Amtrak security is visibly on track

WASHINGTON -- Passengers at Union Station file briskly past the Amtrak ticket taker, eying the platform where the 4 p.m. Acela waits to take them to New York City and other points north.

Periodically, an armed agent steps forward to pull one of them out of the steady march to the train and directs the passenger to a security area where other agents are scanning bags for explosives.

A few people look mildly irritated at the inconvenience — but most don't seem to mind.

"I'm delighted," said passenger Linda Rhodes, a pharmaceutical industry businesswoman heading for New Jersey's Metropark station on a recent Wednesday afternoon.

She said she appreciated seeing the agents on the platform as a deterrent to terrorists who might be planning to bomb a train because "they're going to strike where no one's looking."

That's the idea behind Amtrak's new security push — to let the bad guys know that the nation's train stations and rail cars aren't the open, easy targets they once were.

Since February, a new team of highly trained and heavily armed counterterrorism agents has been working Amtrak's East Coast stations considered to be the highest threat for terrorist attack. They show up without warning and ask passengers to present their bags to be scanned with explosive detection equipment.

Each scan — which involves swabbing the bags and sending them through a machine that can pick up explosive residue — takes about 15 seconds, and the passenger is sent on his or her way to grab a seat on the train.

If a scan comes up positive, agents hand-search a bag. They have never found a bomb.

What's more likely is that "someone went shooting the day before" and ended up with explosive residue on his clothing or bag, Amtrak police officer Jim Cook said.

No trains are held up for the security scans; passengers aren't required to show up earlier than they would otherwise.

No one has yet refused to have a bag scanned out of thousands of trainloads screened since February.