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Steve's Fall '97 Amtrak Journey
Sept 28 - Oct 7, 1997
Amtrak Lake Shore Limited - Train #448
Albany-Rensselaer, NY to Boston, MA
http://www.trainweb.com/travel/stevelog/sg970929c.html

The third segment of my rail journey was on the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited
from Albany - Rensselaer, New York to Boston, Massachusetts.

Monday, Sept 29, 1997, 11:10 AM EDT, Albany-Rensselaer, NY

Radio: Channel 46 - 160.800 - Albany-Rensselaer,NY to Boston,MA.

A bit later, two trains seemed to arrive at the same time. One was the Amtrak Adirondack heading for Montreal. The other was the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited. This is where the Lake Shore Limited is split into two segments, one to head to New York City, and the other to head to Boston, my destination. They first let everyone off of the train. People that were bound for Albany got off as well as New York and Boston passengers who just wanted to have a smoke or stretch their legs.

There seemed to be well over a half-dozen Amtrak workers out on the platform whose job it was to get these trains seperated. They ran into a few problems but eventually seperated the New York section from the Boston section. There was some shuffling back and forth of locomotives so that each section would end up with its own set.

The train bound for Montreal was boarded first and departed the station. Then, a call was made to re-board the passengers onto the two segments of the Lake Shore Limited who had just left to stretch their legs. No new passengers are allowed to board the New York segment of the Lake Shore Limited in Albany as there are several other "locals" serving that route. New passengers are allowed to board the Boston segment as this is the only train to go east from here. I boarded the train and didn't have much problem finding a seat next to the window by myself. The Car Attendant sorted the passengers sending people travling along to the front coach and couples and families to the rear coach where group seating and pairs of seats were available together.

Monday, Sept 29, 1997, 12:15 PM EDT, Pittsfield, MA

This is the Pittsfield, Massachusettes, Amtrak station. No, not that huge building. I don't know what that is. The little thing in the foreground that looks like a bus stop is the Amtrak Station! I found the little red railroad car shack just a bit down the tracks from Pittsfield.

Monday, Sept 29, 1997, 4:01 PM EDT, Boston, MA

This is heavy rail commuter equipment of the "T" in Boston. Behind the train is South Station Postal Annex where I used to work the grave yard shift during the Christmas rush while I was in college.

Radio: Channel 64 - 160.920 - Boston, MA. I heard the Conductor say: "Let's go to the Amtrak Channel." Upon scanning to find what channel they went to, I found them on channel 64 (160.920). Whenever the Conductor switched to another channel, he'd say things like: "Let's go to Channel 1" or "Let's go to Channel 2." When they did that, I could not find them on Channel 2 and there isn't any Channel 1 in the set of railroad frequencies. Instead, I'd find them on some other AAR channel totally unrelated to the channel number that was called out. In most of my experiences across the rest of the country, the Conductor calls out the actual AAR channel number, as in: "Let's go to thirty-thirty." All I could imagine is that everyone at Amtrak in the northeast has radios pretuned to just the few channels that they use which don't corespond to the normal channel numbers for AAR frequencies.


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