Amtrack?

What do you all think of Amtrack VS flying?

 

I understand. I just have herd bad thing about Amtrack latley. I listen to the Clark Howard show often and about a week ago a caller discused whet sounded like the Amtrack trip from hall, then this week a caller siad she was on a trip with Amtrack and siad the food was great. Also when the train could not get them to their destination Amtrack took care of the flight reseravations and paid for the airline tickets. So they ended up flying anyway.

Then there is this story:

"Probe begins in Amtrak derailment. Heat eyed as possible cause; 97 hurt, 6 critically, near Washington.

Probe begins in Amtrak derailment

Heat eyed as possible cause; 97 hurt, 6 critically, near Washington
Rescue workers evacuate passengers after an Amtrak train derailed Monday near Washington, D.C.
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

"KENSINGTON, Md., July 30 â?? Investigators began a probe Tuesday into why an Amtrak train jumped off the tracks outside the nationâ??s capital, leaving 97 passengers injured. Data recorders were recovered from the wreckage soon after the crash as early theories looked at whether Mondayâ??s stifling heat had played a part in the derailment

THE CRASH sent bleeding passengers crawling out windows and left a 150-yard stretch of damaged track along the accident site, including twisted rails and ties ripped from the gravel bed. Six of the trainâ??s 13-cars lay on their side.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which sent a team of investigators to the site, told

NBCâ??s Andrea Mitchell they would try to determine whether heat had caused the track to buckle. Temperatures were in the mid-90s at the time of the accident. "This is a heavily used line by both freight and passengers. When the track gets up over 100 degrees, you have things called heat kinks. You have to watch your track very carefully," former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz said. He said railroad inspectors regularly check tracks as much as twice a day during the summer to make sure there are no problems such as buckling. Carol Carmody, vice chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Monday evening at the scene of the accident that two event recorders had been recovered from the train.

The recorders are similar to flight data recorders, or "black boxes," on airplanes. They will provide information such as the speed of the train and what the engineer was doing, such as braking or throttling, Carmody said.

â??LOTS OF SCREAMING AND HOLLERINGâ??
The train, the Capitol Limited, was traveling from Chicago to the nationâ??s capital with 173 passengers and crew members when it went off the tracks at about 1:55 p.m. Monday, authorities said. The train was about 10 miles from its destination.

Six people were trapped in the cars, but all were freed within an hour, Montgomery County Fire Department spokesman Oscar Garcia said. They were reported to be in critical condition. Robert Bailey, of Capitol Heights, Md., said he and his wife crawled through a window after the car they were riding in turned over. "Lots of screaming and hollering. It was pandemonium in there," said Bailey, who was taking the train home after a vacation in Michigan. "It was very frightening when the train was turning over," passenger Amanda Owen told NBCâ??s Mitchell. "A thousand thoughts were going through my mind." A witness told WRC-TV that a freight train came down the tracks just minutes before the passenger train. "I heard a big kaboom. Before that happened, a train came through with coal on it. It was flying â?? a lot of coal was flying everywhere. A couple minutes later the Amtrak train came through, and then all of a sudden, I saw the track collapse, the inside rail of the train collapsed. The train started rolling, and the cars started flipping over," said the witness, identified as Kermitt Tyler.

AMTRAK BUDGET CRISIS

July 29 â?? A violent derailment of an Amtrak train near Washington, D.C. injured at least 90 people. Amazingly, as NBCâ??s Andrea Mitchell reports, there have been no fatalities so far.

The accident comes as Amtrak is trying to emerge from its worst budget crisis in its 31-year history. The private company recently required federal help to close a $200 million budget gap that threatened to close the railroad. Rep. Connie Morella, R-Md., visited the scene and met with passengers at Kensingtonâ??s Town Hall. "It couldnâ??t have come at worse time for Amtrak," she said of the derailment. By Monday evening, rescue workers had searched the train three times and were matching the names of rescued passengers to the manifest, said Bill Dulaney, another Montgomery County Fire Department spokesman. The trainâ??s engineer will be tested for drugs and alcohol use, as is routine. The track is owned, operated and maintained by freight railroad CSX Corp. Company spokesman Dan Murphy said the speed limit on that stretch is 70 mph and early indications are that the train was going 57 to 60 mph. He said the section of track where the derailment happened was last inspected visually at 5 p.m. Sunday. He said the last train that passed through before the wreck was a freight train that went by about 45 minutes earlier and reported nothing unusual.""

 

If you don't like to fly, there is always the buss. Its slow but it's a lot safer than taking the darn train!

http://www.greyhound.com