Why Are There Still So Many Train Stations Named Penn Station?

If you ride Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor enough, you've probably witnessed the Penn Station mix-up. A conductor announces Newark Penn Station and some passenger — either uninitiated with Amtrak or in a car without great speakers, or maybe both — gets a little frantic wondering if it's New York Penn Station. Amtrak seems to be aware of the problem: I've noticed that many conductors now announce "Newark, New Jersey, Penn Station" just to be clear. This doesn't resolve the problem, but it helps.

Granted, the idea of a few passengers getting a shot of nerves every now and then, or in the worst-case scenario actually missing a stop early, ranks pretty low on the scale of human tragedies. Still the situation got me wondering, recently, why so many stations have bothered to keep the name Penn Station. The Northeast Corridor claims three (New York, Newark and Baltimore); Pittsburgh uses the name too. But private passenger rail in the United States is long gone, and even if it does make a little comeback — well, the Pennsylvania Railroad isn't coming through that tunnel.