TRAIN TRAX/ AMTRAK'S SHINY NEW AIRO SERVICE

Airo Green Cascades added to Amtrak's usual silver, blue and red.

Amtrak’s new trains are arriving soon. Here’s what to expect. 

GUEST BLOG / Text and photos by Washington Post Reporter Andrea Sachs--This summer, if all goes according to plan, Amtrak will begin rolling out the first trains in its sleek new Airo fleet, an eight billion dollar investment the company hopes will usher in a more modern, comfortable and accessible era of rail travel. 

 It is a big order in every sense. In August, Amtrak launched the NextGen Acela, an upgrade of its high speed service along the Northeast Corridor. When the original Acela debuted in December 2000, it offered business travelers a racehorse alternative to the corridor’s workhorses. Airo represents the next phase of that evolution. 

In June 2021, Amtrak ordered 73 Airo trains from Siemens and later added 10 more. Eight six car sets will serve the Cascades route, running from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Eugene, Oregon. 

 The Northeast Corridor is next. The remaining trains will operate from North Carolina to Maine, including routes in New York and Pennsylvania, Amtrak President Roger Harris said at a recent preview at Union Station in Washington, D.C. The company plans to integrate Airo into Northeast Regional service in 2027. So far, executives say, the project remains on budget and on schedule. 

 The timing appears favorable. Ridership has climbed steadily over the past three years. A record 34.5 million passengers traveled last year, a 5.1 percent increase over 2024. 

 “The Airo fleet will set a higher standard for regional and intercity travel, replacing trains that are up to 50 years old,” Harris said. “Our North Star for this whole project can be summarized in two words: the customer.” 

 If the customer experience truly is the guiding light, did Amtrak succeed? 

During media preview of the train, we reclined seats, unfolded tray tables and inspected the bathrooms to determine whether Airo is really built for us. 

 For starters, green is the new silver. With its forest green and bark brown exterior, Airo evokes the woodsy landscapes and outdoorsy lifestyle of the Pacific Northwest. The snowy mountain graphic is open to interpretation. Is it Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, Grouse Mountain, or a composite of all three? 

 Inside, the palette is soothing, with a hint of hygge rather than plaid flannel. Seats are a light gray reminiscent of a bright overcast sky. A strip of green peeks out from behind each headrest like a Douglas fir rising between city buildings. 

Tables and tray surfaces echo the blond wood tones favored by Scandinavian designers. The train feels more spacious and brighter, thanks to taller ceilings and large panoramic windows. Travelers get a full view of the passing landscape instead of the truncated scenery framed by the older split window design. 

 Each six car train holds 317 seats, with 72 in each coach car and 50 in business class. The seats are not as plush or wide as those on older models. You will not sink into them, but you may find your posture improved. 

 The thoughtful details stand out. Tray tables adapt to shifting needs. A smaller shelf slides out for a device and drink, complete with a separate cup holder. For a meal and a movie, the full tray unfolds, and a small ledge with a latch secures a tablet in place. 

Personal reading lights keep illumination focused on you rather than your sleeping neighbor. Every seat has its own power outlet in the center console, eliminating the awkward negotiation with a seatmate for a charge. And instead of reclining backward into the space behind you, the seats slide forward within their own footprint, preserving the personal space of the passenger in the next row. 

 Accessibility moves to the forefront, from sweeping design changes to smaller details such as adjustable tables and braille seat numbers. “All of our new trains are highly accessible, and we’re spending two billion dollars on making our stations more accessible,” Harris said. “It’s really a core theme for Amtrak.” 

 Boarding is easier, with integrated wheelchair lifts in coach cars to handle low level platforms. Inside, 32 inch accessible corridors allow greater mobility than standard passageways. Entryways and restrooms provide a 60 inch turning radius, ample for wheelchair users. 

 New seating configurations also accommodate mobility devices. Near the bathrooms, a window seat paired with an open aisle space allows a passenger traveling with a wheelchair to sit comfortably alongside a companion. Another configuration can accommodate two wheelchair users with a table between them, suitable for a meal from the cafe car or a snack delivered by cart. 

 Two large, clearly marked buttons call for assistance or activate lighting. The emphasis on usability extends even to the smallest details. Train restrooms are rarely a highlight of the journey. The Airo facilities, by comparison, feel like a meaningful upgrade. The lavatories are spacious, with touchless fixtures that eliminate the need for creative elbow maneuvers. A full wall baby changing table gives parents room to maneuver. A small shelf and three hooks offer space for bags and coats. Multiple hand grips provide stability if the train shifts. In an emergency, a clearly marked call button summons help. 

The cafe car is designed strictly for ordering. Without tables, the message is clear: purchase your items and return to your seat. The menu, still in development, will incorporate regional flavors and brands. During the preview, options included Tim’s Cascade Style Potato Chips, Bob’s Red Mill oatmeal, Alki Bakery cinnamon rolls and a grilled chicken Caesar salad. 

 A service cart is also in development, though Amtrak has not yet confirmed whether passengers will order via an app or during the cart’s rounds. Among the most welcome additions are filtered water dispensers, a familiar amenity in airports. The refillable bottle stations, paired with the upgraded restrooms, are a practical feature many travelers will appreciate. 

One final note. The Cascades trains carry this Pacific Northwest inspired design. On the East Coast, Amtrak executives say, the Airo fleet will retain the traditional red, white and blue livery.

RETRO FILES / THOUGHTS ON AGING FROM A LONG GONE SHRINK. CHANNELING CARL JUNG.

Every generation believes it invented anxiety about aging. The young fear becoming irrelevant; the middle-aged fear becoming tired; the old fear becoming invisible. Yet the older philosophical tradition — the one that predates self-help aisles and longevity supplements — treats age not as a failure of youth but as its final achievement.  

The essay we almost lost belongs to that earlier lineage. Its author does not promise eternal vitality, nor surrender to decline. Instead he proposes a harder idea: vigor is not energy. Vigor is orientation. A man in his seventies walking slowly toward the horizon may possess more vitality than a thirty-year-old sprinting away from time.  

Carl Jung would have recognized the argument immediately. He believed the first half of life builds the ego, but the second half integrates the person. And integration requires the cooperation of four faculties we spend youth using separately: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition.  

Youth trusts sensation. It lives through the body — speed, appetite, attraction, reaction. Everything is immediate and therefore urgent. Later comes thinking, the architecture of careers and plans, the belief that life can be engineered forward like a bridge. Feeling follows more slowly, often painfully, when consequences arrive and relationships outlast ambitions. But intuition — the last and most unsettling faculty — only awakens when time becomes visible. Only when one knows the road is finite does one begin to ask what the road means.  

Modern culture tries to keep us in the first two stages forever: sensation and planning. Stay young, stay productive, stay expanding. Death becomes a medical failure rather than a human certainty. 

But Jung understood that a life lived only outward never becomes whole. The psyche, like a courtroom, eventually calls its missing witnesses.  

The retro philosopher treats death not as an adversary but as the judge’s gavel — the sound that brings testimony into order. Without an ending, experience would not accumulate into wisdom; it would scatter into endless activity. Mortality does not steal meaning from life. It concentrates it.  

This is why aging can feel calmer rather than smaller. Sensation quiets but becomes sharper: a single cup of coffee replaces a night of restless pleasures. Thinking softens into perspective rather than strategy. Feeling deepens because relationships outlive roles. And intuition — long ignored — begins connecting the story backward. Events once random begin to form a pattern, not imposed but discovered.  

The essay rejects the sentimental lie that old age is merely decline. It describes subtraction as revelation. When speed leaves, character becomes audible. When ambition narrows, attention widens. Youth asks what it can still become. Age asks what it has always been.  

There is freedom in accepting the boundary. Once death is no longer treated as a stalking enemy, life stops resembling a siege. Days regain proportion. Conversations lengthen. Urgency shifts from accumulation to presence. You stop trying to outrun time and start accompanying it.  

Jung’s final insight fits perfectly here: the goal of later life is not survival but wholeness. The psyche does not want endless extension; it wants completion. A good old age is not youth preserved but youth understood.  

Death, then, is not defeated. It is acknowledged — and in that acknowledgment loses its terror. The last chapter is written not to avoid the ending, but to justify it.  

Strangely, that may be the most youthful idea of all.