one thing about me is I love brutalism. I love concrete. I love not living in a house with cardboard walls and I love looking at a building and thinking this imposing boy would survive a nuclear war

A guide to different types transit of systems

Here is where I keep my png collection

🚅Choo-choo! All aboard the KatsuCon express!🚅 (If you could take the train anywhere, where would you go?) . I told myself that this year, instead of driving or flying to comic cons, I’m gunna take the train! So I drove from Pensacola to Orlando’s Atlantic Coastline Station to take the 98 Silver Meteor all the way to Alexandria, Virginia! That’s 850 miles up the eastern coast of the United States all in about 17 hours. I get it, seems like a lot… but here’s my thoughts: As cosplayers we are constantly complaining we never have enough time crunching before a con to get our last minute details done because you obviously can’t work while driving and there’s never enough room on a plane to do anything; so the train is a perfect solution. It has plenty of room, you don’t have to actively do anything, you can just sit back, relax, craft, and on top of it all, you get an awesome tour of the countryside, all while being able to work in comfort and ease. This trip is my first train of the year and I’m excited to learn more about America’s oldest and most reliable mode of transportation! . . Also I found out about @amtrak instagram residency the day after the application period closed so I figured I’d give it a shot on my own. Who knows? Maybe I can inspire more cosplayers and convention goers who travel all over the U.S. for both work and pleasure to start taking the trains! . . . #amtraktakemethere #silvermeteor #train #trains #trainspotting #trainstation #trainstagram #amtrak #amtraktrain #cosplay #cosplayer #cosplayguy #travel #travelphotography #travelblogger #travelling #travelholic #katsucon2019 #comiccon #comicconvention #anime #animeconvention #katsucon #convention #trysomethingnew #orlando #alexandria #amtrakgram #amtrakvacations #amtraklife (at Amtrak Silver Palmetto Train 98 Northbound) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt1V0Mgn1Q7/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=11bs88mhvr2qx

The Silver Meteor snakes out of the station. Wilmington, DE June 22, 2007

One of my favorite things about exploring new-to-me places is finding cost-effective or free ways to get around aside from walking. Tampa has the TECO Streetcar, a free service that runs between Downtown Tampa and historic Ybor City, and depending on traffic and whatnot can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a half-hour to go between the two destinations. The downtown terminus is located a few blocks south of the City Center complex, so it was super-convenient to access, and it was a nice way to get an overview of the downtown area, the Channelside neighborhood, and Ybor City as well. 

Inside the Silver Meteor’s dining car. Jesup, GA December 08, 2007

The northbound Silver Meteor knocks down the signal at South Jesup just before the quick station stop. April 08, 2005

10-907 by George Hamlin Via Flickr: Dream scene, as Amtrak’s northbound “Silver Meteor” heads across Neabsco Creek in northern Virginia in the pre-dawn light of a moody morning on April 5, 2010.

Tampa food highlights, part three: with the weather looking OK, I took the free streetcar that runs from downtown Tampa to Ybor City to Ybor City, and tried out the food and the daily happy hour at Bernini on 7th Avenue. The beef carpaccio wasn’t my favorite because the truffle oil that they used in the dressing was too strong, but it would prove to be the only thing I didn’t like on the menu that I tried. I also was able to try one of their happy hour martinis–that run $3 from 11:30 AM until 7PM every day–and I knew I would have to take M here at some point during our stay…more on that later.

I tried a few brews at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company too, because when in Rome. They were fine, but not quite as good as the Cigar City Brewing offerings.

We had this notion to try this fancy Italian place in the Channelside neighborhood (also on the streetcar line) but the wait was beyond our patience, so we went to Jotoro and had a solid meal of Mexican food with some decidedly tasty cocktails. 

Tampa - Florida - USA (by Matthew Paulson) 

Tampa Life 🐠 ☀️ . . . #chelaxadventures #travelwithchelax #bookwithchelax #relaxwithchelax #cruisewithchelax #chelax #travel #traveltheworld #explore #adventure #seetheworld #discover #authentictravel #experience #makememories #instatravel #travelagent #travelexpert #thatssotampa #tampalife #floridaaquarium #tampastreetcar #trolley #lovewhereyoulive #channelside (at The Florida Aquarium) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsBjxlzBkNe/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=g9sa4ws3tcd5

Tampa Bay!! You are so special and so is your historic streetcar! I rode it all the way from Downtown to the Ybor City Historic District and fell madly in love. What a charming way to travel. Ybor City is eclectic and there is so much to do. I found a 40 year old vintage shop called La France with Derby hats to die for. I also tried a REAL Cuban coffee which is delicious and watched some cigars being rolled at Tabenero. This is my favorite stop yet! Scroll through as see me living this Tampa Bay life to its fullest! #ad #unlocktampabay (at Ybor City Historic District)

Amtrak train “Silver Meteor” passing through Sanford, Florida, 1987.

Downtown Tampa Trolley (at Amalie Arena)

Where Amtrak service isn’t genuine

Cincinnati. Cleveland. Omaha. Salt Lake City. And to a lesser extent, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and San Antonio. All of these are big cities that are theoretically served by Amtrak, and all except Charlotte have their labels shown in bold on the map, as if they’re important destinations.

Yet there’s an important caveat to this: while trains technically come through, it’s in the middle of the got-dang night.

Let’s break it down:

Charlotte gets daytime service to and from the Northeast Corridor on the Carolinian. But if you’re in Charlotte and you want to head west along the Crescent to Atlanta or New Orleans, the Crescent will leave at 2 AM, and your return trip won’t get you back to Charlotte until 3 AM.

Cincinnati only gets six Cardinal trains coming through every week—three leaving for Chicago at 2 AM and three leaving for the northeast at 3 AM.

Cleveland gets four trains daily—or nightly, I should say. The Capitol Limited leaves for Pittsburgh and Washington at 2 AM, two trains leave for Chicago at 3 AM and 4 AM, and the Lake Shore Limited leaves for Boston and New York at 6 AM. With this many trains running, one would think at least some of them would be at a reasonable hour.

Omaha sees the westbound California Zephyr at 11 PM and the eastbound California Zephyr at 5 AM.

Pittsburgh gets daytime service to and from the Northeast Corridor on the Pennsylvanian. But the Capitol Limited to Chicago? 12 AM. And to Washington? 5 AM.

Salt Lake City sees the westbound California Zephyr at 11 PM and the eastbound California Zephyr at 3 AM.

San Antonio gets daytime service to and from Dallas, St. Louis, and Chicago on the Texas Eagle. The Sunset Limited, however, arrives three times weekly from New Orleans at 12 AM and waits to depart until 3 AM. Headed the other way, the Sunset Limited arrives three times weekly from Los Angeles at 5 AM and waits to depart until 6 AM.

And to make matters worse, all of these times are assuming the train’s not running late, which can’t exactly make things better since passengers will generally need to be awake and ready at the scheduled time no matter what.

So really, Amtrak’s map is lying. Four of the above cities effectively don’t have Amtrak at all, and the map shouldn’t give them much more importance than Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Nashville. And the remaining three cities are shown on the map as interchanges with service in three directions, when in reality the service is only usable on one of the three.

And this needs to be addressed. To do so, let’s talk about one of Amtrak’s least-known yet most interesting routes:

The Palmetto

As Amtrak’s only long-distance train that doesn’t run overnight, the Palmetto follows the route of the Silver Meteor between New York City and Savannah. Since the Silver Meteor passes through North and South Carolina in the middle of the night on its way to and from Florida, the Palmetto is an obviously better option for both North and South Carolinians.

(Note: Amtrak is required to secure state funding for routes shorter than 750 miles, and as such, this length is generally considered the cutoff for “long-distance” services. The Palmetto barely makes the cutoff, and is the only daytime route to do so.)

And the train is a success story: ridership on the Palmetto in fact exceeds that of the Silver Meteor. Granted, a large fraction of that number comes from ridership within the Northeast, as the Palmetto carries local travelers between New York and Washington while the Silver Meteor does not. But the Palmetto only started carrying those local passengers in 2015, and looking at the ridership figures for previous years shows that the Palmetto’s ridership was still more than half of that of the Silver Meteor.

Sure, “more than half” doesn’t sound particularly impressive…until you remember that the Silver Meteor’s main market is travelers between the Northeast and Florida—a huge base of travelers, for whom the train’s overnight schedule is incredibly convenient. Conversely, the Palmetto’s main market doesn’t even have any particularly large cities. It doesn’t even go all the way into Raleigh, and the largest destinations south of there are Fayetteville, Charleston, and Savannah, the largest of which has barely over 200,000 people.

You probably see what I’m getting at here. By making sure trains don’t show up in the middle of the night, Amtrak took a relatively low-potential route and made it work. Adding daytime trains like this could have huge potential for other parts of the network—for example, daytime service could be added between Washington and Atlanta along the route of the Crescent, providing better options for Charlotte. Or perhaps a second daily roundtrip could be added on the Capitol Limited (which actually has a shorter route than the Palmetto), to provide daytime service to Chicago and Cleveland.

And overall, what I’m trying to say is that while it’s definitely good for Amtrak to talk about adding new destinations, it’s important to make sure it can also serve the destinations it already has. People are more willing to ride trains than one might expect—but not if they have to get up in the middle of the night to do so.