The president of Amtrak is starting to impress me. And the reason for this may be the part of Joe Boardman that seems to draw the disdain of so many critics: He is a bureaucrat. Living here in northern Virginia, bureaucrats are my neighbors. As...

The Florida East Coast Railway that most people see looks to be doing fine. Intermodal business, which brings in 62 cents of each dollar of revenue, is at record levels. Almost four-fifths of the debt incurred at the time of its 2007 buyout by...

A recent Washington Post story quotes Amtrak president Joe Boardman as saying the Northeast Corridor, between Boston and Washington, is making its owner money. In fact, Boardman goes on to say, the Acela Express service enjoys a profit margin of 40...

To my way of thinking, the wail of an Amtrak locomotive horn whistling in the distance is as good as it gets. It’s how we should all be beckoned to heaven. Next to an Amtrak whistle, every other locomotive horn emits just an out-of-tune screech...

Way back when, if you wanted to know what was happening at Amtrak, you had to read Rail Travel News , a 20- to 24-page, twice-monthly, vest-pocket-sized magazine so poorly printed as to sometimes be almost unreadable. But poor print quality was part...