Spent some time up in the Baltimore area with friends, during the week before Shmoocon. I took the train back. They ask for ID at the train station, when you pay cash for a ticket. They also claim they want you to sign your ticket (which they don't really require) and they announce on the trains there will be random spot checks for ID.

I haven't felt the creeps on a train like that since I went from Frankfurt to Berlin, back when that required crossing the border into East Germany. There, scary guards with machine guns got on the train and actually checked our passports at the frontier.

I don't have a problem with them trying to defend the transportation infrastructure but hassling someone who pays cash and claiming some overworked
underpaid union conductor is going to make sure I'm not a commie trying
to invade the capital looks pretty silly.

Besides, when I looked up the schedule online, the railroad site coughed up furballs and spat out messages with messages like "JRun connection closed". If they're not securing the computers behind the train system I don't feel particularly secure...