Introducing a new, semi-regular, feature of smogr: Logo Smackdown!

Logo Smackdown will feature one logo against the other in a cage match where our reader will critique the two logos and smogr will (more or less randomly) name a winner.

First up is the Amtrak, which is the many-headed hydra frankenstein of a national railroad:

For passenger train lovers, May 1, 1971 was a day of reckoning, as Amtrak began its first day of operation, and many privately operated long-distance trains made their final arrivals. The first day saw 184 Amtrak trains running on a 23,000-mile network that served 314 communities.
Sadly, this was half the amount of some 440 passenger trains that had run the day before. Even factoring in the 34 additional trains still privately run by freight railroads after May 1, the loss of service was staggering, and many large cities and small towns suddenly had no passenger service at all.

I still love the original logo – the “new” one’s color is boring (sea foam green?), smashed text and whimsical logo mark is just off the mark.