Return of the Train

[kevin_standlee]

I discovered yesterday when eastbound #6 went by without warning that Amtrak has reinstated the California Zephyr between Emeryville and Denver. This morning, Lisa and I were out front of Fernley House to greet the first westbound #5 of the newly-reinstated service.

Watch on YouTube

I think this was the engineer who we spoke to once when his train was halted at Fernley and who also stopped by and talked to Lisa one day on his day off on a day when I was out of town. Besides tooting to us (and I think waving, but it was hard for me to see while holding the camera), he needed to sound the horn freely while coming through Fernley because of a crew working on the tracks west of us.

I don't think there will be a lot of passengers for a while, but it may be necessary for Amtrak to run trains simply to maintain their trackage rights, lest Union Pacific claim that they've abandoned them and start tearing up platforms the way they did on the route of the Pioneer (the UP-era City of Portland) to make it more difficult to reinstate service.

Comments

[garyomaha]

Thanks for sharing the tooting!

[delosharriman]

I kind of want to take a long trip on an empty train. (I've taken some quite long trips on very full ones!) But Amtrak doesn't seem to have lowered their fares, which is certainly what I would have done.