Earlier this year, my sister Tracy proposed she, me and my brother Craig have a vacation somewhere. Craig and I agreed. After some discussion, we settled on Charleston SC for the destination. I didn’t want to drive — four hours when I don’t know where I’m going or what sort of traffic/intersections/merging I might be facing didn’t suit me at all. Flying would be at least $500 and that’s with 30 to 45 minutes to change planes in Charlotte NC. TYG suggested Amtrak, I said hmmm. Sure enough it would only be $160 round trip, leave around 10 AM, get in at 5PM.
Well before I boarded the train last Thursday, Amtrak had extended my stopover when I change trains to five hours, so I was now getting in around 10PM. Still better than flying, particularly with all the chaos lately. I showed up at the Raleigh station —
— where we learned the train would be delayed by a half-hour. Annoying but not a huge disaster; I’d still make my connection and what difference did it make which station I delayed at? The same held true as the delay grew and grew before we finally left a little before 1 PM. However the delays did make me frustrated.
We finally pulled in at Wilson NC, a sleepy little Southern town with a small, old-fashioned station.
According to a sign by the train tracks, Wilson is NC’s “first gigabit city.” Sleepy though it looks, it launched a city owned broadband network to provide residents with Internet access. Which is cool. That part of Wilson, though, was not that exciting to sit in for several hours. The drug store across the street was literally selling nothing but prescription and OTC drugs; the cafe was closed. I’d eaten a large breakfast and brought some snacks but by that point in the day, I wouldn’t have minded a small cafeteria. No such luck.
And then my second train got delayed too. And delayed. And delayed. Until finally we left 90 minutes late, with a corresponding impact on my arrival time. And riding a largely empty train in the pitch-black night is not much fun.
The ride back was smooth so I don’t think Amtrak’s become enshittified — perhaps I just caught them on a bad day? I did make it Charleston, regardless, and had a wonderful time. More photos to come.
Part of the problem is that Amtrak doesn’t own most of the tracks it runs on, which puts it near the bottom of the scheduling priority list, after freight. Other things can also happen…
I’ve done the Salt Lake City to Denver run a few times, traveling to MileHiCon and back. The train normally leaves around 3 AM, which is annoying but takes it through the scenic part of the Rockies in daylight. Once it didn’t leave until 6 AM. I heard later that someone in Nevada had abandoned a pickup truck on a railroad crossing, and they had to wait for a tow truck to haul it away. Another time on the way back, the train got stuck behind a slow freight train and crawled along until finally the train crew reached the legal limit on the number of hours they can be on duty. Then we pulled onto a siding and sat for an hour until a new crew could arrive from Green River. I don’t think Amtrak is becoming enshittified, but there’s a lot of stuff outside of their control.
I did some reading while on the train and it seems Amtrak has to give freight trains priority use of the rails. So lack of control is a factor.
Like I said, the ride home was no problem, though Wilson NC is still a dull place to visit. Good thing I brought lots of reading material on my trip.
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