When I was young, dumb and learning how to be a grunt at Infantry Training School in Camp Pendleton, I learned two good things about taking Amtrak to San Diego for weekend of liberty and debauchery.

It was cheap. One could spend more on hookers and booze and hookers. And booze.

One could get drunk on the train and get a head start on the rest of the jarheads in Diego on Friday night.

You absolutely crack me up, V-Man. In these parts, the drunks stay to the dirt roads & and are not a problem unless you must pull them out of a ditch.
The Tweetsie Railroad sounds like fun. Forget the government, I'll provide the booze - for the ah - "inherited illness" for which you are not responsible.

"....where they can prey on each other again, like they did in their original Rousseauian state of nature."

Laughing hard.

Thing is, these numbnuts can't even admit error. They're the retards who put Dukakis in charge of Amtrak in the 1990's, who went out and bought high speed trains and placed them on rails that weren't strong enough to handle trains moving at high speeds. They'd be better off admitting error and fixing the Acela train before taking on any new challenges.

Only high-speed rail I'm interested in is the one we run these bastards out of town on.

Atlanta to Vegas? Hell, yeah. Throw in stops at Shreveport and Dallas, and you'd have a winner. As much as I love Vegas, getting there is a hassle. If I could climb on board a rail and be there overnight, I'd go once a month.

The part that never gets mentioned, and there is a technical name for it that I don't recall, is how do you get to, and from, the train station.

Very few stations have public transportation available at all, and if they do the schedules and routes are terrible.

It would be a common occurrence where the last few miles could cost as much in time and/or rental fees as the train trip.

Another brilliant Veloci-piece. Brainsturming und Dranging indeed.

I've been to Blowing Rock once. Disappointed, I was. There was precious little in the way of blowing, if you catch my drift. But that ATL-to-Vegas maglev? I am so there.

Rail? Feh... Used to be you could have the porter schlep a steamer trunk full of belt-fed weaponry into your compartment, and no one would even blink. Nowadays you're gonna get the Airport Ass-Probe done to you before you even get near the tracks.

I drive instead of fly/rail because there's no got-damned metal detector between me and the steering wheel on the truck. That long stretch from Flagstaff to Kingman is no place to get caught unawares with nothing but harsh language to repel the goblins.

Drive? Try the drive from Riyadh to Taif with three falcons, two cats and a pet Indian.

The bullet train from Tampa to Orlando will be built between the concrete drive on the I 4 corridor. Gee, they just had nine sink holes that messed up the interstate for two weeks. Then the DOT put a band aid on it to keep it moving. Not a good place for a high speed train if you ask me.
Check out Schnittshow.com for his view. He is right on

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