Heh. Considering how useless Amtrak is out here, it's kind of darkly funny that Chicago is the center of the map.
It is cheaper to take Amtrak from Chicago to my hometown (Pasco, WA) than to fly! Also you can take a single train the whole way. You have to take a minimum of two planes. Of course the trip takes about 5 times as long (42 hours vs about 8 assuming an average layover at Seatac, Denver, or Minneapolis).
And that's assuming the train isn't delayed when the freight trains take priority on the tracks.
I thought the same thing! Great minds...
I'm not saying I would use this as a travel method, just astounded that my littlw hometown has a direct if SUPER slow route here.
This is as appropriate a time as any to link to Soul Coughing's "Brooklyn Girls By Train," even if Mike Doughty doesn't want me to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yO1odyOtk
That there's no train service between Houston and DFW makes absolutely no sense. The baseline rail is there, and it could be a 3 hour train ride, which marketed well (a la the NE corridor) could follow I-45 and relieve traffic both air and car between the cities.
And what's with Atlanta? How can the biggest city in the Southeast, founded as a railhead and transportation hub, not have more than one Amtrak route? On the map, it's no bigger than the presumably aptly named Picayune, MS.
I'm also finding it impossible to look at this map without having songs run through my head. I've already followed the train from Chicago through Kankakee down to the City of New Orleans and found the Danville train where Virgil Kane worked before they drove Old Dixie down.
Oh, that's really cool.
but insert list of things in Texas that make absolutely no sense *here*
Pretty sure that, historically, the hub at Chicago was about getting things (cows, pigs) to Chicago rather than getting people away.