POETRY HISTORY

Noah Bruce’s article in your January 19 issue, “Poets get ready to rumble,” is an encouraging yet inaccurate account of Portland’s spoken-word community.

While Jay Davis’s monthly event at Free Street Taverna has succeeded over the past two years, it has yet to eclipse the popularity, endurance, or sheer intensity of the reading series originally spawned there in 1994. BSI Communications initiated that reading series with the help of Kris Savage and Pete Kostopoulos at a time when readings were already thriving at Cafe No and Granny Killams and still managed to attract full houses for four straight weeks in their first month. The bi-weekly reading series that followed developed through evolving casts of regulars until it finally broke down in 1997. Cafe No and Granny Killams had both closed previously. A burgeoning, hungry, diverse group of writers dispersed, some went on to better things, some lost interest, but most kept writing.

Steve Luttrell did a lot for Portland’s latest resurgence in reviving his Cafe Review readings at Oak Street Theatre in 1998 and by simply maintaining The Cafe Review itself, after all what is performance without product? He also survived the fall of Oak Street well with a smooth transition to the Center for Cultural Exchange.

Jay Davis did well to revive the open reading series at Free Street Taverna, although I haven’t seen a slam at one of his readings since last summer because no one has chosen to compete. Regardless, readers still regularly attend because they know the Free Street Taverna is a place to speak out, experiment, and grow.

Portland has a good stock of young talent that through the work of Bluntfest competitions (whose slams feature actual competitors) and Words and Images has encouragement and experience behind them when they turn 21. Likewise, many writers have returned to or discovered Portland’s readings and have formed an exciting scene, although appearances by Pat Murphy, Doug Bither, John Nichols, and Annie Sekonia are still sorely missed.

If a slam scene could establish itself here it has the best chance it has had in five years. I wish any competitors all the luck they can swallow. I just wish people would remember where they came from.

Rodney Nason
Portland

MYSTERY TRAIN

My compliments to you on your recent article about the Boston-Portland Amtrak service.

One correction: there was no such railroad as the “Dover and Hudson.” I believe that you were trying to name the Delaware and Hudson, one of our nation’s oldest railroads. Guilford bled that property white when they owned it, and it took much effort from the New York Department of Transportation to prevent that company from going under. Fortunately, the Canadian Pacific bought it, and restored it back to health.

Mark J. Adamcik
Parma, Ohio

As a former railroad brakeman, a former journalist and a longtime advocate of modern passenger-train service, I very much enjoyed Noah Bruce’s story on the long-delayed opening of Amtrak service between Boston and Portland. Bruce successfully identified the issue that has been stalling the debut of this service: how to inject federal transportation infrastructure funds into the only segment of the US transportation industry whose infrastructure (i.e., the right of way plus its improvements) is privately owned — the railroads.

Anyone wanting to follow up on this question might want to talk with transportation officials in California. They have the most successful and fastest-growing intercity passenger-train program in the nation, with annual double-digit ridership growth on all four principal lines — San Diego-L.A. (11 round trips per day), LA-Santa Barbara (five round trips), Oakland-Bakersfield (five round trips), and Oakland-Sacramento (seven round trips).

As in the Boston-Portland corridor, the California trains do most of their running on track owned by freight railroads, in this case Burlington Northern & Santa Fe and Union Pacific. But the California Department of Transportation and its train-operating contractor, Amtrak, are able to get the schedules they want, and the on-line communities have been able to erect the stations they want, because the two railroads are relatively accommodating. Unlike Guilford Transportation Co., UP and BNSF know that passenger trains and freight trains can coexist when all parties are committed to making the relationship work. Passenger trains have been a good deal for the railroads in California. Gov. Gray Davis has just asked the legislature for $90.5 million to build additional passing tracks and double track to help speed up the passenger trains. But when the passenger trains aren’t running, the railroads can use the added capacity to move more freight. That’s called a win/win situation everywhere but on the Guilford system.

Why Guilford hasn’t learned from the successful freight-passenger symbiosis emerging in California, Washington state, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and selected other sectors of Amtrak’s operating territory is a mystery. So is Guilford’s ridiculous assertion that passenger trains cannot be operated safely on the 115-pound-per-yard rail now being installed on its line at public expense. I just got off the phone with a railroad metallurgist whose company provides track products to railroads on both sides of the Atlantic. He tells me that in Britain passenger trains weighing almost as much as those run by Amtrak are operating at speeds of 125 mph on Type BS113A rail, i.e., 113 pounds per yard, and that in France the 186-mph TGV trains use 122-pound rail. In his words, “Seventy-nine miles per hour is not a particularly high rate of speed for a passenger train. It does not place a great deal of strain on the rail and is not dangerous.”

What is going on in the Boston-Portland corridor is clear: Guilford, not content to have public officials put $60 million of free money into its railroad, insists that government buy it an even bigger toy, 132-pound rail, which would permit it to run heavier freight trains at higher speeds. Having looked the gift horse in the mouth, Guilford demands more teeth.

F.K. Plous
Chicago, Illinois

I have long wondered why Guilford’s part in the delay of AMTRAK service to Portland isn’t reviewed by the press more often. I was rewarded by your January 26 article. From the news briefs I have read, it has never been clear to me how Guilford can keep getting away with not settling on an agreement while constantly extracting benefits from Amtrak that exceed the national norm. No one can blame a business for looking after itself — until its tactics appear to resemble extortion. Guilford is right to be concerned with safety, but rebuilding the tracks, at tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers, has added to the safety of their service too.

Amtrak service is compatible with freight service on rails throughout the nation. Why is this arrangement so difficult for Guilford? Perhaps a larger question is how does Guilford manage its business compared with other rail companies? What do Maine businesses that depend on Guilford think of their service? Would anyone dare to say?

Robert H. Kahn
Portland

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