5 ms·
Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- homeonthemtn 7mo agoWhoa, forget the train, folks check out this website. This is active??
- noer 7mo agoMy first reaction when I saw the domain
- riffic 7mo agoAOL Media LLC more info here: https://hackaday.com/2026/01/27/zombie-netscape-wont-die/ https://hackaday.com/2026/01/27/zombie-netscape-wont-die/
- QuantumNomad_ 7mo agoSee also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565264
- PostOnce 7mo agoActive and beautiful, I can start reading without having to scroll down, which I have to do on the AP site. I miss when the web looked like this, and pages were documents instead of applications. We built the wrong web, we needed two, one for documents, and one for applications, but we built this rube goldberg contraption instead.
- Finnucane 7mo agoJust gotta zoom _way_ in to make the text readable, though.
- fHr 7mo agoTrue :D
- shagie 7mo agoThe regular site (rather than aggregator): https://apnews.com/article/airports-shutdown-long-lines-train-travel-amtrak-e4d8ea591b3b036142c2bf2dee7dff5a https://apnews.com/article/airports-shutdown-long-lines-trai... This also includes some images that aren't part of the netscape.com version... which is probably part of the point of it: "A view of America from the tracks" has some pictures of Amtrak stations and Virginia countryside. (and for some nostalgia- City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman https://youtu.be/fhHxNMyw0dI https://youtu.be/fhHxNMyw0dI )
- dang 7mo agoChanged from https://isp.netscape.com/news/story/0001/20260329/e4d8ea591b3b036142c2bf2dee7dff5a https://isp.netscape.com/news/story/0001/20260329/e4d8ea591b... above. Thanks!
- dylan604 7mo agoDelta has round trip flights from ATL->WAS for ~$800 TFA train round trip shows $306 without a private cabin. TFA already mentioned the time differences. The googs says it's 638miles doable in 9.5hours. Say an average of 20mpg at $4/gal (I have no idea what current rates are in that part of the country) needs 32gals for $128 one way or $256 to come back. Of course someone needs to drive it. The train definitely looks like a decent deal for this route. I've priced train rides from my town, and prices look like plane routes but in days instead of hours. The train doesn't make sense all of the time, but I'm holding out hope I'll find a trip where it will make sense.
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoBased on the last long trip I did in the U.K. where I averaged 43 miles per US gallon (52mpg) I’m shocked how terrible efficiency is in the US. That’s real world highway driving in a 4 year old petrol car.
- dylan604 7mo agoI deliberately chose a low mpg value. Most people are driving SUVs what I assumed 20mpg would be safe. My car averages about 26mpg. I have no insight into how many kilometers per liter UK cars get, but the translated £/litre to $/gallon has always shocked me at the price paid on that side of the pond. If Americans had to to pay the same rate, we'd have better mpg ratings as well.
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoI paid £1.45 a litre on Friday my average, which I tend to treat as about 14p a mile or 18c a mile. I’m not sure why I’d deliberately burn more fuel regardless of the price. Literally setting fire to cash for nothing. That would be $120 for your trip to Georgia, about the same price as in the US despite fuel being $7.30 a gallon equivalent in the uk.
- dylan604 7mo agoI don't know where you're coming with deliberately here as if that's something I chose. I'm not familiar with cars getting 43mpg in the US. Maybe some hybrid, but that's definitely not the norm on this side of the pond. Even when I had a Corolla, which was the highest rated car I've ever driven, did not get 43mpg. Your "deliberate" sounds a lot like victim blaming here.
- superultra 7mo agoI’ve taken this line - as many have and do all the time. Ride it once and you’ll realize why it’s the better way to travel in every way but cost and time - and both of those are a result of the United State unwillingness to fully fund something like Amtrak. As the author states traveling by train just a more pleasant experience. I should note that even though there is technically wifi on every Amtrak train, it’s cellular based. You’ll find that at least from atlanta to NY, the train somehow threads the needle between cellular ranges. Both your phone and of course the train will often be either out of range of fast cellular service or out of range altogether. Supposedly Amtrak is getting starlink but we’ll see. So, don’t expect to be getting on any video calls.
- standardUser 7mo agoYears ago I tried to book a train from San Francisco to Chicago as part of a trip I had planned but found it to be more expensive and, more significantly, a multi-day journey instead of a few hours. If you happen to be an American living near one of the useful passenger rail lines, and desire to go to one of the few destinations it can take you to quickly and affordably, more power to you. But most Americans live nowhere near a useful rail system.
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoTaking days to get to Chicago from Emeryville is all part of the fun of it. Enjoy the journey…
- standardUser 7mo agoSpoken like one of the small percentage of Americans who can afford to tag on extra days to their PTO to enjoy a nice view.
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoI guess so. We took the girls when they were young to Omaha a few times from the Bay Area. I wasn't even sure passenger trains would be around when they were adults so wanted to give them that experience. I took a train between Kansas City and Chicago as a kid and found it magical. So, yeah, the train ride was actually a significant part of the experience for those particular vacations.
- adjejmxbdjdn 7mo ago> The train is still longer, and time is money, we are taught. But certainty has value, too, even if it means at 11:29 p.m. departure. Unfortunately this is misleading. Outside of the Northeast Acela corridor, there is no certainty in train travel in the U.S.. Although legally passenger trains are now supposed to have right of way over freight trains, in practice that’s just not the case. So a 14.5 hr train journey can easily be delayed by several hours.
- GenerWork 7mo agoI believe Brightline in Florida has ownership of its tracks from Cocoa to Orlando.
- bryananderson 7mo agoIt does not, but it has a sane scheduling agreement with the railroad which the railroad actually respects. This is a common misconception because Brightline’s parent company Florida East Coast Industries shares heritage with Florida East Coast Railway, but the companies were split in 2007.
- xvedejas 7mo agoA couple of the lines I ride in California have decent on-time rates (mostly I ride the line formerly known as the San Joaquins)
- jeffbee 7mo agoHaha hours. There is no upper bound. The average Amtrak delay on Norfolk Southern is 19 minutes per 100 miles. And the worst cases are all horror stories. A freight operator sidetracks Amtrak while a miles-long coal train rolls through at a jogging pace. The coal train breaks down. The Amtrak crew can't legally operate any more because of federal time limits. You are 1000 miles from a city in the middle of nowhere and by the time they dispatch another crew to your train you've been surviving on Fritos for days.
- Loughla 7mo agoSo I took a consulting job in a small town in Illinois called Quincy. I couldn't fly there without connecting in St. Louis, but I could take the train from Chicago. It was billed at 6 hours. It absolutely left on time but had to wait for three freight trains on the way. 9 hours later we got to the "station". One of the other passengers said that their previous trip was cancelled and Amtrak bought everyone bus tickets. In the Midwest, there are no guarantees with trains other than you'll get there. Eventually.
- ChrisArchitect 7mo agoIf you were trying to highlight the Netscape ISP site OP, thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565264
- walterbell 7mo agoStory discovered via usability of that site. Will use it more.
- ChrisArchitect 7mo agoc00l. Stick to sources over syndication for submissions tho, as others noted, source has more photos etc.
- walterbell 7mo agoThanks to ever helpful commmenters!
- axpy906 7mo ago“ That is what drew Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman for one of the Civil War’s seminal campaigns that helped defeat the Confederacy.” To be clear Sherman burned it to the ground which is why it got renamed Atlanta.
- Reason077 7mo ago> ”… booked the train overnight and into game day across a 650-mile route … A 14½-hour weekend train ride” Just by way of comparison, in China the 819-mile train route between Beijing and Shanghai takes 4.5 hours.
- satvikpendem 7mo agoImagine if we had passenger rail like Asia does, it would be amazing. But sadly it's all a matter of political will, the US simply does not want to create such a rail system where we can take bullet trains from NYC to LA.
- walterbell 7mo agohttps://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...
- shiroiuma 7mo agoThere is no world where bullet trains between NYC and LA would make any financial sense at all. The trains can't possibly go fast enough for passengers to be satisfied with the speed (even maglev isn't fast enough), and the cost of track construction and maintenance would never be paid for by ridership. I live in Japan; bullet trains are great here, but the distances they cover are quite short by American standards. Extremely high ridership, with trains covering relatively short distances between extremely populated population centers (the Tokyo metro area has 38 million people for reference) means the trains operate at a profit. That could be done in America, maybe, but only between select cities that aren't too far apart, such as DC and NYC and Boston. Even here in Japan, no one is taking the shinkansen between far-apart cities in the north and south; they use inexpensive and faster domestic flights instead.
- satvikpendem 7mo agoIn China it's a matter of politics rather than financial sense, of unifying the country hence why they have them in ethnic minority areas too. The trains would be like roads, sure, most people wouldn't take them from one end to the other, A to Z, but there are enough people to take them from A to D, J to N, Q to T, so to speak. If one could commute in one hour from Boston to DC for example each way, daily without flying, it opens up more economic opportunities in total. But like PG said, the competition to an airline isn't a car or a plane, it's Zoom.
- plagiarist 7mo agoI wish we had high speed rail. Rail travel is actually pleasant. Air travel is a godawful nightmare that is somehow worse every single year.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ghaff 7mo agoI’m hoping it won’t be necessary but, if TSA is fundamentally broken with an international transfer through Dulles I will seriously consider taking the train from a union Station to Boston. Honestly surprised how many TSA people are still working without pay. I wouldn’t in their shoes. Maybe if TSA just basically shutdown commercial aviation in the US it would lead to some progress.
- theturtle 7mo ago[dead]
- ritcgab 7mo agoInterestingly mixed usage of en dash and em dash across the article.
- mememememememo 7mo agoMixed usage—of em-dash and en-dash—is suspiciously human–like.
- etmargallo 7mo agoWow, netscape is still around
- arkensaw 7mo agocame here to post this!
- stego-tech 7mo agoI've taken multiple Amtrak routes, all out of the Northeast Corridor but eventually crossing the country West or South. You don't take Amtrak because you want to get there fast, and you don't really take it because it's cheaper than flying. You take it because you can, and because it's more important to you to be (comparatively) comfortable instead of rushing from A to B. You take it because of the sights, the people, the chance encounters, the proximity to city centers that airplanes can never hope to match. It's an experience in and of itself that's distinctly foreign to many Americans, and one I wholeheartedly recommend. Sitting in a roomette, crossing from Boston to LA over a long weekend, sharing delicious meals with total strangers as the countryside whizzed by (or we sat on a siding waiting on a freight train). Just not comparable.
- doomspork 7mo agoCouldn't have said it any better. The experience and the people I've met make it worth it. It's a great little adventure.
- satvikpendem 7mo agoThis is not really true, at least for the northeast corridor. Amtrak is the fastest way to get from DC to NYC for example due to traffic in the city if driving or taking the bus, and the distance from the airport (LGA or JFK) to the final destination in the city if you're flying. I take Amtrak somewhat begrudgingly because it often can be way more expensive than flights which are subsidized generally speaking over passenger rail these days, because it's simply faster. And I honestly don't know what adventures people are talking about, most people keep to themselves. I've had more stranger experiences on flights than I have on Amtrak but maybe it's different in the West Coast.
- pfg_ 7mo agoThis only applies to sleeper car routes. You're on the traib for 2-3 days, mostly with no cell service. If you eat in the restaurant car, they will seat you with strangers. If you sit in the observation car, there's a bunch of other people sitting there too.
- II2II 7mo agoThe tone of the article, as well as some of the comments here, make me think of "City of New Orleans" (a song about the history and experience of American railways) instead of "Midnight Train to Georgia".
- brianzelip 7mo agoThe song title is actually ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’.
- yanhangyhy 7mo agoI highly recommend everyone read “The Grass Frontier”. It provides a detailed account of the development of American suburbanization and its integration with the automobile industry. (and why cars > trains after that) The United States is a very unique case—its capitalist development progressed faster than in other countries. Although many industries today are controlled by oligarchs and politicians and no longer serve the public interest, this history remains distinctive and worth remembering.
- rballpug 7mo agoI started to think, whether the UP-Norfolk Southern merger would bring major changes to the mid-line time-keeping measure in the CCG.
- derelicta 7mo agoI rode the amtrak from NYC, to DC then finally to Atlanta. Beautiful all the way, but incredibly slow, and the train "station" at Atlanta is left to be desired to say the last.
- saagarjha 7mo agoA lot of people here talking about the northeastern routes, but there's another good one that is kinda worth it: San Jose to Santa Barbara on the Coast Starlight, on account of SBA being very expensive to fly through. It's about 8 hours (driving is 5-6) and comparable in price to a bus (and it is probably beating gas right now, to be honest). And the tracks go by some of the prettiest coastline in the United States, usually around sunset too.
- ghaff 7mo agoThere are probably a few other city pairs like Seattle to Portland’s and Raleigh to Charlotte that are reasonable.
- Halian 7mo agoI took the Floridian and Silver Meteor last April in coach round-trip to DC. 19 hours getting bounced around so badly I couldn't sleep. :(
- davidfekke 7mo agoAh, Choo Choo trains
- rsynnott 7mo ago650 miles in 14 hours. Wow. That's actually slower than Irish intercity trains.
- jeingham 7mo agoI am very much enjoying my weekly train rides to care for my grandson. I'd much rather do that than drive the 90 mi or so back and forth. I set up my laptop and hotspot and go. Or I just sit and watch the scenery. Or just watch the people. Sometimes the bathrooms are a little stinky and sometimes people are a little loud and sometimes the train is crowded. But that's all much better than the intensity of driving on the freeway for me at least. So much more relaxing.
- gaoshan 7mo agoHaving ridden the trains of China fairly extensively and over a long period of time I am essentially ruined for what we have in the US. The older style Chinese trains were fine and I always enjoyed the journey (and remember excitedly riding the maglev when it first opened in Shanghai) but the newer generation of high speed trains is what pushed me from "It would be so pleasant to have this system in the US" to "We are losing out and falling behind the modern world". Trips that take me 3 hours in normal traffic here would take less than 45 minutes in China... possibly as little as 30 minutes. Trains would be leaving for the main destinations in 15 minute intervals, travel times cut by an order of magnitude, arrivals would be in stations that connect to clean, modern, efficient, inexpensive and safe subway systems. A typical journey. Hangzhou to Shanghai used to be a 3 hour bus ride for me. On top of that it was 45 minutes from home to the bus station. Now I can walk a few hundred meters to a gleaming, state of the art metro station (seriously, you've never experienced anything like this if you've never left the US), arrive in the ground floor of the train station, catch a glass smooth, spacious high speed train to Shanghai that leaves every 15 minutes and takes only 45 minutes and go downstairs to the subway to travel wherever I need to go in the city (usually within a couple of blocks of whatever destination I have). We are so far away from this that I find it a bit distressing. We cannot afford it, we cannot overcome the legal and political hurdles to make it happen... we are just going to fall further and further behind.
- nasaeclipse 7mo agoSame. I lived in Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China for about 10 years, and I only came back with my wife because we want to buy a house here in the States. After that, we're going back to Japan and China. The US is so far behind in public infrastructure (trains, pedestrian, cycling, etc) that I can't see the States being a good place NOW, much less the next fifty years.
- HWR_14 7mo agoWhy do you want to buy a house in the United States that you never plan to live in?
- SoftTalker 7mo ago