AOC introduced the crazy extreme Green New Deal cockrot on the half a loaf principle.
As with Nixon and Watergate the idiots behind it orig proposed a super-crazy plan to Tricky Dick calling for a raft of burglaries and several murders. Nixon was horrified so they “compromised” on the Watergate burglary. Which he would not have agreed had they just tried to baldly put it on him from a standing start.
Bug eyed bitch proposes obvious crazy shite so everyone is relieved at seemingly just low level eco-crazy–at first.
Shouldn’t She Guevara have been on that train? To share the future she proposes?
She should have been under it.
BTW–Does anybody know what the House of Scum are supposed to be voting on today? March 12+ betrayal I have the details of but I can’t find anywhere listing what treason they are up to today.
I understand the septics are generally extreme fatties who each need a food fix of at least two Happy Meals every couple of hours.
So was there any cannibalism on the train?
Replace air travel with high-speed rail?
Laying the track over the Atlantic is going to be a real bitch!
Or perhaps – a tunnel?
Harry Harrison parodied this, I think!
On the plus side – everybody who rides Amtrak outside the NE Corridor are retirees who had nowhere to be anyway
And Amish (though probably not going Seattle-LA). Outside the NE Corridor 4-8 hours late is almost normal for Amtrak. The freight companies (BNSF and UP) own the rails, so miss your slot and you’re stuck in endless sidings waiting for a procession of mile-long freights to come past (many lines are single track).
I hear The Canadian was so late a few weeks ago that the next one (which set off 3 days later) caught it up.
@Tim the Coder
A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! Cracking read (like most Harrison books). I also like the somewhat conceptually similar The Technicolor Time Machine.
On a more serious note:
Has anyone seen any numbers on the fuel efficiency of high speed trains wrt air travel?
It seems to me that ramming through ground level air of 15 psi at 200 mph is probably more inefficient than 600 mph through the upper stratosphere at 3psi. But just guessin’.
If so, why would anyone replace an efficient form of travel with a more fuel-consuming, slower form, with massive fixed costs to recoup as well?
Stupidity, or a deeper evil?
Or an inability to distinguish energy sources from transport fuels. I need to be selling shares in electricty mines!
Are US trains owned by British Rail, then?
“stranded for more than 36 hours after their train got stuck in a remote and snowy part of Oregon and food supplies ran out.”
Do they not teach journalists to write? I really don’t think the food ran out before they got stranded for 36 hours. Pretty sure the causality is the other way round.
The effective drag area of an aircraft is much greater than a train because of the airflow needed to provide lift. Also drag force is proportional to v^2 so that militates against aircraft. This is all hand-waving though as I can’t be bothered to look up some typical numbers & do the sums.
Also trains run on lovely clean electricity rather than that nasty kerosene…
“Also trains run on lovely clean electricity rather than that nasty kerosene…”
And there is no need for expensive exclusive support infrastructure…..
America used to have lots of long distance trains… then aeroplanes.
Trains were invented to carry freight, not people.
““Also trains run on lovely clean electricity rather than that nasty kerosene…””
From the numerous TV shows I’ve seen lately this doesn’t apply to long distance trains in the US & Canada. I suspect the cost of installing, and maintaining overhead lines over distances of thousands of miles is prohibitive. And one advantage of being powered by “nasty kerosene” is that those “stranded” passengers would still be sitting in heated and lit carriages, whilst waiting for the track to be cleared….
183 passengers stranded. I scanned several articles, that’s what they all said.
I guess Amtrak employees were not affected.
Did Amtrak not want the press to report because there was a crew of 200?
No journalist* asked? Surely the press cares more about the quasi government employees than the POS Trump voting passengers.
*World’s finest people
@Richard T “Do they not teach journalists to write?”
Good heavens, no. They are increasingly taught to emote in an approved (woke) manner.
It should be fairly observed that if air travel is effectively banned there will still be air travel for very important people (shall we call them politicians and bureaucrats) but everyone else will be shunted on to trains.
Trains are largely used (and quite effectively so) for freight in the US.
If you are stupid enough to go to LA you deserve whatever you get. The place was once described as ‘Detroit with palm trees’, which is just about perfect.
Anyway, none of this shit is going to happen. It’s been a decade and California couldn’t build a train that ran from one shithole (LA) to another (SF). Less than 400 miles.
Nobody in flyover territory gives a fuck about building passenger rail routes, much less paying for them. Period.
I think it was Michael Jennings who used to write about trains versus planes. There is a certain configuration of city size and distance between them which makes train travel better, around about 3-4 hours between major cities I think, otherwise planes are better. I use the TGV fairly regularly and while expensive and prone to strikes, it really is brilliant when it’s going along at full pelt. Paris-Marseille (750km) in just over 3 hours is seriously impressive. And I noticed the other day that some of the TGV trains are made by Bombardier.
Tim Newman,
Yeah. France is geographically suited to high speed rail. Bordeaux and Marseille are further than Newcastle is from London. Lyon is further than Manchester is from London.
It’s why they went from slow services to TGV and we went with the 125s. The extra cost isn’t worth it when you’re doing London to Bristol. Plus people working from home is already killing off commuting and London to Birmingham won’t need more capacity.
“Also drag force is proportional to v^2 so that militates against aircraft.”
Actually, it’s worse than that, as the *power* required to overcome air resistance is proportional to v^3.
@Tim the Coder
Research I’ve seen is that rail uses more power than air (for less than half the speed). But the power is electricity, which can be as green as you can afford to make it. We aren’t going to see electric airliners … well, ever.
I hear The Canadian was so late a few weeks ago that the next one (which set off 3 days later) caught it up
Sounds like a nationalised railway, except that under true socialism that second driver would be liquidated.
It should be fairly observed that if air travel is effectively banned there will still be air travel for very important people (shall we call them politicians and bureaucrats) but everyone else will be shunted on to trains.
Trains are largely used (and quite effectively so) for freight in the US.
Yes, Elite and Freight – the Progressive and Globalist destination.
From my attempts to ride a bike I can attest that doubling of speed requires the square of the effort. Planes will have less air resistance but will have the penalty of overcoming gravity, which trains will suffer less from (though not when getting across the Rockies). Add in the weight from the hundreds of unionised staff the trains will carry. Air travel uses evil fossil fuel, while the trains will use electricity derived from non-evil fossil fuel.
One for the Scientists (vetted and licensed).
Newcastle Rugby travel by air to Bristol when playing away against Bristol/Bath/Gloucester. That’s understandable as the train journey takes 5 hours and you have to pass through Burton. But the fact that Arsenal travelled by air to Norwich when they were in the same division, and that a scheduled flight from Teesside to Hull exists at all tells you a lot about how air travel is more convenient. And what’s the point of an economy if you can’t pay for convenience.
Bring on that CO2 tax, I say, so we can do so without being told we’re bad people. And because the logic for it is impeccable.
There’s a website does sciency stuff, which I’m damned if I can remember the name of. Has a comparison of transport method’s energy efficiency with the maths included. Basically a big jet airliner cruising at the speed & altitude a big jet airliner does beats everything past about 300 miles IIRC.
North London to Norwich by air is ridiculous. It must be under 100 miles.
Europe does have an advantage for passenger rail service: the trains go through town.
My son used to take a train from Charlotte to Raleigh when he was at NC State. The train stopped a block from his dorm. Not that unusual in eastern U.S.
Out west, Union Station in every city was perfect for passenger service.
Jet planes require more real estate. And came later. Hence airports are not at city centers, and secondary transport is required.
Bongo–piss on carbon tax and the noose for everybody who advocates it. Including Tim if he won’t give up his nonsense.
@Gamecock “Did Amtrak not want the press to report because there was a crew of 200?”
Sorry, am I being dense here, are these trains massively overstaffed? In the U.K. a passenger train would have about four staff. I’ve never been on Amtrak, don’t know anything about it.
When I was based at Lossie, I used to prefer taking the Caledonian Sleeper to London when traveling down for a weekend to flying from Inverness or Aberdeen, mainly because of the damned inconvenience of getting to the airhead and the inevitable sitting around for ages after the faff the security theatre…
About 130 miles from Cricklewood, Rob.
About 130 miles from Cricklewood, Rob.
But it still takes hours on minor roads. Norwich – the city at the end of an 80-mile cul-de-sac. Do the flights still include the announcement: “Welcome to Norwich, where the local time is 1975”?
” Do the flights still include the announcement: “Welcome to Norwich, where the local time is 1975”?”
Er, excuse me – it’s Norwich INTERNATIONAL airport these days, if you please…
And the “80-mile cul-de-sac” has been extended:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_Northern_Distributor_Road
Known to the locals as “The Road To Nowhere”
1965 then….
“Sorry, am I being dense here, are these trains massively overstaffed?”
I don’t know; they didn’t tell us. I was speculating as to why they didn’t mention the crew. It was as if the crew wasn’t stranded, just the passengers.
When there is an incident with a plane, they always mention the pilot and crew.
No Tim – ’65 = summer of love; ’75 = miners’ strike.
I think the Lefty love in with trains is quite instructive. Trains go on fixed rails, and thats it. Someone upon high decides where the rails are to go, then everyone has to put up with that, regardless. Whereas buses and cars can drive pretty much anywhere without any direction from on high whatsoever. Pretty much encapsulates the different between socialism and capitalism really.