Pennsylvania One - Text
Caucasian female, 30's, born and raised in Havertown. College at Penn State. Has held a variety of jobs in banking, but worked in downtown Philadelphia for Amtrak when Cynthia Blaise recorded this interview on 7.03.99. Subject has middle-class Philadelphia dialect, and exhibits interesting "vocal fry" at ends of phrases. She talks about her work with Amtrak and high speed trains. Edited by Paul Meier 9.16.99.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
Well, I was born in Upper Darby actually, but I grew up in Havertown, which is right next to each other. I went to Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. I was a French major and a Business minor. I went back to school to Villanova University, in Villanova, Pennsylvania, which is also a suburb of Philadelphia -- and I took the train to get there -- um I guess in 1991 for my Master's Degree in Liberal Studies, where you take a selection of various courses, um from the Arts, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences.
Amtrak is a very very interesting place. They're about twenty years behind the times, which is okay, um because it's quite a challenge. Um but it's very interesting. Um it's an interesting industry, definitely different from banking. Um I've done a lot of neat stuff related to trains, like going into Centralized Train Control where they um track every single train on part of the North East Corridor. And all computerized, it's kind of like NASA: you go into this dark dark room, no windows. And in the front of the room there's a huge board that just has different colors on it that signify different things. Um and they just track the progress of the train, and it's so cool. Um if there's an accident or um like a c.. if a conductor can see something on the tracks ahead, you know, he calls into Centralized Train Control and they immediately alert y'know 911 and Fire and Police, and all that stuff, so that is kind of cool. And I got to go on the high-speed rail locomotive [?showing me?] all the technology that we're using is from Europe: France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain. Um they've all had y'know pretty sophisticated train systems and a lot of the countries have high-speed trains so, we are behind the times, but we'll be catching up soon.
Transcribed by Kevin Flynn, March 2006