Amtrak is preparing to let passengers carry guns in their carry-on bags for the first time on the trains that serve the Northeast Corridor — the Acela and the Northeast Regional among them — under a policy the railroad says it will phase in from January 2027, and the union that represents the workers who staff those trains is calling the plan “sheer lunacy” and asking the federal government to reverse it. Under the policy, as Amtrak described it in a statement to WABC-TV (ABC7 New York), passengers aged 18 and older will be able to bring declared, unloaded firearms and ammunition in carry-on bags on trains that do not offer checked baggage, travelling only between staffed stations, with the gun in a double-locked, hard-sided, TSA-compliant case that cannot be opened during the trip. The Transport Workers Union (TWU), whose Local 1460 represents Amtrak’s on-board service workers, set out its objections in a statement on November 5, according to ABC7, USA Today and Scripps News reporting.

Source: ABC7 New York (WABC-TV), Amtrak statement, via Workers Rights News summary, Nov 7, 2026

The change is narrower than the headline suggests, and the limits are the story. Today, Amtrak allows firearms only on a few dozen long-distance trains, and only in checked baggage, stored in baggage cars away from passengers. The new option applies only where there is no checked baggage to use — trains such as the Northeast Regional and Acela — and only between stations with Amtrak staff, because the lock procedure runs through station agents: under the procedure described in the reporting, a gun owner brings the cased weapon to a station agent, who attaches an Amtrak-owned combination lock before the trip, and an agent at the arrival station removes the lock. Advance notice is required, the passenger must be 18 or older, and state and local gun laws continue to apply at both ends of the journey.

Source: Deep Arrival summary of Amtrak statement to WABC and TWU statement of Nov 5, 2026

How Amtrak explains it: an executive order and the airline comparison

Amtrak told WABC that the change fits Executive Order 14206, signed by President Donald Trump on February 7, 2025, which directed the attorney general to examine federal actions for infringements of Second Amendment rights, and that it aligns Amtrak with other national transportation carriers, “such as airlines.” The railroad said the rollout is phased — it began with the Auto Train on September 1 so the railroad could closely monitor the first stage, with other routes to follow in 2027 — and that it eventually expects to allow declared, unloaded firearms on all trips between staffed stations, subject to local and state laws. Amtrak’s own published baggage rules, checked on November 7, had not yet caught up: they still list firearms as not allowed in carry-on bags and accepted only in checked baggage on trains and at stations offering that service, with a separate procedure for the Auto Train. Amtrak has not yet published the full new rules.

“Sheer lunacy”: the union’s case against

“This is sheer lunacy,” said John Feltz, director of the TWU’s International Rail Division. The union represents 360 on-board service workers at Amtrak — train attendants, café staff and others who work in the passenger cars where the locked cases would now travel — and more than 160,000 workers across airlines, railroads, transit and other sectors overall. Feltz disputes the airline comparison directly: “You can’t walk onto a plane with a gun; it has to be checked with your luggage and stowed away.” That is also the federal rule for flying: the Transportation Security Administration’s guidance says firearms are not allowed in carry-on bags on aircraft and are allowed in checked bags only if unloaded, declared and locked in a hard-sided container. The union argues that a case or lock could fail or be forced open, endangering riders and crew in a confined carriage, and it raises the position of stations with no Amtrak employee or law-enforcement officer on site to respond to an emergency. TWU is asking the federal government to reverse the policy.

Source: USA Today and Scripps News reporting of TWU statement, via Workers Rights News, Nov 7, 2026

TWU staff representative Brian DeLucia put a scale on the change: an additional 1,500 trains a day across the country, he said, including service on the Northeast Corridor — the Washington–New York–Boston spine on which, the union says, about 750,000 people ride each day across the corridor’s services. Those are the union’s figures, offered in its campaign against the policy, and Amtrak has not published its own count of affected trains. The corridor matters to this readership in particular: it is the rail spine for the Punjabi diaspora communities of New Jersey and New York — Edison, Jersey City and the wider New York metropolitan area sit on or beside the Northeast Regional and Acela routes — as well as for the Washington and Boston ends of the line.

Background: from baggage cars to the seat, under administration pressure

For years the compromise on American trains has been distance: guns could travel, but in a locked case in a baggage car, on the limited number of long-distance trains that carry checked baggage at all. The corridor trains that carry the most people have no baggage cars, which is why the question has arrived now. Amtrak had previously said it was considering a change after pressure from the Trump administration to loosen restrictions on transporting weapons, but it had not set a start date; the January 2027 date, reported by USA Today and Scripps News from Amtrak’s statement to WABC, is the first timetable the railroad has given. The reporting is not identical on every detail — ABC7 describes a phased approach with other routes to follow in 2027, while the union states the wider rollout is scheduled for January 2027 — and the open questions in the coverage are exactly the ones regular riders would ask: which routes, on what dates, and with what published rules.

What happens next

The policy now enters a two-month contest. The TWU is lobbying the federal government to reverse it before the January rollout, and the union’s public campaign — its November 5 statement, carried by USA Today, ABC7 and Scripps News — is the opening move. Amtrak, for its part, had not answered the union publicly in the coverage reviewed as of Sunday, and USA Today reported it had not heard back from Amtrak or the union as of Friday. The next concrete steps are Amtrak’s: publication of the full rules, the route-by-route dates for 2027, and any response to the safety objections about unstaffed stations and lock security. Awaaz Punjab will update this report when Amtrak publishes the rules or the rollout dates, or if the federal government acts on the union’s request.