by Jim Loomis | Apr 25, 2015
The Cardinal is not a big train – just one sleeping car, three coaches, and a diner – and it runs only three days a week over a meandering southerly route between New York and Chicago. But, in between those frenetic metropolitan centers, the Cardinal passes through...
by Jim Loomis | Mar 30, 2014
I’m not sure what to expect from Siberia — pine and birch forests with an occasional gulag, perhaps — but I’ll soon be experiencing the real thing as my train rolls out of Moscow’s Kazan station and heads east, rattling through a series of switches and out onto the...
by Jim Loomis | Nov 10, 2012
A rail excursion through the mountains of Western Canada aboard the Rocky Mountaineer has long been on my list of to-do train rides. And this morning, here I am in Vancouver, watching a quarter-mile-long train in stunning blue and gold livery ease to a gentle stop at...
by Jim Loomis | Jan 21, 2012
Back in the mid-90s, I was working on a book about train travel and had spent time interviewing Amtrak’s on board crews during my many cross-country train trips – conductors and train attendants and dining car staffs. But the one crew member I hadn’t been able to...