I've been a long time patron of Amtrak going back to the early 90's. I was living in Raleigh at the time and would commute to Charlotte regularly. I lived in DC for 15 years and had access to Amtrak on the Washington Metro Rail and Virginia Railway Express was so easy. Sometimes I would take the VRE to Washington Union Station and from there you can go anywhere in the US that has Amtrak service. My preference was the Acela high speed train to NY or to Boston. A next level experience and a hint of what high speed rail might be one day in the US. All this to say, I was back at the CLT Amtrak station to p/u James who took the train from Raleigh. There are now 8 (eight) trains to/from CLT & RDU. It was 'close' to on-time as well. Only about 10 minutes late which is not bad considering multiple stops. The CLT Transport authority is working on the new Uptown Station which remains under construction. It will connect with the Lynx line as well as the Trolley. CLT has waited a long time for this vision to become reality. I took some photos which are posted on the Yelp site and you can see, it's spartan. It's not changed much in 25 years. The biggest changes is the new Starbucks that's across the street. read more