Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
deserve thanks and appreciation for their dedication and effort.
Please make it a point to acknowledge them should you be on
one of those trains.
Track the Train's Progress
A portable GPS is a lot of fun, because it will tell you where the
train is at all times. But for a permanent souvenir of your train
trip, bring along a soft-cover road atlas of the United States. As
your route takes you from town to town, mark the train's prog-
ress on the maps with a colored highlighter. If you don't want
to bring the entire atlas, just photocopy the appropriate pages
before you leave home.
Compute the Train's Speed
The train's speed varies greatly, of course, depending upon track
conditions, grade, the amount of rail traffic, weather, and other
factors. Outside of the Northeast Corridor from Washington,
D.C., to Boston—where Amtrak's high-speed Acela trains can
reach speeds of 150 miles per hour—the top speed is 79 miles
per hour almost everywhere else in the country. “How fast are
we going?” is almost certainly the question kids ask most often,
and there's an way to figure it out quickly, easily, and accurately.
You'll need a sweep second hand on your watch and a calcula-
tor. You can also work out the math yourself. You'll need to be
able to see the mileposts passing by outside your train. (Informa-
tion about mileposts can be found in chapter 10, “How It All
Works.”)
The formula is simple: Divide 3,600 (the number of seconds
in an hour) by the number of seconds it takes you to travel one
mile (the distance between two mileposts). Thus, if it takes the
train 53 seconds to travel one mile, you're going 67.92 mph. The
engineer in the locomotive cab carries a stopwatch for the same
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