Amtrak Brands & Logos
http://www.trainweb.com/news/2002/2002f14a.html

New Amtrak President David Gunn speaks out
about Amtrak's new Acela Brand and Amtrak Logo.

From the "Washington Post", Friday, June 14, 2002; Page A29:
"The Late, Lamented Metroliner" Click here for the original article.

Amtrak got a lot of kidding for naming its new high-speed trains "Acela." (For example, Acella with two l's means "armpit" in Italian.) Now new President David Gunn has joined the chorus, telling a meeting of the American Public Transit Association Wednesday in Baltimore that he can't understand why Amtrak ever gave up the name Metroliner.

"That's like Coca-Cola changing its great brand name into 'brown liquid in a bottle,' " he said, according to our colleague, Don Phillips. "Acela, to me, is the room before the first floor."

The trouble is, he said later, too much marketing has been done and he can't give up the name entirely. But he said he may reverse Amtrak's policy of naming everything on the Northeast Corridor Acela-something, such as calling the regular trains Acela regionals. "That just confuses the passengers," he said.

Gunn has other symbols he doesn't like. He insisted on having his official portrait made with a lapel pin of the old Amtrak logo, commonly called the "pointless arrow." The new logo is hard to describe. It looks like a series of wavy lines or maybe a seashell run over by a train. Some Amtrak old-timers have taken to calling it "the flying breast implant."

Click here for the complete transcript of the APTA Commuter Rail Conference session with Amtrak President David Gunn.