Don Phillips reflects on Trains-Amtrak town hall meeting

Special guest post from Don Phillips, Trains columnist

I am tempted to say that there was good news and bad news out of the Trains Magazine-Amtrak meeting in Chicago Saturday. There was indeed one item of terrible news and a few items that could be bad if we learn the details. More about that shortly, but first I want to concentrate on some of the good things that came out of this meeting.

The best "good thing" was that Amtrak management was there at all and actually provided some straight talk and some useful information. This may have been a quirk or, perhaps more likely, may have been the first of a series of useful meetings that could actually soothe some of the bad feelings in the railfan community. It was a long time coming, but it was at least an acceptable beginning. I have been amazed that for more than a year, Amtrak President Joe Boardman and his top management have provided almost no useful public information. Boardman has held almost no news conferences and has appeared in public almost always in situations where he could control the agenda and avoid followup questions. But just recently, before Saturday's town hall meeting, he gave two speeches in which he took relatively tough questions and answered them.

Then, at the town hall meeting, he took numerous questions and answered most of them satisfactorily. THAT is a new situation that all of us should applaud and encourage. There is no need to dwell on his year in the bunker, although that serious loss of time may well have a negative effect. Saturday was a great coming-out celebration, and we all need to hope that Boardman and his crew keep their stride and perhaps mitigate the effects of the lost year. Personally, I look forward to discussing issues, agreeing with some and disagreeing on others, but not trying to read the tea leaves of hazy hints about what may be happening. Clearly there are serious issues and there will be serious disagreements all around. That's just fine.

We learned a lot about plans for train improvements and possible minor (but important) train reroutes. There is even the possibility (absolutely no decision for a while) of splitting the Lake Shore Limited at Toledo to run one section to Boston and one to New York via Pittsburgh and Altoona, returning through service and sleepers to the route of the Broadway Limited. They mentioned this at the same time they said they would operate no new long-distance routes. Train reroutes can have the effect of creating a new service

I (and Editor Jim Wrinn and other Trains writers) will go into detail about the conference in an upcoming issue of the the magazine. I will certainly elaborate on the issues I see coming out of the conference.

However, let me say I see one very serious issue, Amtrak's sad blunder in continuing its sad policy that railfans can't take pictures on Amtrak open-air platforms. This accomplishes nothing and actually takes one small step in removing some of our freedoms. A platform is public unless there is a compelling reason (perhaps a chemical spill) to evacuate the area, or unless some railfan does something stupid like walking in the middle of the tracks. In those cases, there should be removals. Lets also make no mistake about it. This rule is aimed ONLY at railfans. Terrorists would never make an open spectacle of themselves, and the rule says it's perfectly fine for passengers or their families to take photos on the platform of Aunt Jane or cousin Joe boarding the train.

No one has yet explained why this rule was imposed. Even at the conference, the "why" issue was danced around. We know lots of so-called reasons, but we still don't know the real reason why Amtrak considered this strange rule so important it would risk losing lots of friends and step on our Constitutional rights. Many railroads welcome railfan photographers on their platforms, including Jersey Transit. I mention Jersey Transit because it owns Newark station. Therefore, we can go on the Newark platforms and take all the photos we want of Amtrak trains. This makes no sense at all. (Actually, Amtrak owns only one-third of the stations it uses. How confusing for railfans.)

At the conference, Amtrak chose its wonderful police chief John O'Connor to break the bad news to us. O'Connor is a pure civil libertarian and perhaps the best cop I've ever known. He cast the rule as something that Amtrak never claimed till now — a way to let Amtrak know we are there so local citizens and police can be informed we're legitimate unthreatening photographers if someone asks. Sorry, Chief, good try and I know you mean it, and it's true that we'll almost never be approached if we do take platform photos. But we're still technically banned from places that have been open to us for more than a century. Something needs to be done about that.