Dear Jeff
I can't quite agree with your conclusion. Having ridden early Amtrak (including the Lake Shore), when schedules seemed closer to reality, and even a few pre-Amtrak passenger trains (the NYC a couple of times in college, once on the C&O in Virginia, the Southern Crescent as the last non-Amtrak holdout), I do have some standard of comparison. I take the train as an alternative to flying (rarely rather than driving, as driving offers the convenience of door-to-door, wheels at the away location, and unlimited baggage with as careful handling as one could wish); unless one is flying Southwest or something comparable, the train is usually still cheaper, and sometimes it is less of a problem to get TO the point of departure and FROM the point of arrival. If I want leisurely travel, there are excursion railroads.
Jace Kahn
Mostly Fairbanks

While this can be true, it nonetheless is indicative of a "double
standard" in peoples view of on-time performance. If you were
driving from New York to Chicago and estimated it would take you 13
hours (or consulted AAA who would tell it takes such-and-such number
of hours) and when you actually finished the trip it took 14 hours,
you would not be bitching about how f***ed up everything is that you
couldn't make it in 13 hours. The whole point of traveling by long
distance train is to relax and get your nose off your watch. So the
train gets there at 10 instead of 9 -- so what.
Jeff English

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