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From the Atlanta Journal Constitution: At least the passengers got free lunches!
Amtrak Train Moves After Day in Ga. Woods SAVANNAH, Ga. — Exasperated passengers were stuck on an Amtrak train for close to 20 hours while engineers waited for a derailed freight train to be removed.
Amtrak Train 98 started to move again Friday around 1:30 p.m., with the hopes of reaching New York by Saturday. Two passenger trains behind it were delayed for less time.
The train had left Orlando, Fla., on Thursday around 1 p.m., but was delayed in Jacksonville for roughly 12 hours because of the derailment. It started moving again about 4 a.m., but stopped again in a patch of forest outside Savannah about two hours later.
"We're stuck in the woods," passenger Eleanor Meyer said in a cell-phone interview. "People have ran out of money buying food. This is unbelievable. You have to run to different cars because certain cars have run out of toilet paper."
Meyer was trying to return to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., after taking her 19-year-old triplets on their first trip to Orlando, Fla.
"I took this train because I'm afraid of flying," she said. "Right now flying is the only way to go."
Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said the CSX freight train's derailment came at a "choke point" in the north-south lines that gave trains no chance to pass.
Amtrak arranged to provide free lunches on the New York-bound train and two other trains stuck south of Savannah — the Silver Star and a train carrying automobiles and passengers.
Meyer said young children on the train were cranky and scared, and older people were concerned about running out of their medication.
Peter Nicholson of Newtown, Pa., returning with his wife from a visit to Orlando's theme parks, said he was glad he brought books to read during the delay: The mammoth "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
But he worries how long the passengers can hold out.
"You wonder how long you have to try to spread out your money and where your food is coming from," he said. "There's nowhere to go if you needed something. If anybody got sick, I don't know what they would do."
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Posts: 416 | From: St. Albans, Vermont | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I walked by a TV with CNN on today and this story was big news. What great publicity for Amtrak! I am really curious why they couldn't back up to a station or grade crossing and bus people. Did the CSX dispatchers allow this to happen?
Is this Norm Mineta's self-fulfilling prophecy? "All we have to do to get Amtrak to fail is do nothing." Do we have a "Do nothing" mission statement now that David Gunn is gone?
Posts: 1572 | From: St. Paul, MN | Registered: Dec 2002
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MUST put a policy in place that says something like 6 hours and then passengers should be immediately removed from the train and bussed to their destination. They should never have left Jacksonville, if there was not guarantee from CSX that the tracks would be cleared by the time they reached Savannah.
I would err on the side of caution and get the passengers off the train as soon as possible. What great publicity and Cliff Black's explanation on TV seemed defensive and silly!
&*^% that CSX!
Posts: 171 | From: Aurora, Illinois | Registered: Jun 2005
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