The Failure and Success of Great American Transit | Amshacks 

This was a video I made for Patreon subscribers back in the day, thank you to everyone who supported at the time! Since Patreon has been off for a while and I have clocked out of the video factory for a few years I wanted to make it public because this was a video I really love making. Enjoy!

Bigmoodenergy? In 2024? It's more likely than you think

Unbreakable She alive dammit It's a miracle

She has returned!

apology for poor english where were you when penn station dies? i was sat at windsor locks mugging grandma when stuart ring 'ny penn is kill' 'no'

That's a very interesting point about historical preservation. I think that many older (pre-amshack) stations were so successful and beloved because they established a special social experience around rail travel that has now been lost in almost all of the country (but is still mostly alive in europe, japan, etc.). Stations like grand central, boston south, washington union (except the "gate" area) are genuinely nice to spend time in because they're designed to uplift the experience of rail travel. Most US airports don't do that at all - they're just a place where being in an unpleasant environment for an hour or two is a price you pay for traveling at 500mph through the air. In trying to attune their image to the zeitgeist of airtravel, 60s Amtrak shot themselves in the foot. people don't want rail travel to be like air travel. they want it to be actually pleasant, and a well-designed station can do that. I just don't think that amshacks do - they provide a "not entirely unpleasant" experience, which isn't enough. I think they're worth preserving as buildings, but I don't think they're worth preserving as stations. We have do better. Great video!

I should have known never cleaning the fridge would eventually lead to a time portal swallowing me up, depositing me back in 2020 ... curses!

Richmond Staples Mill is probably one of the most successful amshacks. It is Virginia's most used station with over 400k riders last year and it recently had some renovations.

16:53 Brothers-in-arms. Ha! Thanks for the history tour of Amshacks. They will not be missed.

The Return of the Queen

hey i've been there (windsor locks)

Great to see you uploading again! Even though I'm personally not a fan of the minimalist design of the amshacks, I do appreciate the in depth architectural explanations off all the stations mentioned on that timeline towards the middle. I feel there isn't a strong demand to preserve these amshacks due to their much smaller, albeit cheaper design when compared to their predecessors, but I do agree that most smaller station designs and renovations should be kept on the cheap side, but still look nice and should be placed in a central location of the town instead of off to the side. Just don't use bus shelters and a platform and call it a day. I actually called out several stations along the Metro North Waterburh Branch, not too far from Windsor, CT, for their poor station design in my branch line review series: Fixing Your Branch Line.

Since this video was originally published, the Tacoma Amshack has been decommissioned and now Amtrak trains are routed through the much newer Sounder commuter rail station. The new station has links to light rail and is in a much more walkable part of town, as opposed to the old station, which was sandwiched between the highway and the docks and not particularly close to anything.

epic work. Now let us all collectively weep for the destruction of Penn station. BTW epic holst jupiter music

This is a good video. I like how you've used Cities: Skylines to generate the old stations over time. It's so sad to see those old iconic buildings replaced by freeways. It's also disappointing that they've put them in such far off (and some downright dangerous) locations like it was some afterthought, and built them so cheaply. I've been to Thailand and Vietnam and while I see some of the railway buildings look so dilapidated, but what's different is that they're surrounded by little enterprises where people patronise to buy food or other produce or other things, whereas these ones, the passengers just want to get out of there ASAP.

Amshacks aren’t dying anytime soon imo. Having been there (I agree, the station was fine!), Grand Forks, North Dakota doesn’t have enough money to care about updating their station.

And here I was thinking you were going to do a video on misplaced bus shelters. You've swayed my heart; I now want a local rail museum in an Amshack.

hopefully at least one Amshack can be preserved somewhere, they honestly seemed like a pretty reasonable design to fit a lot of changing factors beyond Amtrak's control

Seattle King Street Station is a pretty good restoration!

Footage looks so good that it is easy to forget this is CS1, until you see the gummy-looking Cims milling about...

This is the kind of niche content I come to the youtubes for

(happy bong sounds)

She’s alive!

I was not expecting my sunday to become infinitely better but bigmoodeneegy posting again definitely made my weekend! :D

Lost my mind to see a new bigmood video on my feed.

hey welcome back

With Greyhound closing stations and relocating service to curbside pick up, small US cities should pursuit Amshack like bus depots. They're small but that's appropriate for small towns and their intercity bus service.

SHES BACK

There's a small Amshackesque station still in service near Virginia State University (Ettrick - PTB). Lots of fond memories there waiting for a visiting aunt that disliked flying.

Our queen has returned!

Was super excited to see this in my feed :)

The queen is back

she is back!!!!

Schenectady used to be my home station and the elevator was by far the scariest elevator I've ever ridden, you could barely feel it moving because it was so slow and the floor was basically made of gum with dim flickery lighting

That was a really great video. I think when it comes to our rail infrastructure, it comes back to one thing: private monopolies will underserve and overcharge. Most of the railroads in this country are private, and we observed a gradual decline in railroads from when they were built in the 19th century to the 1950s, just as economic theory predicts privately owned utilities will do. Buying out big companies was seen as "communist" even though it would be limited to just railroads, so it doesn't really follow Marx or Lenin's views, I digress, and when the death knell of Penn Central, which had a near absolute monopoly of efficient transportation between the manufacturing of the midwest and east coast ports went bankrupt, Conrail was created. Conrail gradually improved as its profits went back into reinvesting, and by the 1990s, it was profitable. Then we sold it off... the biggest mistake Clinton made in his presidency. We kept the corridor between DC and Boston and the line to Port Huron, Michigan, and it's easy to tell what is private and public when you ride AMTRAK today. If it's fast and electric, it's publicly owned and operated. If it is slow, stops in random places, and is diesel, it's private. Penn Central was in really bad shape in the 1960s, but the expectation of a renaissance of passenger rail was not unreasonable after Conrail was formed. It just took 20 years for the mistakes of Penn Central to be fixed, and then we privatized and threw it all away. I frequently think that if we had not sold off Conrail and had continued the exponential improvement of the service, the Midwest would have much better service than it has today. We could have gradually expanded AMTRAK service in Virginia and North Carolina much faster than we are now if those tracks had come under Conrail ownership, eventually electrifying the entire route from Atlanta to Boston. With better AMTRAK service, the Amshacks would then have likely gotten better local transit service and maybe even been moved downtown in the best-case scenario over the last 30 years. They built stations but didn't provide the necessary service and connectivity to really take advantage of them. With faster, more frequent service on AMTRAK, we'd live in a very different country. We almost had the second great era of American rail, but ideology got in the way of economic growth. It's a shame.

YOURE BACK! Immediate like before the video even started

Like I can't get over the Holst soundtrack for crappy buildings in the states surrounding were I live, built around the time I was born when so much crappy stuff was built!

You're back!!

Essex Junction has a 70s style that is one waiting room which is crazy because it serves Burlington which is like... the only city in the whole state. But VT does do a lot of things right! For example, my hometown on 7,000 has a, I kid you not, full pedestrian phase on its traffic signal!!!

It's been 80 years...

Interesting video

i had no idea richmond staples mill was pre-standard! they’re planning on replacing that one in the next few years (and revitalizing the historic downtown station). i didn’t even consider it before watching this, but maybe the shack does deserve some memorialization. maybe with a cheesy mural in the new headhouse

we're so back

I feel like what many of these "shacks"could do easily is get local artists to make a train mural on the walls be that inside or out and it will make it much more a habitable and many would easily do it for free or even a token fee so not exactly bank breaking for the tax payer. Having what looks like old banks is just depressing.

Large Emotion Force

hey you're back yay

the difference between amshacks and other modernist buildings, some of which are already unfairly getting knocked down (or heavily damaged in refits and refurbishments that ruin the original look) is that the amshacks are not architecture. they are buildings designed to be purely utilitarian, infinitely reproducible and cost efficient. There is no spark there. In my opinion, nothing worth preserving. One might be able to make a similar point about say a 1900 2 story brick storefront, but I think a key difference there is the preservation of the larger urban fabric, which as u have discussed in the video isnt very applicable to amshacks built in the middle of nowhere. That storefront can go through many different alterations and additions, its a part of the living breathing city. These amshacks are not built for permanence, but with a shelf life. You're right that we should be more careful with the modernism we are currently destroying. And one could make an argument that we could be making the same mistakes again. But I see the general post war era as a time when zoning and such first shifted urban development in such a way that separated the places where people live, shop and work, leading to entirely unnatural uncomfortable urban landscapes that broke with millennia of urbanist tradition. These fundamental shifts in methodology not only led to massive new developments but also radically altered the existing urban fabric in a very short time, probably before people realized the full scale of what urban renewal had done. So what I'm getting at is to get back to healthy cities, there will need to be a lot more demolitions of modernist buildings and I don't think it will be a mistake. great video im glad i became a patrón

This is soo random I was just thinking about this series haha

Lovely editing once again Alex! I never really had a good insight how American infrastructure has developed the way it did, aside from car-centrism and general uhh.. capitalism, so these vids are really informative aswell as being entertaining. $2 well spend! Also GO TRAKS (i guess)!

Wait, it dropped 1 minute ago but there are 4 year old comments?

Yes diva

When I was a kid in the 90's me and my dad took the train all the way from Seattle to Disney Land. During the trip there was a minor earthquake and all the trains stopped, so they dumped us out at what I'm now understanding was most likely an amshack. I remember the square overhanging roof and the interior/chairs matching perfectly. It was way too many people for such a small station so everyone spilled out into the searing california summer sun. A replacement bus service took us the rest of the way to around LA I think, which was a big fancy station they were filming a movie at. I've always wondered where this station was. Are there any amshacks in California north of LA?

We should just pioneer maglev at this point

Damn, too late on my patreon sub to make the credits.

What program are you using? It reminds me of SimCity

We will be eating good

✌🏾

yaaaaay

I’m conclusion Am=Am Shack=shack Any questions?

Why did you have to excite us? C'mon Alexandra, we need more gay-coded transit content.

I know it's a joke but I'm a little sad that people who want beauty in this world again, are once again labeled as extreme right. Fascist even.