Amtrak Ads Through the Years

If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember some of these.

There’s one with the amazingly catchy show tune-style chorus of “All aboard! All aboard! All aboard Amtrak!” And one, clearly from the mid-70s, with a lounge singer crooning about the virtues of train travel (the latter also features an intimate moment of a mustachioed groom carries his bride over the threshold of the sleeper cabin.) In both there are mentions of strange artifacts like “Yellow Pages” and “travel agents.”

But these ads also underscore that for more than 30 years, Amtrak has been a static entity. Adjusting for hair styles and production fads, the spots from the Ford administration could still be running today. The only substantive development that your average passenger could point to in the last three decades would be the introduction of high-speed Acela service in late 2000 (a year behind schedule).

The $8 billion in rail funding that Obama demanded be in the stimulus package probably marks the beginning of a new age of rail in this country. (With all due modesty we’ll note that the Infrastructurist broke the story that it was Obama who demanded the $8 billion for high speed rail funding — four days before this Politico piece re-broke it.) Which probably means Amtrak should get a new ad agency.