I saw an Amtrak Coast Starlight train the other day and i realized the back didn’t have another locomotive or a remote cab like other trains have at the back, the back is just back. It shares trackage with the cascades which has cabs on either end and can just start going the other way at a terminus. So does the terminus of the coast starlight alignment have a big loop of track that lets it turn around? Do they uncouple the train in the yard and put it back together the other way? Do they have the train make a three point turnaround on a wye?

• Sources:
• Ridership and vehicle-mile data 2023
• energy consumption data
• Mustang Mach-e data
• car occupancy

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this question as I note most posts are around rail transport.

I'm looking to estimate UK public transport density using census ward level data and the Google Maps bus information (routes, schedule). So for an area you could calculate frequency of service per thousand people and then use that as the basis for other calculations.

Tbh this could also be applied to rail and water transport but my main interest is in bus networks. I'd also quite like to extend this to cyclepaths (to calculate the percentage of main roads with cyclepaths etc)

Probably a long shot, but just thought I'd post it here to see if I get a response.

What is your city's or district's transit/urban planning problem? And how would you fix it?

I took a sleeper train in Europe a few months back and mostly loved it, except for the problem that the ride was too short to get a full night sleep. My ideal sleeper train ride length wouldn't be seven hours (as that one was) but somewhere around 10-14 hours, enough to settle in and consciously appreciate the train before sleeping.

Now that I'm back in the US, lately l've been looking up random train rides between the cities and trying to figure out how I can make a multi-city trip across the country work via multiple sleeper trains. It's basically impossible, mainly because most of these 10-14 hour trains depart in the morning and arrive at night. It also costs so much more than a regular plane, but l'd still like to ride one at least once.

The most efficient trip l've found so far is the train from Pittsburgh to Chicago: train departs at midnight and arrives almost ten hours later. The most pleasant-sounding trip I've found so far is from Washington DC to Atlanta: train departs at 6:30pm and arrives at 8:30am— gives you time to eat dinner/relax/socialize/take a shower/etc, and get a full 8-9 hour sleep without ever having to rush.

The trip I will most likely end up taking is the one from my hometown of Poughkeepsie to Chicago. 18 hours, departs at 5pm and arrives at 10am. This probably sounds deeply unpleasant to most people, but considering I'll be spending 9 hours of that snoozing, it doesn't sound so bad.

TL;DR: what’s the best sleeper train experience you’ve had so far, and are there any good sleeper train trips you’d recommend? (Could be anywhere in the world.)

WIL->PHL->Trenton NJ

I saw this discussion on Twitter, and it piqued my interest as someone who is big on the atmosphere of metros, but in honor of Halloween I’m curious to hear what the creepiest/most disturbing/most unsettling station on your local network is. The consensus for mine (SEPTA) seemed to be that it’s the expansive, overbuilt, liminal concourse of Walnut-Locust and/or the partially abandoned, neglected, and mostly deserted Broad-Ridge platform at Fairmount Station on the BSL.