TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

This won’t really enhance Amtrak’s service reputation - ok, so it clearly wasn’t their fault that the freight train derailed and their trains were stuck, but couldn’t they at least have given these people some water? Is that too much to ask?

By the time the freight cars were cleared from the rails, about 2,000 passengers on six trains – three headed north, and three south - were affected, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black in stories in The New York Times and the Long Island, N.Y.-based newspaper Newsday. The trains were the Silver Meteor, the Silver Star operating between New York and Miami and the Auto Train, operating between Lorton, Va. and Sanford, Fla. Black said the CSX freight train’s derailment occurred at a “choke point” and that the Amtrak trains were unable to pass around it. Passengers aboard at least one of the trains, Amtrak train 98, the northbound Silver Meteor, sat in Jacksonville, Fla. for 12 hours Thursday before it finally started moving again. But only two hours later, at 6 a.m. in the middle of a forest south of Savannah, Ga., it stopped again because of heavy freight train traffic also bottled up from the derailment. The second delay lasted about eight hours. During the wait, the toilets on the Silver Meteor clogged. The crew offered no food or water, passengers said, except what was available in the dining and cafe cars, for a price. Those who could not pay were told they could charge their food, but only if they presented ticket stubs with their credit cards, said passenger Nancy Johnson of Washington.

(TRAINS News Wire for January 3, 2006)

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