When people ask what I do for fun, I say I chase trains. They usually think this is a figure of speech — that I watch or photograph trains. Nope. Nothing beats a good chase. The other day I chased a train hundreds of miles. Unfortunately, it was a lot...

What’s the matter with you, America? There's a Morning Sun book about everything, but no “Amtrak’s Auto Train, In Color!” Where's the buzz about Auto Train on the online forums? Why is this not the most talked-about train in the land? The Auto...

I’m headed from Washington to New York this weekend on an Amtrak Acela. My friends Richard Simon and Nancy Ross, a married couple who practice optometry in downtown Washington, are going to New York, too. They could well afford the Acela, but instead...

What do you do when you can’t sleep? If you were me last night, you got up at 3:30 and watched trains. Okay, it helped that I was overnighting 40 miles south of Richmond, Va., alongside the CSX mainline to Florida. There’s not much else to do...

Amtrak’s Acela high speed trains cover the 40.3 miles between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore in a brisk 29 to 33 minutes at speeds of up to 125 mph. But MARC, the Maryland commuter-rail agency, has some Acelas beat. One of its trains, No. 406, gets...

Have you noticed your sleep being disturbed more often these last few days by the dulcet sounds of locomotive whistles in the night? I thought so. Now comes proof: The railroad business is finally showing signs of life again. It’s worth a celebration...