All aboard: Maiden voyage of Atlantic City-NYC link

ATLANTIC CITY - The gamblers, the honeymooners, the prizefighter, the vacationers and the casino entertainers riding the inaugural Atlantic City Express Service train between the Big Apple and the Queen of Resorts probably won't ever form a crowd of Friday "regulars."

But that's OK with executives from Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah's Resort Atlantic City, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa and the New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which have invested more than $19.8 million in the joint venture to link New York City's Penn Station with Atlantic City by rail for the first time in decades.

"Every week, it'll be a different crowd with different people with different reasons for wanting to take this train from New York to Atlantic City," said Joseph Tyrell, regional vice president for Harrah's, as he surveyed the crowd of about 100 paying customers who joined casino and state officials and media representatives on the maiden voyage yesterday. "And it's what's going to help make Atlantic City a destination that's easier to get to for a whole new market of people."

Carrying overnight bags and other pieces of luggage, the passengers boarded the train for the scheduled 21/2-hour ride that stretched into two hours and 45 minutes.

After pulling out of Penn Station precisely on schedule at 2:30 p.m., the train made a brief scheduled stop in Newark's Penn Station and then journeyed nonstop southwest across New Jersey, over a Delaware River railroad bridge and into a Philadelphia freight yard. There, the ACES train halted for more than 20 minutes as the engines were switched from electric to diesel, and then waited for the tracks to clear of Amtrak trains before being given the go-ahead to proceed to Atlantic City. The train arrived in Atlantic City about 5:15.

"We live in Florida, work in Manhattan, and we like to go to A.C. a couple of times a month and gamble when we're in New York," said Norman Payo of Orlando, on the ACES train with his wife, Carol. "We would usually rent a car and drive down. We'll see how this goes and do this instead if it's quicker."

But for Elizabeth Ross of Aberdeen, Wash., the train ride was more about savoring the experience than it was about getting to Atlantic City quickly.

"I'll be spending about a week down there, so I just wanted to be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the scenery on the way," said Ross, traveling solo on a three-week East Coast jaunt. "When I contacted AAA, they told me about this new service, and it sounded great, so I said, sign me up."

And while ACES, with its plush leather seats, might be all fun and games for the passengers on the Friday-through-Sunday service who are willing to plunk down $50 each way for a coach seat and $75 for a first-class ticket, officials are hoping service will be a spark that helps ignite Atlantic City's flagging casino industry, which has seen revenue declines and layoffs in the last year.

"Our approach with this has been to partner with our competitors to attract a different market base of customers," said Auggie Cipollini, senior vice president at the Borgata.

"We're not just going through our old databases and marketing to the same old customers; we're marketing to new customers in a new way."

With billboards in Times Square and at Penn Station and other locations throughout Manhattan, and a marketing campaign that includes mailers and radio, newspaper and television commercials, Cipollini said, Atlantic City casinos were hoping to attract people who had never even thought of setting foot in a casino before.

That thinking worked for Melanie and Lance Malone, a twentysomething newly married couple who, in these recessionary times, had planned on forgoing a honeymoon when they married last month. Then they saw the sign in Times Square.

"We don't have a car, but we wanted to get away cheap, and taking a bus seemed so unromantic," said Lance Malone, a graduate student at New York University. "Now, we can get away for a few days, do the casino and the spa thing, and feel like we at least had a little bit of a honeymoon."

And that's why Gov. Corzine, who rode the train briefly between New York and Newark, said such an expensive investment at a time when the nation's economy remains in peril was a good idea.

"This train is a connector, a connector of one of the most important marketplaces in the world, the Northern New Jersey-New York market, with Atlantic City," Corzine said. "This is something that will generate revenue at a time when we sorely need more revenue generated."

ACES (www.acestrain.com), operated by New Jersey Transit, covers the cost of operating the train, with no cost to taxpayers, Corzine said.