We are often very focused on the equipment side of railroads. It's important to remember there is a human side as well. History is playing out right now as the Brunswick ticket agent has retired and is being replaced by a machine. Some of you might remember, like I remember, twenty some years ago CSX Chairman Hays T. Watkins was quoted saying something like "we sold the first train ticket and we'll sell the last".

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... 8173.story

In the mid 1950s, B&O president Howard E. Simpson declared that B&O had sold the first railroad ticket in America and, "come hell or high water" they would, if necessary, sell the last.

Hays T. Watkins was working in the C&O finance department at the time. His hostility toward anything that lost money (especially the C&O's Lake Michigan car ferries) was well known, and if he quoted Simpson some 30 years later I doubt it was approvingly.

Thanks for the clarification on the quote. Sometimes things get mixed up.

Sorry, they lost. We have the hell, but not enough high water.

MARC still retains a ticket agent in Odenton, on the electrified ex-PRR "Penn Line." There is also still a contracted independent seller at Frederick's new station, and Amtrak agents at Penn Station in Baltimore, BWI, and Washington Union Station will still sell you a MARC ticket. However, the day is fast approaching when all such sales may be via ticket machine and/or online.

(Part of the delay in the entire system is bureaucratic. I'm in a pilot test program for Maryland MTA's "Charm Card," a "smart card" that is supposed to be able to read balances and passes from an electronic card. In spite of the MTA shelling out $90 million so far over ten years, I'm still on the third phase of the testing, expected to end at the end of this month, and so far tested only on the one-line, out-and-back Baltimore Metro. "Software compatibility issues," they claim.)