Amtrak steps up Empire Builder service in bid to save itself in Montana and the West

Editor’s note: Today, the Missoulian presents a special report on the history and future of passenger rail service – in Montana and the West.

Summer sunlight hammered hard and hot against the twin tracks, waves of heat rising silently, like watered-down smoke from shining steel rails.

Bob Winkenweder sat calmly in the stifling quiet, watching the empty tracks from a shaded bench. He flicked some ash from a cigarette. Waved off a lazy fly. Waited.
Above him, flowers hanging from the depot eaves sagged in the heat, not a leaf lifting in the still air. But then the vapors twisting up off the train tracks eddied a bit, danced as if a breeze had blown through, shimmied and shimmered and shook with a faraway vibration.

Had Winkenweder put his ear to the tracks, like they did in the old westerns, he might have heard the train a-coming, westbound out of Havre, 45 minutes late but picking up time on the run to East Glacier, West Glacier, Whitefish, Spokane, Seattle by tomorrow morning.

Winkenweder stirred, roused himself despite the blistering sun, stood and walked to the now humming tracks.

"Haven’t ridden since ’58," he declared, speaking to no one in particular. "Just came out to visit, and here’s this station. Nice station, too."

With that, he wandered off toward the east, as if to meet the train before it slowed to pick up the growing crowd at the depot in East Glacier.

By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/08/14/news/top/news01.txt

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Railroad reform takes many different shapes
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian

WHITEFISH – When Frank Wilner turns his mind to Amtrak, he sees a nationwide network lacing together the coasts, embracing the heartland, tying America together with shiny steel bindings.

It is, he said, the one and only way to think about it.

"Once you start breaking up the national web," he said, "you destroy the political ability to keep any of the parts."
Wilner is author of "The Amtrak Story," formerly of the Association of American Railroads, now with the United Transportation Union.

He, more than anyone perhaps, knows well Amtrak’s strengths and weaknesses, knows the political realities that have kept intact an embattled system that was, arguably, set up for failure from the beginning.

According to Wilner, most all agree there’s value in the passenger trains that run through the Northeast corridor, linking New York and Philadelphia and Boston and the nation’s capital. Likewise, he said, most all find value in the urban West Coast routes.

"But even those routes still need federal funding," he said, "and to get federal funding, you need a majority in Congress."

And to get that majority, Wilner said, "you have to provide service to all the states. All politics is local, and Montana won’t support passenger rail in New York unless Montana gets passenger rail, too. It’s nationwide or it’s nothing."

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/08/14/news/mtregional/news02.txt