.

General Electric covered this issue well in its 1952 industrial film "Going Places." The film explains in simple terms the difference between moving cars and moving people.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alMQmQsC6gU

Wesley

I think there's a real opportunity here for places like Scranton if they have easy access to "centers of activity" like NYC. Even more so than before the pandemic.

Many employers are going to hybrid offices: where you come into the office sometimes and sometimes you don't.

These are the EXACT people that a place like Scranton makes sense for if they can hop on a train and be working while they head into the office for that 10am meeting.

You can't do that in a car (at least, not today).

It's the reason why, working for a Baltimore company, we would always take Amtrak to DC meetings instead of drive (even thought driving was cheaper/quicker). That hour you spend on your laptop in an Amfleet is far more productive than the one you spend staring at brake lights.

And this is why this shouldn't happen.

The railroad conquered distance; the automobile conquered distance at individual whim.

Broadband obliterated distance.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/death-commuting

Railroads involve massive fixed costs; if people aren't riding in and out every day with regularity, they are even more problematic economically.

I ran some numbers. They were talking 3.5 hours Scranton-NY for the Amtrak train, which is what Martz is doing with their beeses. That's about the running time DL&W/EL did.

Martz does a big business with 17 weekday trips from Stroudsburg-Delaware Water Gap to NY (PABT) There are 5 trips from Wilkes-Barre and Scranton to NY.

Martz, incidentally, is headquartered in Wilkes-Barre and dates from 1908. They started interstate service in 1922 and are founders of Trailways.

Phil Mulligan

Martz isn't going to pay 10 million a copy for a Siemens Charger or Alstom locomotive, plus whatever Hyundai Rotem is charging for the coaches I hope they redesigned and repaired since the SEPTA debacle of a few years ago.

A bus driver doesn't need years of training to drive (My Uncle was a Martz driver after spending years at RCA), and a bus doesn't need an exclusive right-of-way or PTC apparatus.

The only possible advantage I can see for the train is busses can't do their own plowing and smash through a two foot Pocono Blizzard.

Martz also drove the waning Northern Electric line out of business. The NE was granted permission to convert remaining trolley service to busses and bought, I believe, 26 Macks in preparation. However, the Public Service Commission abruptly changed their mind and instead granted the certificate to operate to Martz.

How about running a bus from Scranton to Delaware Water Gap, right down I-380 and I-80, and then a transfer to train there? The train would make pretty good time going across the Lackawanna Cutoff, probably better than they bus on I-80 across New Jersey.

Probably not going to happen, since the train would only be in PA for a few miles, not enough to be politically feasible.

But "busses are for poor people".

My professional coworkers would literally never think of taking an intercity bus. Amtrak though? Point us to the bar car!

It's one of the ugly little facts of public transportation planning. Rail is seen as "premium" while busses just aren't.

When your clientele are people working in NYC and willing to ride a few hours to get there, you're not talking about catering to the working class.

"My professional coworkers would literally never think of taking an intercity bus. Amtrak though? Point us to the bar car!"

So your "professional coworkers" drink before work?

Well one did, but he wasn't one for long.

But on the way home? The idea of having a beer or glass of wine on the way home is quite attractive.

That reminds me of my experience riding buses--and the Pittsburgh light rail system, before it was rebuilt extensively.

My background as a rail enthusiast comes from steam--magnificent, thundering, beautiful steam (even if it's horribly inefficient and uneconomic.)

Trolleys? They look like a bus. So what?

And buses--ugh! In my hilly home city of Wheeling, W.Va., we had a mixture of older GM TDCs (essentially descendants of the 1940 designed Yellow Coach bus, in production from then until 1957, and a shorter run of shorter versions in the late 1960s), and the 1957-designed "New Looks," or "Fishbowl" buses that were still in production into the 1980s.

I can still hear how they sounded. Those buses, BOTH series, had a single speed transmission with a locking torque converter. The driver would pull away from the curb, and the GMC 6-71 (inline version on the older buses, a V6 in the later ones) would go to maximum RPMs, telling you why they were called "screaming Jimmies." If there wasn't a stop, this would go on until about 30 mph or so, when the torque converter would lock, and give the whole bus, and you, a kick in the pants.

"Rrrr-rrrr-rrrrr-rrrWHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-WHUMP!!-rrr-rrr-rrrrrrrrrrrrr----"

Then there were the hills. If the driver could, he'd get a run for the hill, but he couldn't get all the way up without a torque converter unlock that felt like you were hitting something.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr--rrrrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrr-rrrr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-WHUMP!!-WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE----

I remember being behind the driver and watching the speedometer dropping, dropping, and then, from about 14 or 15 mph, suddenly crash down to 10 mph when the converter unlocked, and it would stay there the rest of the way up the hill.

If he had to make a stop at the bottom, we never got out of that first range, and our speed never went over 10 mph.

Oh, and every bump in the road rattled the windows, the seats, and often you.

So what's so special about a trolley that looks like a bus? That's what I was thinking when someone suggested riding the Pittsburgh system to avoid the traffic and problems of driving in.

Well, I didn't know it, but I was about to ride a PCC!

That trip to Pittsburgh from the shopping center at South Hills was a revelation. Smoother, quieter running, none of the rattles from bumpy streets--and keep in mind, this was before the system was rebuilt, so we were riding on old jointed rail from who knows how far back--and no clunking, kicking torque converter!

Hills? We just went up them, no fuss, no bother, no screaming diesel engine.

After shopping around Pittsburgh, including a visit to Kaufman's department store (I was with the lady I would later be married to, and still am after 40 years), we went to visit Station Square. I do remember how the car had bad gearboxes, going "clunk, clunk, clunk" with ever turn of the wheels. That made me remember its number, 1700.

We did have a bit of adventure on the return trip. Getting on the car after visiting Station Square, we had a motorman who was the most bored looking, sleepy looking person I ever saw--but he would have been a great costar with Harrold Lloyd in the classic silent film featuring New York City street railways, "Speedy."

This guy cautiously edged out from the stop at Station Square--he was coming off the Smithfield Street Bridge, when it had tracks on one side and traffic lanes on the other, and he had to cross those two way lanes AND another street crossing right in front of us before he could get into the steep grade inside the Mount Washington tunnel.

Edging out, easy, watch the traffic--ZOOM!!--full power across the other street and into the tunnel.

Those who have been there know how steep the climb up from the tunnel to the junction at the other end is. That car just sailed up the grade, almost like it wasn't there.

At the ancient station at the top, we stopped with what felt like something approaching an emergency brake application. People got on, people got off, then ZOOM!! off we went again.

This was how this operator ran.

He wouldn't slow down for anything either. People on the track-"DING!! DING!! DING!! DING!!" Autos on the track on the street running in Dormont--"DING!! DING!! DING!! DING!!" A dog on the track--"HONK!!"

This fellow drag raced the auto traffic in Dormont--and won. Never see a bus do that!!

Some time later, I was paying a visit to the A. B. Charles hobby shop in Dormont. I mentioned this experience to the clerk, who said, "We know that guy! He comes in here. He models Pittsburgh Railways in HO scale!"

That was in the late 1970s, with PCC cars built over 30 years before, running on rail that may have dated to the 1920s.

A ride on the Washington Metro just after that was an equal revelation of what modern rail could do.

Who wants to ride a bus?

BAH!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nDwDv7L3zU

I'm an old enough fart to remember when a three drink lunch did not mean soda.

That was already in steep decline in the early eighties. The wreck at Gunpow helped kill the revolving door dry out camp. One and done. Quarterly random testing for some years. A second hot was enough to launch you out, and no appeals ever succeeded to my knowledge.

Brian

"But on the way home? The idea of having a beer or glass of wine on the way home is quite attractive."

So, that means we should spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a diminished work model so people tip an elbow?

The biggest question in my mind is, can Amtrak and SNHS coexist? How much infrastructure would be required at the terminus of the line?

What's with all the "stir the pot" posts on here recently? The Trains Magazine discussion forum has (or had, I haven't looked at it in half a dozen years) the right mix of freight railroaders who resent passenger trains and anti-tax libertarian types to embrace the anti-passenger rail crowd, those of you here might check it out. I personally am not interested in rehashing what hypothetical alternative could replace passenger rail, and I think the people making those arguments aren't in earnest anyway.