Remains to be seen how many of those places are able to do the 'heavy lifting' to make it a reality.
I would love to see the Crescent pick up a Meridian - Dallas section.
-------------------- David Pressley
Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!
Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes. Posts: 4203 | From: Western North Carolina | Registered: Feb 2004
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Having taken an introduction to (construction) project management course myself, I just figured what it would take in terms of equipment and time to fix up enough equipment to restart the Pioneer. The super-short answer was "around a year and a half" at least at current rates. The current thinking on that is that the Sunset will probably never operate east of NOL again. It is more intelligent to get a south-central hub going, probably at NOL, to handle more trains. This involves either a Crescent extension to the west or state-supported Florida-Mississippi-Alabama-Louisiana-Texas corridor service. Amtrak is not in a position to start up any more New York-style state corridor service with the state(s) in question not paying for any of it. They've even named their price- $700k per refurbished Am I coach (we've got plenty!), you provide the stations, we provide the people, we provide the locomotives, and we're sorry if they occasionally light themselves on fire. (the locomotives, hopefully not the people!)
Posts: 391 | From: Schenectady | Registered: Jan 2002
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