At Amtrak's National Train Day yesterday in DC, the crowds were more than I expected, the lines long and the event generally under staffed. But standing in lines, folks seemed happy and upbeat. Most impressive were the 40-60 minute waits to tour through the Dover Harbor, Hickory Creek, an Acela trainset, an Amfleet coach and a MARC bi-level car.

There were few takers when Amtrak staff walked up the line and asked if anyone wanted to skip the Dover Harbor tour and only walk the Acela. Figure 3-5k people walked through the private cars. The Dover staff said they recently put $50k into a new under floor Genset.

Bob

An hour wait to walk through amfleet and a bi-level?

I guess if it was free....

I went to hopefully see and talk to former coworkers. Got there right at 10 am, no huge crowds getting off Metro, not much on the morning newscasts, outside of Al Roker's piece on the Today Show just before 8 am, not even a "crawler" notice about it on the CBS affiliate, WUSA. I was able to be within the first dozen people in one of the lines when it opened at around 10:01. After saying hi to a couple of Washington Chapter friends, I headed for the Acela set and after a minute started running into old friends, who I was able to talk to before the crowds started getting thick. I never did go on the Dover, which I know very well, but I was favorably impressed by the refurbishment of Hickory Creek, which I had seen on the back of the Ringling Bros. train in Ohio in the late '70's, not looking very good then. I wouldn't call it a restoration - the lounge design looks much more modern than the era of the car, but tastefully done, and the exterior paint and Century sign on the rear are really great.

I was disappointed by a couple of things. One was the sparseness of display equipment. I'm guessing that there were PV's in NY that I would have thought could have been on display in DC, like PRR 120. Georgia 300 came through DC on Friday afternoon on the rear of (I think) P090 (I'm not really sure, I was on the law behind Crystal City in Arlington, having been up all night), and I thought it was going to be part of the display. The other thing was that there was no way to look in the cab of either the Acela motor or the MARC streamlined electric motor. I realize that this was a short event (four hours), but it would have been possible to put some steps up to cab level and block access to getting on the motor, but let people look inside the cab. Just a thought if they do it again next year.

I also would have thought that maybe having a Viewliner sleeper, or some more Amfleets on display (there was an Amcoach attached to the Dover for people to leave through, since the Dover only has one vestibule), like a cafe or business class car.

Once the crowds built up, leaving or looking at the display tables for things like NARP, Wilmington and Western RR, CSX, etc. was nearly impossible. It's really hard to have a major event like that in a working passenger station on a busy Saturday, especially with all the other shops and restaurants around. Hopefully Amtrak did get themselves some new fans and customers.

Paul,

You are correct not to call this a restoration. There is one less bedroom on the car than there should be. The owners of the car along with the company that refurbished it decided to create the mini-kitchen you see on the car today in order to make it more attractive for Amtrak charter work. Originally, only drinks and very light snacks were served in a much smaller area.

The lounge is fairly accurate. The design and the furniture are correct for the late 1950's era on the car. It was certainly a futuristic look back then when compared to the lounge on the Dover Harbor which would have still been running when the Hickory Creek was on the NYC.