Amtrak North-East Corridor

The North-East Corridor (NEC) is a section of rail running from Boston to Washington, DC. Unlike most of the rest of the country, Amtrak itself owns and operates the tracks in the NEC. The NEC is electrified, and is home to the fastest trains in the country, such as the Acela.

Besides Amtrak, quite a few other regional railroads use parts of the NEC track.

See also the Northeast Corridor Wikipedia page.


While Amtrak is often inexpensive, there are some extra things you can do to reduce the cost of your trip.

Generally, I have found train travel to be competitive with iir, bus, or car travel. Of course, the specifics will vary depending on where you are going, when, and on what train. Check out the How to Travel by Amtrak page for information on getting fares online or by phone. Also, there are lots of discounts available.

Traveling by rail can be a fun, rewarding, exciting, and inexpensive experience. There are lots of Reasons to Travel by Rail. But it’s different in many ways from air or car travel. Read on to learn all about your trip.

Let’s talk about what you can expect on the train. We’ll start with the layout of the train, and go on to describe different parts of it. Scroll down for more.

There are a lot of reasons! Let’s look at them:

Amtrak is the only cross-country passenger railroad in the United States. Outside a few regions, Amtrak is usually the only way to travel state-to-state by rail, and is the only regular option for cross-country travel by rail. Amtrak operates the trains, and mostly runs on tracks owned by freight railroads. Amtrak is a quasi-governmental corporation, created in 1971 when the passenger railroads at the time wanted to get out of the passenger business. For more information on the history of Amtrak, see the Wikipedia article on Amtrak.