When we were inching our way through New Mexico — because of the poor condition of the tracks — this fall, the sleeping car attendant warned us that the Amtrak Southwest Chief route might be changed. That would mean Lamy and Albuquerque would be completely bypassed. We would have to drive down to Belen, an extra hour, to catch the train — assuming the new schedule meant the train stopped at a reasonable time.
The problem is the tracks need major upgrading, to the tune of $100 million. And BNSF, the train company that owns the tracks, doesn’t need them for their business — hauling freight. It wants the money to come from the states involved (Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico) and Amtrak. Needless to say, no one is happy about spending the money involved. And apparently rerouting the Southwest Chief would also need substantial sums. The interested parties are now negotiating.
As this article points out, the alternatives are (1) to come up with the money to fix the infrastructure and keep the current route, (2) reroute part of the the line to avoid the Western Kansas-Colorado-Northern New Mexico part, or (3) discard the Southwest Chief route altogether.
The current contract between Amtrak and BNSF expires in 2016, and we go see Kaitlin, Torben and the pups every other year, so there’s a good chance we could still take the train to and from Lamy in 2015. After that who knows? The nice thing is Kaitlin and Torben are planning to take the Southwest Chief to come here for a couple of days at the end of the year. So we most likely will see Lamy again then. We do have happy memories of that place.
My experience with the train & Lamy dates back 50 years. Was by myself going across country with 4 kids, Lydia, just born & in a picnic basket. Still have the basket.
errrrrr –dates back 49 years. Lydia isn’t 50 ’til Aug. 1914.
I love that story!
When am I going to switch the years from 19?? to 20?? I’ve had 13 years to practice. It’s because we don’t write checks anymore with credit cards. Don’t have to fill in the date on checks.
It doesn’t really matter, does it? If that’s the worse we do, we’ll be darned lucky!
Here NZ, many of the train tracks have been closed down, but then again that has much to do with population/business using them which seems to be same for you respective tracks.
Once upon a time, there were tracks through Quay Street from main railway lines South – that took cargo/freight down to other areas but then they were taken away because the big other shipping terminals disappeared, and a new one was built in a slightly different place and rail line goes under the road (well I think it does!). Maybe trucks cart large shipping containers to somewhere else ??? I haven’t really studied trains 🙂
But the local service public transport lines have been in upgrade mode for a couple of years as we are going from diesel engines pulling carriages to electric trains. Some routes are beginning soon whilst others will play catch up over how ever long it takes…
We have a local bus service, but no trains or taxis here. The interesting thing about Amtrak is they don’t own the rails, so freight has top priority. Coming back from Chicago we had to wait for freight trains a number of times. If the trains stop going through Lamy it will because the cost of upgrading and the yearly maintenance is too high.