#Amtrak

The Still Room Blog

Transportation Tuesday: Sad state of affairs for train transport in Indianapolis

Becky Fifield

Jun 11, 2013
1 min

Transportation Tuesday: Sad state of affairs for train transport in Indianapolis

I was really impressed with downtown Indianapolis. Ambitious restaurants. People on the streets. Bike Lanes. A canal walk trimmed with gardens. A riverfront developed with a music venue, walks, and a conservatory. I thought the taxis out front was a good sign! Union Station, Indianapolis. RL Fifield Photo. As is my usual, I went off to find the train station. Turning the corner onto Illinois Street, I saw the turreted Union Station from 1886. Cheered, I walked up to the door.

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Transit Tuesday: Grand By Design Exhibition at Grand Central

Becky Fifield

Feb 12, 2013
1 min

Transit Tuesday: Grand By Design Exhibition at Grand Central

After a boozy brunch with Dr. V’s cousins, we wandered up the sunny side of the street to Grand Central Terminal, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The kiosks were great. You can ask about various GCT topics at the push of the button. When they aren’t talking, they just look around and look bored. A former customer service manager relates that GCT before the renovation was “a hell hole.” RL Fifield 2013. The former waiting room space is used for exhibitions and eve

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Becky Fifield

Jan 15, 2013
2 min

Transit Tuesday: The Walking City

Colleagues of mine were up from DC this week for the Alliance for Response NYC program “Community-Based Recovery After Superstorm Sandy” (see the post here). One of them exclaimed “this is New York! look at everyone walking along the streets!” New York didn’t used to have a monopoly on street life. Certainly, my city lends itself to walking. The tight space forces us to live more closely together, further drawn together by our renowned subways, busses, and trains to closely c

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Wanderlust Wednesday – Worcester, Massachusetts, by way of Springfield

Becky Fifield

Dec 5, 2012
2 min

Wanderlust Wednesday – Worcester, Massachusetts, by way of Springfield

Answer: Corsets. The Royal Worcester Corset Factory was the largest U.S. employer of women in 1908. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary. Worcester Art Museum. I spent all of 18 hours in Worcester last week. It has the bones of any successful city of the turn of the century. Money made in industry went to civic projects, art museums, and city beautiful movements. It is home to the American Antiquarian Society, a repository of historic newspapers, prints, and myriad other documents

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Becky Fifield

Nov 27, 2012
1 min

Transportation Tuesday: Time to Get Geeky – The Amtrak History Website

Perhaps Amtrak is a little late for many rail fans, but the Amtrak history website led to me losing a few hours last night while I poked around the various features. Amtrak will never have the glamour of the Baltimore and Ohio’s Royal Blue service. But for those of us still attracted to the possibilities of passenger rail service, Amtrak is what we’ve got. After 40 years of service, there’s some stuff to look back on. Features on the website include a chronological history, a

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Becky Fifield

Nov 20, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: Amtrak’s Quiet Car

I was putting together another post on Amtrak when I stumbled across a New York Times Opinion on Amtrak’s Quiet Car by Tim Krieder. The Quiet Car is at first brilliant: I settle myself away from the din of the other carriages. There’s the cellphone conversation we’d rather not hear about (surgery, sales, boyfriend). The businessmen strutting their acumen to each other. The travelling family unaware that others are using the train. The Quiet Car is for single people who enjoy

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Transportation Tuesday: Two Loves Collide – Historic Preservation, Transportation, and the Sus

Becky Fifield

Oct 16, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: Two Loves Collide – Historic Preservation, Transportation, and the Sus

Sorry for the pun. Photo: r25 Productions. Flowers by Amanda’s in Havre de Grace. Since I was a little girl, driving into Havre de Grace meant curving around the high stone embankment to the right and passing under the hulking iron bridge that carries the Pennsylvania Railroad over the Susquehanna: it’s been doing so since 1906. That bridge says Havre de Grace to me like little else; so much so that some of our wedding photos are in front of it. Rendering of the new bridge at

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Becky Fifield

Oct 10, 2012
2 min

Wanderlust Wednesday: Seattle

Seattle. RL Fifield, 2012. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Brilliant sun and a cloudless sky marked my days in Seattle. Like San Francisco and Vancouver (see my post here), Seattle has that feeling that the gold rush just went bust. Yes, it is a highly successful town, but there’s something seedy about it – the SROs, seedy hotels, wanderers. Pike Place Market was full of tourists. I found Piroshky, Piroshky, a Russian pastry place, where I could have a more savory breakfa

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Transit Tuesday: Rail – Stories of Our Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Becky Fifield

Oct 9, 2012
4 min

Transit Tuesday: Rail – Stories of Our Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Call me a dreamer. A romantic. Impractical. Head in the clouds. One of those city folk (that’s hilarious, you should see where I grew up). Trains will become more important, even necessary, in the near future for transportation. Hogwarts Express at Universal Studios. RL Fifield, 2012. I recently visited Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure with Dr. V. By far, the most busy part of the park was the Harry Potter section, with it’s wobbly roofs, token castle, and shops sellin

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Becky Fifield

Jul 31, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: Amtrak Fiction

I’ve been working on a short story for years about a friendship slipping into an unfamiliar place. One of these days I’ll fish it out of the muck. In my book (ha), trains are good places for writing, and good places to write about. I don’t feel the same way about airplanes, where you enter a sort of stasis between points A and B. This introductory portion was inspired by the Northeast Corridor, the stretch of rail between New York and DC. A jolt over the old join in the rail

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Becky Fifield

Apr 6, 2012
2 min

Trainscribbling – Moving and Writing.

Grand Central Terminal. RL Fifield photo. When I leave the city, it’s either on a plane or a train. On a plane, you have little sense of forward travel once you’ve reached cruising altitude. Everyone channels sardine-ism for a number of hours, and the landscape below loses relevance and becomes a myth, of sorts. On a train, you hurtle through rapidly shifting landscapes of human scale. Each passing view brings you into a new space, posing new questions: Why was that factory a

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