Political Briefs
Elementary, my dear Watson

Color Me Impressed: New Mexico's RailRunner

I am sitting on board Train 511, the 4:10pm Southbound New Mexico Railrunner from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. Because of a scheduling quirk, I can't get all the way to downtown Albuquerque. The Southbound train arrives 15 minutes too late for the northbound departure, so I'll be getting off at Journal Center and waiting 15 minutes for the train back north to Santa Fe. Why yes, I am a train geek, why do you ask?

The New Mexico Railway Express (NMRX) is impressive several ways. There is free onboard Wi-Fi (officially, they are testing it). There is great air conditioning. The cars are double deckers, and the upstairs has a great view. This is clearly much newer equipment than they use on the Caltrain lines, either from San Francisco to San Jose or Oakland to Sacramento. It has a roadrunner logo (a stylized one, not a Warner Brothers one) painted on the side of its trains.

The tracks run down the median of Interstate 25 (which means they don't follow the old ATSF route to Lamy), but if you're upstairs you can see over the cars. And by a  half-hour out from the station, the right of way veers away from the freeway into its own little world, with nothing but an access road running parallel to the track. The round trip is $8 (must be amazingly subsidized). The 4:10 was jammed (mostly with tourists, I would judge), but there are clearly also lots of locals. At these prices, who's surprised? Although the trains are capable of 100 MPH, the top speed is 80 MPH, which is the speed at which we travel on those long, lonesome straightaways where the track is level and there are no grade crossings. Sometimes, for miles, there is no other mode of transportation visible.

The high desert is beautiful. The ride is quite comfortable; the track and ballast went into revenue service in December 2008, and clearly this is welded rail, because there is no clickety clack. Well,. some of it is and some of it isn't. The new part (18 miles) near Santa Fe is; some of the old Burlington Northern Southern Pacific Track (the other 70 miles) is not, including the track at the Journal Center station. All the sidings are slick new welded track with concrete ties.

Many of you may not have realized before what a railroad geek I am. I am not worthy to kiss the rings of real railroad phreaks; I do not own a collection of  steam and diesel engine photographs, and I can't tell a 4-6-4 from a 8-10-12. My real love is streetcars. But America's first all-new passenger train railroad tracks in 80 years were irresistible. On the way back, I sat in what  I like to call the "geek seat," the one facing out the front window, where you can see the track and the signals. I could see the speedometer and the engineer's hands, but not the engineer's face. I assume from their size, the flowery blouse and the nail polish that the train was being run by a female engineer--mighty rare.