Pointless Prize: Golden Spike award

[arlcxrider]

To encourage more bikes on trains, and maybe something “fun” in the mix if the weather’s nasty, I’m offering the Golden Spike Award pointless prize.

THE RULES

1. Ride your bike to an active station where passengers board and alight. Location must have regularly scheduled passenger service. For example, the Vienna depot on the W&OD doesn’t count, neither does the old B&O station in Silver Spring. What constitutes “riding” to the station is on the honor system.
2. Intercity (Amtrak or equivalent), commuter rail (MARC, VRE, etc), heavy rail (WMATA, etc.) and light rail transit (DC Streetcar, Baltimore light rail) all count. Must be steel wheel on steel rail. (I will make an exception for Montreal.) Trolley buses (i.e., there is no fixed guideway) don’t count. Airport people movers don’t count.
3. Submissions to the forum must include a picture of the bike with a station sign.
4. Each station sign submission is worth one point and must be unique (no repeats.)
5. One submission per day of Freezing Saddles.
6. BONUS POINTS: board the train or light rail vehicle with your bike from one station and alight at another station. In that case you will claim three points. Must post a picture of your bike with the start station sign, end station sign, and your bike aboard the train to claim the three points.
7. BONUS POINT trips must be unique, but you could, for instance, board the Red Line at Silver Spring and ride to Union Station (three points) and the next day ride from Silver Spring to Rhode Island Ave and claim another three points.
8. Tie-breaking method will be at the sole discretion of the prize sponsor.
9. Useful, but not required, use hashtag #goldenspike on Strava.

Topic

[DCAKen]

3/8/24 Court House metro station

[antibozo]

Kensington MARC station:

[DCAKen]

3/10/24 Vienna metro station to Farragut West metro station

[consularrider]

#goldenspike – 3/10/2024 – Amtrak Station in Connellsville, PA.  Those little white streaks are snow flakes

[Sophie CW]

3/10/34 – Riverdale Park Town Center MARC station

[antibozo]

Accidentally Wes Anderson at Garrett Park MARC station:

[consularrider]

#goldenspike – 3/11/2024 – Caperton Train Station (MARC and Amtrak) and historic B&O roundhouse, Martinsburg, MV

[antibozo]

Silver Spring MARC station #goldenspike with Steve Szibler:

 

[DCAKen]

3/16/24 Palm Springs Amtrak station

[antibozo]

East Falls Church Metro #goldenspike with Steve Szibler

[DCAKen]

3/17/24 Foggy Bottom metro station to Pentagon City metro station

[DCAKen]

3/18/24 Van Ness metro station

[Serdar]

3/18/2024 – From Smithsonian metro station to Van Dorn Street station

[arlcxrider]

Howdy, Goldenspikers. Please post any late entries ASAP.

 

I’m going to tabulate results in the next day or two. A nice rainy day activity, and certainly more fun than doing taxes.

 

See you all at the Closing Ceremonies on April 10, when the lucky winner will be revealed. I’ll also announce some truly useless statistics.

[arlcxrider]

First round of useless statistics:

Number of Goldenspike entries: 185

 

Number of unique carriers: 16

Angel’s Flight

Amtrak (NRPC)

BART

Baltimore Light Rail

Baltimore Subway

Caltrain

DC Streetcar

MARC

LA Metro

Seattle Monorail

Seattle Streetcar

SF Muni

SNCB/NMBS (Belgium)

VRE

Western Maryland Scenic Railroad

WMATA

 

More to follow…

[Author]

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