Smitty,

Please don't be so hard on photographers who want to get photos legally, and who do no harm. Have you been to Los Angeles Union Station or San Diego of late? How about Sacramento? Taken any photos there? In the past year I have been approached by Amtrak employees and security guards at all three stations. Three times in San Diego. Twice while in San Diego I was with a party of people, we arrived and left on a private car. I was only on the platform near the private car. I can assure you that as an experienced railroader, I was not anywhere I should not have been, or in any unsafe position. Yet I was approached and asked to stop taking photos, on two different occasions by security guards, and once by an Amtrak mechanical person at San Diego. Yet during these occasions when I was stopped, obvious trespassers were allowed to wander aimlessly, some panhandling passengers, yet the guy with the camera gets stopped!

Last July I was down in the tunnel leading up to the platform at Los Angeles. I was departing on Train No. 14. An Amtrak station employee who was attempting to separate coach from sleeping car passengers stopped me at the lower end of the tunnel, demanding to know if I was a coach or sleeping car passenger. I told him that I was a pass rider, going to the ten car (head sleeper). As I started to produce my ticket, from my backpack, which contained my camera gear, this station employee saw my camera and lenses. He loudly proclaimed that I could not take pictures on Amtrak property. Even though I had no intention of getting the camera out at that point, I calmly informed him that what he was telling me was untrue. He demanded I.D. Knowing this man was not anyone important, and certainly not security or a police officer, I simply turned my back on him, and went the other way up the opposite tunnel, with the coach passengers. I then walked a bit of extra distance on the platform to get around the tunnel he was seeking to keep me out of, even though "his" tunnel was the shortest distance to the head end of the train, and the ten car. There are almost always panhandlers and other worthless characters throughout Los Angeles Union Station each time I go there. Yet ticketed passengers with cameras get approached.

On the return trip from Oregon, last year, at Sacramento, I detrained from Train No. 11, and went into the station to change my ticket to ride Train No. 702 instead of a bus. After changing my ticket, I went up the wrong tunnel to a track that a Capitol Corridor train was waiting on. Realizing that I needed to be one track over, and that there was plenty of time, I took a couple of photos, from the platform. Then I went back down, and headed up to the correct track that No. 702 had just backed into. An Amtrak station employee started after me, looking rather determined. He said something about "no photography" which I pretended from a distance not to hear, and just kept on walking. He was then stopped by some people asking him questions. He and I had just walked by a couple of kids taking flash photos, with cell phones of each other, inside the tunnel. This allowed me to get further ahead of him. He was just emerging from the tunnel, when I stopped at trainside and shook hands with the outbound conductor. A conductor whom I had worked with at Santa Fe, whom I had not seen in about 20 years. The Amtrak employee who had previously eyed me suspiciously, then retreated back down the tunnel, without saying a word. But it was fairly obvious to me that he was about to talk to me about his percieved "no photography" policiy, yet declined when he saw that I was likely another railroad employee. The embroidered Santa Fe jacket, and blue bag with Chico on it were a dead giveaway. I feel such encounters have happened because I look "easy," and when the camera is visible it is fairly obvious what I am up to. I can assure you that I'm not a spy, nor do I behave in such a manner that I am a danger.

Needless to say with these and other encounters in the past, I do not trust Amtrak, nor what Amtrak management has been claiming about not harassing photographers. You have to admit that video clip is pretty interesting. Too bad they did not include what Mr. Black had to say on the subject. Must have been rather embarrassing for him. I have never met him, but have been under the impression he is a true professional, often forced to deal with difficult subjects.

I am certain some of you will choose to pick the above story apart, claiming all kinds of things about my character. I hearby yield to all detractors the coveted last words.

Glen Icanberry
Redlands, CA