Artwork by ROBERT LADUKE
INQUIRER: Amtrak’s updated plan for high-speed train travel on the East Coast envisions 37-minute trips between Philadelphia and New York, after a $151 billion redevelopment of the entire Northeast Corridor. Faster service would be phased in gradually, as Amtrak improves existing tracks, signals, bridges, and power lines and then builds a separate high-speed corridor between Washington and Boston to accommodate trains traveling at 220 m.p.h. In a report released Monday, Amtrak revised its projections for costs, ridership, and the alignment of its proposed new 438-mile high-speed corridor. The high-speed segment between New York and Washington would be completed by about 2030, and the route between New York and Boston by 2040, according to the plan. In Philadelphia, Amtrak envisions bullet trains traveling in tunnels beneath the city, with stops at a new airport station and an expanded Market East station. The plan calls for 30th Street Station, now the city’s main intercity rail hub, to be used for slower regional train service. MORE
RELATED: Robert LaDuke’s narrative paintings are a combination of memories, dreams and everyday life. Some of LaDuke’s most vivid memories are of traveling cross country in the family Cadillac with an Airstream trailing behind. Combined with these memories is a fascination with 1940’s era transportation and because of an inheritance of antique steel toys, it comes as no surprise that the same steel toys often appear as subject matter in many of LaDuke’s paintings. Based on American transportation in the 1930-40s, LaDuke’s acrylic paintings feature toys which were popular during that era. According to LaDuke, his work “is pretty much transportation oriented, trains, ships, cars, trailers, everything that rolls or floats and they always have that nostalgic 40s look to them.” MORE