MR WRONG: Working on the railroad
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 143
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: My Train of the Future Is the Train I Have Now, Only More of It
I GOT THIS an email from Amtrak today on account of I ride Amtrak as much as possible when I am going from my castle in Baltimore, MD to New York City, a/k/a Fun City, and also to Washington, DC a/k/a Our Nation’s Capital. I rode an Amtrak once from Albany, NY, to Deland, FL, on the way to Daytona Beach, FL, and we spent almost the entire, I think it was 20-hour, trip in the club car or whatever it’s called, with the big windows and sort of diner-like tables, I don’t know if they have that anymore, but we played cards and got loaded on beers we brought on board, and then we slept it off by the time we hit Florida. It is a great way to travel, I think, effortless compared to driving, way better than the bus because the seats are way bigger and you can get up and walk around and go to the snack bar and stuff, and a lotta times when you figure in the time getting to the airport and security and stuff, faster than a jet plane. And the bathrooms are bigger.
Anyway, I have an Amtrak loyalty account or whatever, and I get emails, and I got this:
ARRIVING AUGUST 28
Joseph, as one of our most valued Amtrak Guest Rewards® members, we wanted you to be the first to know that NextGen Acela will soon be available to book on select departures. This modern, elevated experience will change the way you look at train travel. Watch your inbox for more information on how to book your future NextGen Acela travel with Amtrak.
The Acela is the very fast train that I took one time to go from Baltimore to NYC. I think it makes fewer stops and you go pretty fucking fast. It costs a lot more, so I don’t take it very often.
I took this screenshot off a speedometer app on my phone, and looking out the window it sure did seem we were going well over double double-nickels. I don’t even know really how much time you save, maybe a half hour? I guess if the speed was a buck-sixty it’d be better, but anyway, Baltimore to NYC in two hours and change is great, the drive is twice that and there’s tolls and New Jersey to deal with, so again, I am all-in on Rail transportation, but this news about the Acela made me wonder about all the hoo-hah I see about “high speed rail,” like around Baltimore it’s this thing, the Maglev, a supercalifragilistic magnetically levitating thing that’ll go, I dunno, a couple three hundred miles an hour?
The one I keep seeing is Baltimore-Washington Superconducting Magnetic Levitation Project (SCMAGLEV), which, no offense, I keep seeing SCAM in there, har!
The Superconducting Maglev (SCMAGLEV) is the latest advancement in the world of high-speed ground transportation. This revolutionary system is not your typical train. In development since 1962, the SCMAGLEV is a futuristic magnetic levitation system that uses powerful magnetic forces for all aspects of operation—acceleration, deceleration, guidance and levitation—resulting in operating speeds of over 300 miles per hour in everyday service, and travel times unlike anything traditional trains can achieve.
They used the word FUTURISTIC in there, for fuck’s sake. The governor of Maryland, I voted for him, dude was looking at some sorta super train stuff in Japan, I don’t even know if it’s the SCMAG-type of Lev, and the one he was looking at wasn’t even built in Japan yet, so anyway, the Maglev needs all sortsa new corridors to run the tube or whatever it needs, the magnets, through all sortsa Rights of Way and then it has to get paid for and/or built, and meanwhile, we have the fuckin’ Amtrak tracks right there and they work and by the end of the month it might be going a buck-sixty miles an hour up and down my Northeast Corridor, you know? It’s always this shit about DC TO NEW YORK IN TEN MINUTES, and like for who? For how fucking much a ticket? I mean jeez, if it ain’t built, don’t build it, fix the shit we got running already. More train! Thank you.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
Cape Town, August 7, 2025
★★★ An ibis gave a scream and flapped around in the thick branches of the hotel's sprawling fig tree, which was about a century-and-three-quarters old, according to the sign attached to the trunk. The sky was mostly clear along the way to Table Mountain, but the one portion of gray in sight was at the destination, engulfing the peak of the Lion's Head and forming a band of cloud below Table Mountain's vast, flat summit. From the roadside overlook at the foot of the aerial tramway, the city lay in overcast shade with the harbor shining silver beyond and the long dark shapes of ships resting there. Somewhere around 1,700 feet on the ascent, thick whitish gray engulfed the cable car and resigned exclamations spread among the tourists inside. The panoramic-windowed car rode on through a gray void broken only by the cables and by the quickly passing bulk of the other car headed down. Then suddenly there was a pale, near-vertical rock race covered with lichen and little sprouting bushes, and the car was coming to a rest looking out over a sea of whiteness, with bits of distant land showing out far past its edge. Off the edge of the mountaintop opposite the sun there was a floating arc of brightness like a colorless rainbow. For the acrophobe, once the slick wet floor tiles of the passage off the tram were done with, conditions were ideal: nothing to demand attention out past the plunging edges, only the broad solid plateau of ancient sandstone, weathered into rounded hollows and protrusions by millennia of this sort of gently abundant wind and water. Cloud-mist drifted among stunted trees and the vegetation dripped with it. The pitted parts of the rock had little pools of water in them. Some flecks of the lichen were bright red or orange on the drab rock. A white fuzz of mist clung to the windward side of a black wool hat and black scarf. The sky faded into blue directly overhead even as bits of cloud blew across the path. Further along the water amounted to a shallow pond, ruffled by the wind. Neighboring prominences of rock appeared and vanished again. Visible mist blew in the doors of the gift shop and beaded on the underside of the glass shelving. The ride down repeated the passage into and out of impenetrable cloud, complete with the other car going by at the thickest again. An hour or two later, after hotel checkout, Table Mountain was still wrapped in the cloud layer and the clouds on Lion's Head and Signal Hill had settled lower until they started to be ordinary fog. Outside the tearoom of a different and grander hotel, sun shone for a while on the pink-and-white balustrade. Dogs chased one another in the park until one decided to try chasing an ibis instead.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS THE Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
POD JOB DEP'T. Vacation season is upon us and the Indignity Morning Podcast Studio anticipates a two week shutdown unless some un-ignorable piece of news breaks, and I find myself with unstructured time and a connection to the Internet, but, assuming nothing unexpected happens in either direction, we will talk again on August 11th.
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Dr. Allinson's Cookery Book: Comprising Many Valuable Vegetarian Recipes, by Thomas Richard Allinson, published in 1915, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
CHOCOLATE SANDWICHES.
1/4 pint cream, 2 bars of good chocolate. Grate the chocolate, whip the cream, adding a piece of vanilla 1/2 in. long; slit the latter and remove it when the cream is whipped firmly. Mix the chocolate with the cream and spread the mixture on thin slices of bread; make into sandwiches. If desired sweeter add a little sugar to the cream.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
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