'Acela' Origins

All you're doing is giving an example of dialectic.....

So what?????????

I could care less how you pronounce it......

mattfels wrote:

I still hear people pronounce it "ACK-sella".

In Mesquite, Texas. So? The nearest place to catch an Acela is about 1,755 rail miles away.

In Acela territory, you'll hear people pronounce the correspondent's hometown "MESS-quite." And before the space program, the largest city in Texas pronounced "HOW-stun."

Mr Gunn has promised to "go down with the ship", and Mr Bush keeps aiming to sink it. Good working relationship?!

I don't think anyone has mentioned the ACE-la variation yet. And I share with Mr. Fels an intuitive feeling that the giant monster phone company is properly pronouncd VAIR-i-zon.

No one ever had trouble figuring out how to pronounce Metroliner, or New England Telephone. But I guess that common English, recognizable names for products and corporations are "out" now. I guess a focus group must have said so.

mattfels wrote:

I still hear people pronounce it "ACK-sella".

In Mesquite, Texas. So? The nearest place to catch an Acela is about 1,755 rail miles away.

In Acela territory, you'll hear people pronounce the correspondent's hometown "MESS-quite." And before the space program, the largest city in Texas pronounced "HOW-stun."

Actually, I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone about Acela out here in Texas. The places I've been where I've heard "ACK-cella" are PA, NJ and NY.

Wow...1755 miles away!?!?
That's significant. Some of that Matt Fels 'fact based reasoning' and 'accountability'. Perhaps you could count the number of words for us too Matt. That's always a good way to bolster an argument.
Throwing numbers around like that is pretty impressive.

Mr Fels--I'm sure that many Texans, as well as New Yorkers, mispronounce place names, etc. However, New York has a street named Houston, pronounced HOWston. It is named after William Houstoun, a Georgia delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention who married the daughter of a NY real estate magnate. The street name appears on the 1811 map of NY, made long before anyone but his mother heard of Sam HEWston. I looked up these facts after I got tired of hearing New Yorkers being accused of mispronouncing the name of the Texas leader or city. Turns out we have two names that have come to have the same spelling but have different pronunciations and refer to different people.

"Hew"-ston and "House"-ston are the same family name (though Sam and William would've had to go back many generations to find a common ancestor). Original pronunciation was "House"-ston; as with all language, it evolved regionally. Both are, of course, correct.

So let's pronounce Acela however we want. We'll all be right in a century or two.

As for Mesquite: we barbeque in Brooklyn, too.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Sorry, Mr. Fels, the defense is in the numbers "7 'n 7".

I'll grant you Mr. Gunn won't be on an Acela "outta Dodge" the way Harry Truman was on the B&O National Limited on Jan 20, 1953 (in line space at that), but the pattern is pretty strong that somewhere during the course of any Administration, the Amtrak presidency has changed hands.

Accordingly, I can only conclude that if there is to be a Kerry Administration, even if only four years in duration, in all liklihood there will be a new Amtrak CEO.

Just because the numbers match, doesn't mean one causes, or is even in any way related to, the other.

For example: Graham Claytor was Amtrak president from 1982-1993 (or 94?). By your logic, he should have been replaced between 1988 and 1992, because George H. W. Bush was president, and, after all, a new US president means a new Amtrak president, right?

Tom Downs took over in 1993/94 (don't know the exact date), during the Clinton presidency, and despite Clinton's reelection in 1996, George Warrington got the job in 1997.

That said, I don't think the upcoming election will have any determination on the Amtrak presidency, except that if george bush remains in the white house, there may not be an Amtrak for David Gunn to be president of. He keeps trying to kill Amtrak...errr.. I mean...force the states to pay for it. Of course, all those states are just lining up, cash in hand, eager to take over the responsibility of funding intercity rail. I mean just last week, the governor of Illinois demonstrated that state's eagerness to fund more rail service by proposing to cut Amtrak funding by about $2 million (a move that would cut Hiawatha service in half) to fix a budget deficit. How anyone can think Bush's "plan" for passenger rail is a good idea is beyond me.

I'll be casting my ballot this November (if you want to go forward, you put it in "D," if you want to go backward, you put it in "R")...oh wait, what was the topic again? I forgot.

David Gunn has his five-year, state-of-good-repair plan. If he gets the money to complete it in five (or maybe six) years, that'll be good. However, once Amtrak is "back on its feet" (or on its feet for the first time), and there is a LEGITIMATE commitment to funding passenger rail in this country (not any of that phony $5 billion promise, with only half the funds appropriated...so that implies some sort of trust fund), it will be time for someone new. I'm hoping that occurs before November 2008, so that the someone new can be a true visionary that will expand passenger rail service throughout the country, and David Gunn can retire back to Nova Scotia, having succesfully rescued and reformed yet another public transport company.

So, in summation, David Gunn's the right guy for the time being, but he's not going to grow Amtrak. For the next Amtrak president, I'd like to propose...myself!

Speaking of "growing Amtrak", how does one do that with funds being made short by Congress and a "mandate" that you cannot add new routes until your current loans are paid off?

Truth is, any ED of Amtrak, even the most incompetent of them, could have "grown" the company were the funding not a mere trickle and were more in line with what the bigger EU countries are giving their railroads.

Irish Chieftain wrote:Speaking of "growing Amtrak, how does one do that with funds being made short by Congress and a "mandate" that you cannot add new routes until your current loans are paid off?

Truth is, any ED of Amtrak, even the most incompetent of them, could have "grown" the company were the funding not a mere trickle and were more in line with what the bigger EU countries are giving their railroads.

Hence the third sentence of my second-to-last paragraph.

Ok, You guys are way WAAY off topic here. My question was kind of answered back in the first two posts. (Thanks guys!) Now, you are bickering over how Amtrak presidents and 'actual' presidents some how correlate and how to pronounce 'Acela.'

If you want to talk about something different that what the topic is on the post, don't hijack it. JUST START ANOTHER.

Heck, I vaguely remember the announcer at Newark Penn Station pronouncing the name of Florida train Champion as 'Champeen'. No-one was confused thinking it was the Monmouth Junction local.

Although is is standard for cabinet members to change to between presidential admistrations, the heads of independent agencies and organzations (like Amtrak) may or may not change. Even though, Presidents have replaced their cabinet heads midway through their terms as well.

Anyone care to ask DCI Tenet about life expectancy in an Administration other than which gave you your appointment?

Just in case you didn't catch Dan, Tom, or Peter tonight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/inter ... NE.html?hp

Not that this is going to help, but for the record, I've always hated the name Acela. It sounds weak, forced and utterly uninspiring. It sounds exactly like something a company calling itself IDEO would come up with.

And that initial ad campaign was just the worst. They let cutesiness and pseudo sophistication get in the way of the main selling point of faster, better service. It was a classic example of runaway creative self-indulgence, IMHO.

IMHO? Who am I kidding?