A great advertisement for the airline industry

I have a fear of flying. I hate it. I do it when it is necessary, but when I have a reasonable alternative I use it. Amtrak has been that reasonable alternative. For my many trips to DC and the occasional trip to Boston I like to use Amtrak because it is on the ground and less scary than 30,000 feet above ground. However, after yesterday’s return trip from DC Amtrak may have just lost its place as a reasonable mode of transportation.

The 6:20 p.m. train (#158) from Washington D.C. is supposed to depart at 6:20. It did not – it left at about 6:40.

On a side note – in NYC the Amtrak line is a free-for-all because no one knows what track the train will be on until the last minute. So when people cut and maneuver it is somewhat understandable. However, in DC people are very organized and get in a single file line 30 minutes ahead of time. But when the train is ready to board there are always 30-40 people, let’s call them “pieces of sh-t,” who feel like the people in line are stupid and decide to slide to the front. I think those people should have to miss the train.

Anyway, just before train #158 reached the thriving metropolis of Aberdeen, Maryland we felt the train start to hit the brakes. That was because the train had hit a deer and had sustained heavy damage to the locomotive. Apparently this was a twelve foot deer weighing approximately 4,000 pounds. My girlfriend and I kept wondering how big could this deer could have been to fu-k up a train? As the trip wore on one thing we did not wonder about is why Amtrak is bankrupt.

After an hour delay (during which I was killing with my train delay material to random passengers) they fixed our train so we could crawl to Aberdeen, Maryland where we switched onto the already half full 7:20 train from D.C. We were fortunate enough to get seats during the forty-five minute boarding process, which felt like a prisoner exchange in the Middle East. There must have been at least 50 people without seats.

But then came a little city known as Secaucus, New Jersey. As I learned by listening to other people’s conversations, every Amtrak train is required to have an engineer on board, probably because their trains are pieces of sh-t. Well, apparently our engineer was fed up with how long the trip was taking (whose fault is that ????!!!) so he stopped the train in Secaucus (not a recognized Amtrak stop) and left the train. Because of his actions (LB) we had to wait an additional 25 minutes for a new engineer to take us the remaining 8 minutes into Penn Station.

This morning I spoke with my girlfriend who informed me that I would be getting a credit with Amtrak instead of the refund I demanded. Great! I just hope that the train is deer proof next time.