Passenger Train

Q: How do I find out about old electric Lionel trains? My set, purchased in 1938, is in good running condition and has its original box and instructions. Is it valuable?A: Condition, age, rarity and demand help determine how much collectors might pay for a set of old Lionel trains, according to Ron Hollander, 197 Lincoln Ave., Newark, N.J. 07104. He is author of "All Aboard! The Story of Joshua Lionel Cowen & His Toy Train Company," ($14.95 paperback, Workman Publishing). He says your circa 1936-'41 "Commodore Vanderbilt" set, named for the founder of the New York Central Railroad, is a common model, worth around $200.

Last summer, when the paving trucks showed up, fans of the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad deservedly got a little nervous. The object of their veneration is a sliver of railroad track that bisects North Charles Street in the Woodbrook neighborhood of Baltimore County. Thousands of drivers who pass over the track every day probably have no idea what it was and where it went. It is left over from the days when the Ma & Pa zigzagged for 77.2 miles across the Maryland countryside from Baltimore to York, Pa. That track, which was left unpaved, is where a head-on collision shattered the tranquillity of a late-spring Saturday afternoon.

Last summer, when the paving trucks showed up, fans of the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad deservedly got a little nervous. The object of their veneration is a sliver of railroad track that bisects North Charles Street in the Woodbrook neighborhood of Baltimore County. Thousands of drivers who pass over the track every day probably have no idea what it was and where it went. It is left over from the days when the Ma & Pa zigzagged for 77.2 miles across the Maryland countryside from Baltimore to York, Pa. That track, which was left unpaved, is where a head-on collision shattered the tranquillity of a late-spring Saturday afternoon.

Luke Curlett, 6, clutched his train-theme library books and stared at the photo of a locomotive exhibited 84 years ago at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad centennial celebration in Halethorpe. The image is one of 11 in the Arbutus Historic Mural Project on display at the Arbutus Library. Any train book, photo or toy enthralls the kindergarten student at Relay Elementary, who visits the library branch at least weekly, said his mother, Kerri Curlett. "I like that they make that big whistling sound," said Luke of the trains he hears rambling through his neighborhood.

An Amtrak secretary was struck and killed by a train yesterday at Pennsylvania Station while apparently taking a shortcut to catch another train to her job in Washington.The Amtrak employee, Robin Cook, 33, of the 1400 block of St. Michael's Court in Edgewood, was pronounced dead at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center about 10 a.m., a center spokesman said.She was struck by the train at the station off North Charles Street about 7 a.m., Baltimore police said.The victim worked as a secretary for the Amtrak chief of police in the capital.

Robert T. Pierson grew up in Carroll County hearing about the 1905 Western Maryland Railway wreck that killed 26 people. Pierson, 32, owns the Whistle Stop Shops & Cafe in Patapsco, some 300 yards from the site of the wreck, which happened 100 years ago yesterday. "As a kid, I used to go down to the Whistle Stop to buy penny candy and they had old photos of the wreck on the walls. I was fascinated by them, and my grandfather, who was a Western Maryland conductor and who had lived in Patapsco, told stories of the wreck," Pierson said.

Optimists were in short supply in 1971. When Presiden Richard M. Nixon signed the legislation creating Amtrak, many critics viewed this last desperate attempt to save the intercity passenger train as nothing more than a visit by the undertaker to a terminally ill patient. Passenger trains, critics thought, would be consigned within a few short years to the American technological attic, next to the Conestoga wagon and the overnight packet boat.It didn't happen.On Wednesday, Amtrak was able to light twenty candles on its birthday cake and found itself wallowing not only in public acceptance but congressional acceptance.

In an effort to select trains for its new high-speed service in the Northeast corridor, Amtrak will soon begin testing a German passenger train, which will be available in October on a trial basis on its Metroliner service.The InterCityExpress (ICE) is designed to travel in excess of 150 mph on straight track and could shave five minutes off the two hours and 20 minutes it took the Swedish X-2000 to make its recent trial runs between Washington and New York.Demonstration of the German-built ICE is the next step in Amtrak's $800 million plan to improve service between Washington and Boston to lure automobile and airline passengers.

The passenger train that snaked through the Howard Street Tunnel, Remington, Charles Village and Waverly seemed to attract more photographers than Elizabeth Taylor's wedding.At grade crossings and bridges in Baltimore, Harford and Cecil counties and northward to Philadelphia, the shutterbugs were out in droves. The occasion was the one-day re-creation of the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's famed Royal Blue."This might be the excursion of the decade," said James Genthner, a Baltimore rail enthusiast.

ABERDEEN -- Sixty seconds.That's all that kept the January 1987 Amtrak train disaster -- in which an Amtrak passenger train collided with a string of Conrail locomotives in Chase, killing 16 people and injuring 170 others -- from happening in Harford County."

With the coming of Amtrak 40 years ago last week, many of the nation's fabled passenger trains, including the Baltimore & Ohio's premier Capitol Limited, which sailed daily between Washington and Chicago for nearly 50 years, began their final runs April 30, 1971. The clock inextricably ticked toward midnight when at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, May 1, 1971, the National Railroad Passenger Corp. — better known as Amtrak — would assume operation of 182 passenger trains with 21 intercity routes that served 314 American cities and towns.

For all the controversial efforts to bring high-speed passenger rail to places like California and South Florida, the ideal location for such a major investment is in Baltimore's backyard. That was recently confirmed by an independent study that found the Northeast corridor would return the most bang for the high-speed rail buck of anywhere in the country. The report released this month by America 2050, a coalition of transportation planners and policymakers financed by a handful of charitable foundations, found high-speed rail works best in corridors of 100-600 miles connecting major employment centers, the shorter and more densely populated the better.

The Obama Administration has discovered high speed passenger rail as both a job stimulus and a means for balancing fuel and environmental constraints with increasing personal transportation needs. Various state and regional groups, supported by self-proclaimed high speed rail experts, are competing for federal seed money grants. Winners will be chosen; losers encouraged to try again with the hope of an ever increasing fund supply. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation visits foreign countries to see how high speed passenger rail works.

George Daniel Williams, a veteran locomotive engineer whose career began with the old Pennsylvania Railroad and ended with Amtrak, died Nov. 25 of complications from a stroke at Lorien Mays Chapel Nursing Center in Timonium. He was 84. Mr. Williams, the son of a farmer, was born and raised in Johnston County, N.C. After graduating from high school in 1941, he worked during World War II in a defense plant in Elizabeth City, N.C. He moved to Baltimore in 1945 and went to work for General Motors' Fisher Body Division on Broening Highway.

The "report card" issued by the 9/11 commission this week was a frightening indictment of the administration and Congress for their failure to protect Americans at home. "Scandalous" was the word used by the commission's chairman and vice chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana. Scandalous that police and firefighters in the major cities still can't communicate reliably in a major crisis, scandalous that airline passengers still are not screened against a terrorist watch list and scandalous that homeland security money is doled out politically to communities at less risk, rather than to places where the risk is highest.

Robert T. Pierson grew up in Carroll County hearing about the 1905 Western Maryland Railway wreck that killed 26 people. Pierson, 32, owns the Whistle Stop Shops & Cafe in Patapsco, some 300 yards from the site of the wreck, which happened 100 years ago yesterday. "As a kid, I used to go down to the Whistle Stop to buy penny candy and they had old photos of the wreck on the walls. I was fascinated by them, and my grandfather, who was a Western Maryland conductor and who had lived in Patapsco, told stories of the wreck," Pierson said.

An Amtrak secretary was struck and killed by a train today at Pennsylvania Station while apparently taking a shortcut to catch another train to her job in Washington.In unrelated fatal incidents in the past 24 hours, four other people, including a 33-year-old man who was attempting to elude police during a high-speed chase, were killed in automobile accidents.The Amtrak employee, Robin Cook, 33, of the 1400 block of St. Michael's Court in Edgewood, was pronounced dead at the Maryland Shock-Trauma Center about 10 a.m., a center spokesman said.

SHANGHAI, China - Every weekend, an unusual train glides out from a nondescript station, carrying its passengers at remarkable speeds along tracks high above the farms and factories east of downtown Shanghai. With a cruising speed of nearly 270 miles per hour, it is the fastest passenger train in the world, but what makes the train truly extraordinary is what it lacks underneath its alloy chassis: wheels. At a cost exceeding $1.2 billion, the Shanghai Transrapid line might be the most expensive 19-mile train route on the planet.

HAVRE DE GRACE - An Acela train on its way to Washington struck and killed a pedestrian yesterday evening, according to an Amtrak spokeswoman. About 5 p.m., train No. 2253, carrying 126 passengers, struck a person as the train passed through Havre de Grace. No one on the train was injured, Vernae Graham of Amtrak said. No further details were available.

GLENDALE, Calif. - A man apparently intending to commit suicide parked his SUV in the path of a Metrolink commuter train yesterday morning, then jumped out of the way in time to watch a chain-reaction wreck that killed at least 11 people and injured about 180. The collision, which involved three trains, was the deadliest U.S. rail crash since 1999. It shattered the pre-dawn stillness near Griffith Park with what witnesses described as the sound of scraping gravel followed by a sustained boom that shook the ground.