All photos by Ron Goodenow. Reproduction without Ron's permission is prohibited.

Can there be any city in North America that has had as great a passenger renaissance as Sacramento? My 1964 Official Guide finds a grand total of six Southern Pacific and two Western Pacific trains stopping by. Today's Amtrak puts 20 into the old SP station. They include the Coast Starlight, California Zephyr, a San Joaqin service to Bakersfield and 14 Capitols serving Oakland and San Jose, with frequent bus connections to San Francisco and Caltrain service up and down the Peninsula. Here, on September 8, 2000 is Capitol Train 729 departing for San Jose from a gleaming terminal bedecked with a glorious mural depicting the arrival in California of the first transcontinental train and well stocked with helpful employees. As for the Capitol I rode a couple of hours later, it was on time, its California cars clean and comfortable, and cafe well stocked. Amtrak and the State of California have this about right. And, if the ride to and from Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and nearby Sierras isn't spectacular enough, there is always the California State Railroad Museum, just a few steps from Amtrak's platform. Now, if Union Pacific would get behind all this rebirth....

When Acela Express hits the Northeast Corridor rails in early November it will have lots of company -- and not just from Amtrak conventional runs and the odd freight. Here are a couple of shots taken in early September. On the left is a push-pull Jersey Transit train in Metropark, New Jersey, photographed through the rear door window on my Worcester-DC train. On the right is a colorful MARC commuter ready to roll at Washington Union Station. Never in its history has the NE Corridor seen so much traffic -- one can only imagine what it will be like when its aging infrastructure is truly modernized!

Saturday, November 4, 2000. Amtrak's Northeast Direct #163 coming and going from Old Saybrook, Ct., on the shoreline between Boston and New York.

Chicago's sparkling Olgivie Transportation Center houses the old Northwestern Station, from which gleaming intercity '400' streamliners, and other varnish the Chicago and Northwestern shared with Western lines, served California, Colorado, Iowa, Wyoming, the Black Hills, and the Minnesota and Wisconsin North Country. Today it is one of the few major terminals in America (New York's Grand Central Station and Boston's North Station come to mind) not occupied by Amtrak. When I visited in October, 2000, it was a beehive of Metra runs to nearby western and northern suburbs. With North Station soon to include Amtrak service to New Hampshire and Maine, this station will serve as a unique reminder of just how much our national rail system has contracted in the past 30 years.

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