The Quiet Car

I am not a big fan of Amtrak because they are ridiculously slow, chronically late, and poorly scheduled. Typically in my ranking of modes of public transportation they are only a small step above Greyhound, and I hate Greyhound because I'm still scarred from all of my college trips home on the bus and my near-death experience at a Greyhound station in Detroit, even though that was more than a decade ago. That said, Amtrak has just gained a little more respectability in my book because of my trip yesterday. I took the train from Albany to New York City for a seminar on the presentation of information, which by the way was great. It was a 2.5-hour-long trip and each way Amtrak was less than 5 minutes late. That is truly a record! But what really impressed me was that on the 6 a.m. trip to NYC, Amtrak designated the last car in the train as a "quiet car." No talking, no phones, no loud anything. Heaven! Well, as least as close to heaven as Amtrak will ever get.