Amtrak

Facing a possible strike that could have stranded hundreds of thousands of commuters, Amtrak reached a preliminary deal Friday that apparently heavily favored the railroad's nine unions, which have worked for years without a contract.

IT'S a long way from Los Angeles to Chicago in a coach seat, especially if that coach seat is on Amtrak's Southwest Chief. The train journey takes 42 hours, winding through Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois, but an upgrade to a more comfortable and private sleeper can be prohibitively expensive -- unless you know the ropes. As a frequent flier fan (or, some would say, fanatic), I can play the airline upgrade game with the best of them.

An Amtrak train struck a compact sport utility vehicle Tuesday, killing all five people in the SUV. None of the 70 passengers or crew members aboard the train, heading from Bakersfield to Oakland, was injured. Shortly after 2 p.m., the driver of the SUV tried to drive through a crossing as the train was approaching, said Steve Mayotte, chief of the Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District.

Amtrak is trying to gin up new business by offering $100 in free alcohol to customers on some overnight trains, including West Coast trips. The national passenger rail company is making the unusual offer to promote a new high-end service being offered on a trial basis for certain sleeper car trips. Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program -- the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers -- can get a $100-per-person credit for alcohol from November to January.

To take Amtrak's Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to the Bay Area is an all-day excursion, 12 hours if you're lucky, 14 or more if there are delays. You can do it only if you have time to give yourself over to the experience, which is why, on a Saturday morning in summer, my 12-year-old son, Noah, and I are in our seats, waiting to leave Union Station for the long passage north.

An Amtrak train plowed into the back of a freight train and crushed one end of a boxcar under its wheels, injuring dozens of people, some seriously. Some passengers were hurled into the seats in front of them in the accident on Chicago's South Side, authorities said. One of the passengers, Coert Vanderhill, 60, of Holland, Mich., said the train was approach- ing the station at 15 to 20 mph when the engine "just ran right up the tail end" of the freight train. Vanderhill suffered a small cut.

Federal transportation officials were still trying to figure out Saturday why two trains were on the same track at the same time when they collided Friday on Chicago's South Side. People were catapulted from their seats when the double-decker Amtrak train traveling to Chicago from Grand Rapids, Mich., crashed into a freight train. Most of the 187 passengers aboard the "Pere Marquette" walked away without major injuries.

Electrical problems are piling up for Amtrak along its showcase Northeast corridor routes, the latest delaying thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters. The "power fluctuation," as Amtrak put it, stopped trains in the New York-New Jersey area. The Northeast corridor, with the railroad's busiest and most profitable lines, runs from Washington to Boston and is fully electrified.

Amtrak trains returned to a normal schedule through the Sierra Nevada on Saturday, two days after the fatal derailment of a runaway maintenance train spilled thousands of gallons of diesel and hydraulic fluid and damaged 600 feet of track in a thickly forested canyon. The first freight train had rolled through the accident scene by midmorning Friday. Crews worked the rest of the day repairing parallel tracks that were also damaged in the accident about 60 miles east of Sacramento.

In a change of course on a key safety initiative, Metrolink board members Friday voted to begin negotiations on a sole-source contract with Amtrak to provide train crews for the five-county commuter rail service starting next summer. The action represents a change from June, when the board approved a plan to hire train engineers and conductors directly. Given the safety improvements straining the rail agency's resources and Amtrak's experience and interest in providing train crews, board members unanimously agreed that negotiating a sole-source contract was the best option for maintaining operations.