Amtrak 40th Anniversary Train Visits Michigan

The Amtrak 40th anniversary train sits at the former Michigan Central station in Jackson, Mich., on Oct. 8, 2011.

Amtrak’s 40^th anniversary exhibit train rolled in Jackson, Mich., over the weekend of Oct. 8-9, making its only scheduled stop of 2011 in the eastern Great Lakes region. The train will be in Milwaukee next weekend before traveling to the West Coast to spend the rest of the year.

The train, which is comprised of five cars, was parked at the restored former Michigan Central station in Jackson. Although photographs of the train at earlier stops showed P40DC No. 822 at one end of the train and former F40PH No. 406 at the other, in Jackson, the two units were together with the nose of No. 402, which is now a non-powered control unit, facing west.

It was just as well because the location of the train would have placed No. 822 beyond the platform and away from easy view. Still, I would have liked to have photographed the nose of the 822 without any obstructions. The 822 and 406 wear the heritage Phase III livery.

The five-car train included 10-6 sleeper Pacific Bend, which was not open to the public, three baggage cars turned into display cars and an Amfleet lounge. The latter serves as a gift shop.

Admission to the train was free. Most of the exhibits are uniforms once worn by Amtrak employees, dining car china, posters and other paper artifacts. The uniforms were donated by Amtrak employees and placed on mannequins that were tailored to look somewhat like the employee who donated the artifact.

A particularly popular attraction was a collection of four locomotive horns. Push a button and you could hear what the horn blowing for a grade crossing. Also on display was a control stand from a geep switcher, seats from passenger cars, and catenary from an electric locomotive used in the Northeast Corridor.

The displays were housed in three baggage cars with each car roughly making up a decade of history presented in chronological order. The exhibits provided a nice but general overview of Amtrak history. The primary purpose was to show how the face of Amtrak has changed over the years and to appeal to a general audience, not a group of passenger train junkies.

Still, there was plenty for the devoted passenger train historian to view, including numerous items I with that I had in my own collection.   

The Jackson depot’s waiting room was also transformed into a display area with exhibit from Operation Lifesaver and the Michigan Association of Railroad Passengers, among others.

The display train was parked on main No. 1, which affected Amtrak operations early Saturday afternoon. The eastbound Wolverine Service No. 350 from Chicago was running a half-hour late and the dispatcher held it west of the station until the arrival of westbound No. 353. After the latter completed its station work, it crossed over from Track 2 to Track 1 and No. 350 rolled into the station.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Heritage units 406 and 822 were part of the display.

Uniforms donated by Amtrak employees, posters and other paper artifacts were plentiful in the exhibit train.

Dining car china used over the year was a focal point of the displays.

 

HO scale model trains were used to represent Amtrak equipment. Shown is an E unit in the Phase I livery that was part of the "rainbow era" train.

 

Westbound "Wolverine Service" Train No. 350 prepares to pass the Amtrak 40th anniversary train in Jackson, Mich.

Upgrades Being Made to Midwest Routes

An Amtrak "Wolverine Service" train rolls into Jackson, Mich., on Oct. 8, 2011. The Michigan Department of Transportation has received a federal grant for track work that will cut the running times of Amtrak trains in the state. (Photograph by Craig Sanders)

The U.S. Department recently announced funding of two projects that will affect Amtrak service in the Midwest. A groundbreaking was held in Chicago for construction of the $133 million Englewood flyover.

The project will separate tracks of the former Pennsylvania Railroad and former Rock Island Railroad that cross at grade in the Englewood neighborhood. The former PRR tracks, now owned by Norfolk Southern, are used by Amtrak’s Michigan trains as well as the Chicago-New York/Boston Lake Shore Limited and the Chicago-Washington Capitol Limited.

Englewood has long been a source of delay for Amtrak trains forced to wait until Metra commuter trains on the ex-Rock Island line clear the crossing.

The federal government granted $126 million to the project, which is part of the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program to reduce rail congestion. The Englewood crossing handles 78 Metra trains on weekdays along with 60 Amtrak and freight trains.

U.S. DOT also announced that it has granted $196.5 million to the Michigan Department of Transportation for track and signal improvements between Detroit and Kalamazoo.  The improvements will allow for speeds up to 110 mph over portions of the routes of Amtrak’s Wolverine and Blue Water services, resulting in a 30 minute reduction in travel time between endpoint destinations.  

The Blue Water is a daily roundtrip between Chicago and Port Huron via Flint and East Lansing while the Wolverine service consists of three daily roundtrips between Chicago and Pontiac (Detroit) via Niles, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Ann Arbor and Dearborn.

Work on the 135-mile segment between Detroit and Kalamazoo will involve preliminary engineering, final design and construction. The project includes new, continuously welded rail and ties, fiber optic lines and infrastructure to support a positive train control system, rebuilding 180 highway-rail grade crossings, and gates and flashers at 65 private highway-rail grade crossings.  Construction is expected to begin in late spring 2012.

In addition, MDOT expected to receive a $150 million U.S. DOT grant later this year to purchase the Detroit-Kalamazoo track after grant conditions are met. The track is now owned by Norfolk Southern. Amtrak owns the route between Kalamazoo and Porter, Ind.

Changes in Store for ‘Lake Shore Limited’

The eastbound "Lake Shore Limited" passes through North East, Pa., in late July 2011. In the lead is heritage Unit No. 66. Scenes like this will be harder to photograph here if the train is rescheduled to operate earlier as Amtrak has proposed. (Photograph by Craig Sanders)

Earlier operation in both directions. A “no cash accepted” dining car. Upgraded meal choices in the lounge car. These are among the changes that Amtrak has in store for the Chicago-New York/Boston Lake Shore Limited.

The changes, some of which are at least a year away, were outlined in a performance improvement plan that Amtrak issued in September.

Amtrak has proposed rolling back the Chicago departure of eastbound Nos. 48/448 to 6 p.m. from its current 9:30 p.m. slot. The rational is that earlier arrivals in New York and Boston would improve ridership and revenue. Amtrak reasons that that would occur due to better connections with commuter and other Amtrak trains.

Amtrak also plans to change the westbound schedule, noting that much of the delays that No. 49 experiences occur in the middle of its route, particularly east of Cleveland. The report did not say what the revised schedule would be other than to note that Nos. 49/449 would need to arrive in Chicago an hour earlier to provide adequate time to service the equipment before it heads out later that day for the East Coast.

At the same time, Amtrak plans to have the Capitol Limited depart Chicago about an hour and half later at 7:30 p.m. However, that change can’t be made until CSX finishes a clearance project on the Capitol’s route through West Virginia. That construction is not expected to end for another year.

For several years, the Lake Shore Limited departed Chicago at 7:30 p.m. That changed in 2007 when the departure time was moved to 10 p.m. on account of habitual tardy arrivals in the Windy City of Amtrak’s western long-distance trains. Rather than putting the “misconnects” up in hotels, Amtrak elected to operate Nos. 48/448 on a later schedule.

As for the on-board service changes, the Amtrak report said that coach passengers buy 47 percent of the meals served in the diner and many of them pay in cash. This slows service because the lead service attendant must spend “a great deal of time handling and accounting for cash transactions,” the report said.

Amtrak plans to address this in a two-pronged manner. It will institute a policy that all dining car purchases must be made with a credit or debit card. It also will begin offering moderately-priced fare in the lounge car to supplement the current menu of hot dogs, pizza and pre-packaged sandwiches.

The report said that coach passengers spend, on average, $10.30 per meal in the dining car, leading Amtrak to conclude “there may be an unmet demand for intermediate food options between the relatively high-priced meals sold in the dining car and the . . . [food] available in the lounge car.”

In a pilot program, Amtrak will convert the Lake Shore Limited dining car into a club-diner that will continue to offer full-service meals, but add at-table beverage service outside of normal meal hours. As for the lounge car, the new offerings will include freshly-prepared sandwiches and salads similar to those served in café cars aboard the Boston-Washington Acela Express. If the Lake Shore Limited club-diner concept is successful, it may be expanded to other long-distance trains.

In the meantime, plans to institute a third Chicago-New York service by operating through cars via the Capitol Limited and Pennsylvanianhave stalled due to an equipment shortage. The same shortage has also delayed plans to expand operation of the Chicago-New York Cardinal from tri-weekly to daily. The Capitol-Pennsylvanian cars would be interchanged at Pittsburgh.

The equipment shortages may begin easing in October 2012 when the first of the 130 Viewliner II cars that Amtrak ordered from CAF USA are expected to enter service.

The Lake Shore Limited report also showed that the average age of passengers aboard the train is 54, that 62 percent of the riders are women, 53 percent are employed, 65 percent have a college degree, 41 percent have a household income between $50,000 and $100,000, and that 88 percent were traveling for non-business reasons, with 56 percent saying it was to visit family or friends.

Although the report did not provide any numbers, it indicated that passengers connecting with other Amtrak trains in Chicago accounted for a “significant portion of the Lake Shore Limited’s ridership and revenues.” Ridership in fiscal year 2010 was 364,460 and continues to trend upward. The report said riderhip in FY2011 – which ended Sept. 30 – was up by 7.1 percent over FY2010 for the period Oct. 1 to Aug. 31.

The average coach passenger travels 483 miles while the average sleeping car passenger on the Lake Shore Limited travels 764 miles.

Ten city pairs accounted for 44 percent of the FY2010 patronage with the largest of those being Chicago-New York (11 percent). The other top city pairs were Buffalo-Chicago and Chicago-Syracuse, with 5 percent each; Albany-Chicago and Chicago-Rochester, with 4 percent each; and Boston-Chicago, New York-Syracuse, Chicago-Toledo, New York-Rochester and Albany-Boston, all accounting for 3 percent each.

The effects of the proposed changes for Northeast Ohio residents boarding and detraining at Cleveland will be relatively minor.  Passengers coming from Chicago will be able to have dinner in the diner. But Cleveland’s “middle of the route” status means that Amtrak operations here will continue to be a nocturnal operation and, in fact, will become darker as the Lake Shore Limited schedule gravitates more toward the dead of night hours.

Depending on how the Capitol Limited is rescheduled, Amtrak may find itself placing four of its six Chicago-East Coast trains through Cleveland in relatively close proximity. With Cleveland having a single-track platform, Amtrak passengers can expect to bear the brunt of the operating challenges that may occur if one or more trains is operating substantially late.

Revelation Video Releases “Amtrak 40′ Program

The westbound Lake Shore Limited breezes through Berea, Ohio, behind a pair of SDP40F locomotives in the late 1970s. The SDP40F locomotives did not last long at Amtrak. (Photograph by Richard Jacobs)

Amtrak’s 40^th anniversary has received much attention this year, largely driven by Amtrak itself with its repainting of at least four Genesis series locomotives into liveries once used by the company and a national touring train that provides exhibits about Amtrak history. The nation’s passenger railroad partnered with Kalmbach Publishing to produce a book and it has also created a DVD. Trains, Passenger Train Journal, Classic Trains, and Railfan and Railroad have all devoted individual issues to Amtrak’s 40^th birthday, but otherwise no other videos or books have been released tied to the milestone.

Filling that void is Amtrak 40 1971-2011, a DVD released in late June by Revelation Video, which is owned by Ron McElrath. The video is billed as a four decade retrospective of Amtrak. Although similar in style to programs that Revelation released for Amtrak’s 20^th and 30^th anniversaries, Amtrak 40 differs in that it is not intended to be a review primarily of what happened at Amtrak over the previous decade.

Before discussing what Amtrak 40 provides, it would be useful to say what it is not. It is not a documentary. The video provides some factual background, but that is not its strength. The program is also not organized in linear fashion. Although it somewhat starts at the beginning and works forward, there is much jumping back and forth in time.

Amtrak 40 presents a series of vignettes that give a sense of what Amtrak has been about and how it has changed during its 40-year existence. Many of these vignettes are short and some have been excerpted from previous Revelation programs pertaining to Amtrak.

Opening with footage of Amtrak heritage locomotive No. 156 in the red-nosed Phase I livery that lasted until about 1976 bringing the Adirondack into Plattsburgh, New York,  McElrath, who narrates the video, notes that anniversaries are a time of reflection to think of what has been, what failed to come to be and what might yet come to pass.

With that in mind, the program makes a brief review of the 40 years before the coming of Amtrak. This segment uses vintage movie film of various railroads, some of it black and white and some in color. The contrast in image quality between the old films and modern video is quite stunning. Passenger trains are not the only thing that has changed over the past 80 years.

Amtrak 40 features interesting footage of Amtrak trains during the “rainbow era” when consists featured an array of locomotives and passenger cars still wearing the liveries of their previous owners. These images alone make watching the video worthwhile. Although largely unintentional, there are glimpses at freight equipment that no longer exists and indications of how much the railroad infrastructure and operations have changed. I was struck, for example, by now much vegetation was growing between the rails on the tracks leading into Chicago Union Station in the early 1970s.

The 90-minute video contains ample footage shot from locomotive cabs, primarily the Genesis units that Amtrak uses today. These segments include cab rides on the Downeaster, Cardinal and a Northeast Corridor train heading from New Haven to New York’s Penn Station on a snowy night.

Viewers are also shown various scenes aboard Amtrak trains from the coaches, to the dining car to the sleepers to the kitchen of the diner. Most of these were recorded aboard Superliner-equipped trains. One particular highlight is a ride on a former New York Central open platform observation car on the rear of the Adirondack. With a little imagination you can feel the car rock and roll over the former Delaware & Hudson tracks in upper New York State.

Some viewers might find the fast-paced action a bit disconcerting. At the end of the cab ride on the Downeaster, the viewer is whisked way to the Surf Line between San Diego and Los Angeles and then whipped around the country in rapid succession to view various state-supported services. Although some stories are told deliberately – such as those of the development of the Chicago-St. Louis corridor and the Adirondack – others are more fleeting.

There are a few surprises in the video, including a rapper doing a ditty that pays tribute to the California Zephyr while sitting in the train’s lounge car as it climbs the Colorado Rockies.

To be sure, not all trains that Amtrak operated are shown or mentioned. It is amazing how much history that an operation characterized as having branch line density over most of its skeletal network can make so much history in 40 years. But if you look closely enough, you’ll get a good sense of what has come and gone during that time. Amtrak 40 provides for an enjoyable evening of re-living Amtrak’s past.

Amtrak Approaches Middle Age

Amtrak turns 40 on May 1 and in human terms that means that it will have reached middle age. Like anyone in the middle years of adulthood, Amtrak is showing signs of getting older. It may not have wrinkles and gray hair, but it has plenty of bridges, stations and pieces of rolling stock that are or soon will be in need of a facelift, if not major reconstructive surgery.

Unlike a person, though, Amtrak began life looking like a senior citizen with its collection of hand-me-down locomotives and passenger cars. The first few years of Amtrak may have been its most colorful with its trains featuring a mix of liveries from a couple dozen railroads. But keeping that equipment in operable condition was a daily struggle until the arrival of Amfleet, Superliners and F40PH diesels. Horizon coaches and Viewliner sleepers later joined the roster in relatively small numbers.  

Some streamliner era equipment remains, primarily baggage cars and diners, with a great dome car thrown in for good measure. The F40 has given way to the P42DC Genesis locomotive. Over the years, other motive power that graced the roundhouse included the SDP40F, the P30CH, the GP40TC and the P32BWH. Some of the latter are still around. Don’t forget the Turboliners, Talgos and California fleet.

That is not a bad history for an operation that began as a skeletal network and remains so today. Amtrak’s inauguration day map bears a strong resemblance to today’s route map. Sure, some routes have changed, a few have been added, and others have vanished altogether. Remember when Amtrak used to have a route across central Ohio via Columbus and Dayton? The National Limited has been gone since October 1979. Remember the North Star? The Lone Star?

 In northeast Ohio where I live, we have four daily trains. Our daily train count has been as high as eight and as low as two. We once had a daytime train, the Pennsylvanian, but it went away after a brief run. Also gone are the Broadway Limited, which ended in 1995 and a successor, the Three Rivers, which ended in 2005.

Ever since the last Penn Central passenger trains between Cleveland and Cincinnati made their final trips on April 30, 1971, there has been talk of reviving service in the 3-C corridor. With four of the Ohio’s largest cities on the route, how could it lose? But the political will or Amtrak management commitment to get the 3-C route rolling has been elusive. Increasingly, it is looking like it will take another generation with a different perspective on public transportation to make 3-C happen. I wonder if that generation has been born yet.

As anyone who has reached middle age knows, as you get older life gets more complicated even as it becomes more settled. And so it has been for Amtrak. There has been a lot of talk in recent years about golden opportunities and expansion, but not all that much has much happened at Amtrak in the past decade.

The carrier in the past year placed an equipment order and is working with a few states to upgrade routes for higher-speed service. But the type of service that rail advocates have long sought remains as stuck in neutral. It has been many years since Amtrak drew a new line on its map. Changes to Amtrak over the past 10 years have been incremental. But considering how many political officials have tried to kill or cripple Amtrak, maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Because of Amtrak’s limited presence in Northeast Ohio, its 40^th birthday is likely to pass here with little or no ceremony. It will occur on a Sunday. If you are out and about that day, take an Amtrak tour. Start in Canton. Next to the former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline downtown you’ll find a forlorn reminder of Amtrak’s past. The station that Amtrak built in Canton sits vacant and unwanted. Many an ARRC member embarked on his first Amtrak trip from that platform, but “all aboard” hasn’t been heard here since late November 1990.

Drive north to Akron on Interstate 77 and you’ll see an equally forlorn former Amtrak station near Quaker Square, but also a hint of what passenger rail could be. Look westward and you’ll see next to the CSX mainline a gleaming new city bus terminal that was designed with the idea of adding a train station if Amtrak or rail passenger service ever returns.

Complete the circle by visiting Amtrak’s Cleveland station near the Lake Erie shore. This is still a working train station, although you wouldn’t know that during daylight hours when it appears to be as abandoned as the depots in Akron and Canton.

 Designed in the 1970s, the Cleveland station reflects what Amtrak has been for much of its life: functional and modest. Some find that hard to embrace, but if you are charmed by the allure of travel involving steel wheels on steel rails, it is the best you can do until that future generation can begin to implement a different vision of transportation policy in America.

Amtrak Lights 38 Candles

Amtrak will light 38 candles on Friday and for the first time in years it will celebrate its birthday without the distraction of being under a death watch, real or imagined.

Although Amtrak’s future seems assured for now, nothing is ever certain about Amtrak other than uncertainty. It may be that the current administration isn’t recommending zeroing out Amtrak funding or telling the states to pay for service they now get for “free.” It may be that Congress is inclined to go along with that and maybe even up the ante by giving Amtrak more money.

Yet there are still those in Washington and elsewhere who argue that Amtrak is a waste of money and they are not going to go away quietly. They have not changed their minds.

Skeletal was the operative word to describe Amtrak’s route network on May 1, 1971, and that’s still true today. Amtrak was then and continues to be a combination of urban corridors, short-haul routes linking large cities with smaller cities and towns, and a handful of long-distance routes. On paper this creates the illusion that Amtrak is a national system. It also has assured enough votes for the yearly Amtrak appropriation in Congress, particularly during those years when a president was trying to eliminate it.

In some places, of course, Amtrak has far more service now than it did 38 years ago. This is particularly true in California, in the Pacific Northwest and to a lesser degree in some places in the Midwest, New England and North Carolina. Yet many states today have the same level of service that they had on May 1, 1971. Some routes have not grown in years while others are at the same level as when they began.

It has been an uneasy alliance that has held Amtrak together all these years. Passenger train advocates are not much for airing their internal disagreements in public. The National Association of Railroad Passengers has done a remarkable job of presenting a united front, saying that the California Zephyr is just as important as the Acela Express. Indeed, some passenger rail advocates argue that any conveyance that involves steel wheels on steel rails is not just worthy, but also needed.

Still the interests of those who live in flyover country are not necessarily the same as those who live on the coasts. Look up the writings of guys like Bruce Richardson and Andrew Selden and see what they have to say about the Northeast Corridor or any corridors for that matter.

For much of Amtrak’s life, it has been a struggle to fight off the efforts of various administrations to kill the beast. Even administrations that were not trying to kill Amtrak were content to treat it with benign neglect and let it limp along with just enough money to keep most of the existing system running.

Later this year we may see a renewal of age-old arguments about where passenger rail priorities should be as the federal government doles out the billions in stimulus money for passenger rail. President Barack Obama may speak favorably about passenger trains, but the trains he praises are not long-distance services. He is not calling for a resumption of the North Coast Limited, the Lone Star or the Floridian, to name three long-haul trains that bit the dust nearly 30 years ago.

Nor has the administration said much about how it feels about Amtrak as it is currently constituted. Every administration claims to be in favor of passenger trains, but that is not the same thing as liking or favoring Amtrak.

In a column in the May 2009 issue of Trains magazine, veteran transportation reporter Don Phillips wrote that Amtrak has won the war and it is time for it to get out of the foxhole it has been hunkering down in all these years.

I have a lot of respect for Phillips and I find him to be one of the most even-handed and sane voices out there when it comes to the politics of Amtrak. But I disagree that the Amtrak war is over or that it will ever be over. There may be a cease-fire right now, but we are just one change of administration or a turnover in Congress from the war being re-ignited.

Phillips was right to say that Amtrak needs to transition from a bunker mentality to a mindset of taking advantage of the new era of rail that seems to be blooming in America. But old habits and ways of thinking are hard to break. And old attitudes won’t change easily, including those that consider Amtrak an abject failure because it has never turned a profit in 38 years.

There are plenty of people who would like to throw Amtrak out, take a clean sheet of paper and start over. There are those who are horrified by that idea. Their fear is that they will lose whatever little passenger service they have now.

Where Amtrak goes and how often it goes there is not necessarily its most pressing problem today. As Phillips pointed out in his column, there is much that needs fixing at Amtrak, including its rolling stock. When Amtrak began, it relied on equipment that was a quarter-century old or older. Some of Amtrak’s Amfleet equipment is far older than that today. Amtrak is only beginning to show signs of taking action to replace its equipment and rebuild what it can.

For all of the issues surrounding Amtrak, Friday should be a day to feel the warm springtime air surrounding passenger rail. Of late Amtrak has celebrated its birthday with what it calls National Train Day. It’s a nice way to get people to come down to a station and perhaps interest them in riding a train.

Amtrak is alive today because there have been enough people riding its trains to demonstrate that, yes, people will ride trains. If there really is a new era in rail in America, then Amtrak’s next objective should be to show that there would be far more passengers if it could add more cars to its trains and even run trains to a few more places.

The F40 is Still Serving as the Face of Amtrak

I was looking at the cover of an Amtrak timetable for the Lake Shore Limited while waiting for a photograph to upload to one of my blogs when I came to a startling realization. The timetable, dated October 27, 2008, had an image of an F40PH locomotive on the cover.

Yes, that is an F40PH locomotive adorning the logo that appaears on recent Amtrak timetables and in print advertisements.

Why is that startling? Because it has been more than a decade since the F40 was Amtrak’s primary diesel locomotive. Today members of the Genesis family of locomotives pull most Amtrak trains.

Yet there was no mistaking that the image of the locomotive within the circular logo promoting how Amtrak serves more than 500 destinations is an F40. The square nose and positioning of the headlights are a dead give away. Even the nose markings are suggestive of the three-color band that adorned Amtrak locomotives and rolling stock through the early 1990s.

The locomotive image in the logo probably is an artist rendering, but surely Amtrak could have provided the artist with a photo a P42DC to work from. The P42 plays the role today that the F40 performed during the 1980s and early 1990s. The P42 is ubiquitous on the point of long-distance, medium-distance and Midwest corridor trains.

Perhaps using the F40 as the model for the logo was purely happenstance. I don’t assume that those who work in Amtrak’s marketing department are train enthusiasts who make it their business to know all of the locomotive models that Amtrak operates or once operated, let alone what they look like and how they differ.

They probably do not remember, know or care that when the first batch of F40 locomotives arrived at Amtrak in early 1976 they were intended to work only in corridor service. But problems with the SDP40F locomotive resulted in the F40 becoming the backbone of the diesel motive power fleet for more than a decade.

By 2000, P40s and P42s had relegated most Amtrak’s F40s to the sidelines. Many of them were sold and since have gone on to have productive second lives. Others were rebuilt into cab units with a baggage compartment where the prime mover used to be. You can still see some of these “cabbages” working in push-pull service. Some even have the current blue and silver livery. But no Amtrak trains today are pulled by honest to goodness F40s.

To the public, a locomotive is a locomotive. Maybe that is the way a lot of the folks at Amtrak think, too, outside of the operating department. So long as the engine gets the train to where it is going what difference does it make what make or model it is or what it looks like? Well, it must make some difference because the Genesis locomotives have worn three different liveries since entering service beginning in 1993.

What’s in an image? Plenty. It is the face of your product, both to your customers and to those who just happen to see one of your trains go by. It defines who you are and says something about how you got there and where you want to go next.

Amtrak approved a design for the Genesis locomotives that was decidedly different from the boxy, compact F40. The wedge-shaped Genesis locomotive was designed to suggest something sleek, fast and contemporary. In that regard, the Genesis locomotive somewhat resemble high-speed equipment found in Japan, Western Europe and even on Amtrak’s Acela Express.

A lot of railroad enthusiasts who do make it their business to keep track of the intricacies of the Amtrak motive fleet disliked the design of the Genesis units. I was one of them. It looked like someone had chopped off part of the nose on an angle.

I’ve since gotten over my initial dislike of the Genesis, not because I think it looks great, but because I’ve seen it so many times that it now looks familiar. Interestingly, many railroad enthusiasts went through a similar progression with the F40. The knock on the F40s was that it didn’t have the style and grace of an E or F unit. It looked like a junior version of a freight locomotive, which is probably why Amtrak wanted its Genesis locomotives to look like something other than the engines that freight railroads have.

It’s funny how certain locomotives have come to represent the image of railroads. Most E and F units have long since been scrapped, sent out to pasture in railroad museums or been limited to tourist train duty, yet you still see the familiar shape of their streamlined noses in many places where someone needed a “railroad” image. To some extent this occurs because these images are available in clip art, which are generic images used by graphic artists and others to design all kinds of products.

But it also occurs because the design worked its way into the public consciousness to the point that people associated the image with railroads. In the case of the E and F units, it was the first thing that many passengers saw when a passenger train pulled into a station or if you saw a passenger train pass by while going about your business. Railroads placed images of E and F units in countless advertisements, and marketing and public relations products.

The F40 has managed to attain a level of “clip art” fame, which assures that its profile will continue for many years to come. It also has worked its way into the public consciousness, although probably to a lesser degree than was the case with E and F units. Still, there will come a day where the number of people alive who remember seeing or knowing what an E or F unit was will lose critical mass status. At that point, perhaps the F40 will become the dominant image of railroads.

The F40 is, of course, far from dead. It continues to play a major role in pulling commuter trains, VIA Rail Canada passenger trains, a few freight trains, some excursion trains and the CSX executive train fleet.

Aside from timetables, the “over 500 destinations” logo also appears in Amtrak advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Some day that logo will give way to another image. Some day Amtrak will permanently retire its F40 cab cars. By then the F40 will have served Amtrak for more than three decades.

Will the contemporary design of the Genesis locomotive serve Amtrak that long? Will it come to define the image of railroads? It’s hard to say. It all depends on how well the Genesis units age both physically and perceptually.

The F40 managed to age gracefully and with style and class. It may not have won any design awards, as the Genesis design did, but it set a high standard for its successor to meet both on and off the rails.

Encounter with an old ‘Friend’

Amtrak No. 470 reposes on the dead line at Beech Grove Shops on August 11, 1991. It was rare to see a locomotive at this late date still wearing the Phase 1 livery that Amtrak created in 1972.

While looking through my collection of photographs of Amtrak trains recently I ran across the photo shown above of E unit No. 470. This image was made on August 11, 1991, at the Beech Grove shops in suburban Indianapolis.

Seeing this photo of No. 470 brought back some memories and reminded me of how my thinking about Amtrak’s early locomotive power has changed. But more about that later.

Look at this image and what do you see? Most would probably see a locomotive that is clearly past its prime. The peeling paint suggests that No. 470 had received little attention from Amtrak maintenance forces for some time.

Indeed it was a wonder that No. 470 was still at Beech Grove. It had been nearly eight years since Amtrak had used E units. That No. 470 is still wearing the Phase I livery suggests that it had not seen service for an even longer period of time.

But No. 470 was no ordinary E unit. Built by EMD in May 1955 for the Baltimore & Ohio, it wore number 1454 when it was conveyed to Amtrak. Its original Amtrak number was 400 and the limited roster information that I have indicates that it spent a good portion of its time assigned to Cumberland, Maryland, working on such trains as the Blue Ridge and James Whitcomb Riley.

In 1978 No. 400 was rebuilt into a prototype fuel tender, its traction motors and engine removed and replaced with fuel tanks. The idea was to place it between two F40PH locomotives on long-distance trains so as to avoid having to refuel en route.

Environmental regulations set to take effect in 1983 would mean that Amtrak would have to refurbish its refueling stations, something that might cost $20 million. Hence, a fuel tender was tried as a way to get around having to do that.

The test ruins using No. 400 as a fuel tender were successful. It was renumbered No. 470, the second E-unit to carry that number. The original No. 470 had been a former Union Pacific E9A.

The fuel tender idea failed to catch on, although I do not know why. Maybe the environmental regulations changed, but I suspect that Amtrak decided that instead of using fuel tenders it would refuel locomotives with trucks or refueling facilities owned by its contract railroads.

At the time that I photographed No. 470 on this humid August Sunday I paid little attention to it. I was at Beech Grove courtesy of a friend who was permitted to come in and look around on weekends when no one was working. My primary objective was to photograph the F40s, particularly to get some cab interior shots.

There were a lot of F40s parked outside the diesel shop and a few retired P30CHs. I only grabbed this snap snot of No. 470 because it has been years since I had seen an Amtrak E unit, let along one painted in the Phase I livery.

I wish I had spent more time examining No. 470. I see that the door on the engineer’s side is open and I wish I would have climbed up there and had a look around. The control stand may have been gone by then, but maybe not. But I didn’t have time for an old, ratty-looking E unit. And that was the way it was when the E units were still working Amtrak trains in the late 1970s.

In those days I was disappointed when I saw that the Amtrak train that I was ticketed to ride was being pulled by an E unit. E units were has-beens. I was enamored with the SDP40Fs, the F40s and the P30s because those locomotives represented progress.

Never mind that E units were classics. Their time had come and gone and I didn’t care for them all that much. They were another generation’s locomotive. They did not belong to my generation.

As I write this in 2009, I’m a lot older and a little wiser. I wish that I had not been so dismissive of the E and F units that I once disdained. There aren’t many of them left now except on tourist railroads, in museums and at the head of the Norfolk Southern executive train. I spent most of a day last year traveling to Bellevue just to see the NS executive train so I could see something that was once commonplace.

The SDP40s and P30s are gone now as are many of Amtrak’s F40s. Some F40s still live in commuter train service, on VIA Rail Canada and in other assignments here and there. A few survive on Amtrak as non-powered “cabbage cars” used in push-pull service.

I still have a lot of fondness for SDP40s, P30s and F40s. They remind me of a formative time in my life. It’s funny how things that impressed you at a young age tend to stick with you. Things just seem to make more of an impression when you are in you early 20s. I like that blue and silver Genesis units that are ubiquitous at the head of Amtrak trains today, but I can’t say that I love them as much as I did the aforementioned three models that came out in the 1970s.

To be sure, there are a lot of guys around my age who have always loved E units. It just took me a long time to understand that I should have respected and appreciated them a lot more when I had the chance to see them and ride behind them.

Is a Passenger Rail Resnnaisance at Hand?

Could the era of intercity rail passenger service development that many advocates have dreamed about finally be at hand? Is there a passenger rail renaissance just around the corner?

There is much reason for rail passenger advocates to be optimistic these days. Last fall Congress approved the Rail Safety Improvement Act, which included authorization for Amtrak funding of more than $13 billion over the next five years. True, an authorization is not the same thing as an appropriation. Yet it has been a long time since Congress authorized Amtrak funding for more than a year.

The economic stimulus bill contained $8 billion to be spent on passenger rail development while President Barack Obama proposed in his first budget another $5 billion in grants to states for high-speed rail development. Other parts of the stimulus package are also expected to benefit rail development.

While many presidents have paid lip service to rail passenger service, Obama seems to have a genuine interest in it. He many times has expressed admiration for the high-speed rail systems of Western Europe.

Amtrak may be a major beneficiary of this fledging renewal of passenger rail development. The National Association of Railroad passengers recently observed on its web site that “[Amtrak President Joe] Boardman may be in the unusual position of heading Amtrak at a time when funding for passenger trains is a question of not how many millions of dollars but how many billions—between the passenger rail reauthorization and the stimulus bill, Amtrak stands to receive more than $3 billion in funding, more than double the funding levels it usually receives.”

So what can rail passengers advocates expect in the coming months and years? Opportunity is knocking and many are more than willing to answer the door. The media and cyberspace worlds are chock full of accounts of plans and proposals for all manner of upgrades, renovations and new routes and trains that passenger rail advocates and state transportation officials want to see come to fruition.

Some of these ideas are pretty solid and have been subject to extensive published studies. Others are more fanciful than realistic. Even in a best case scenario it will take years for new passenger cars and locomotives to be built and placed into service. It will take years for tracks to be rebuilt in order to achieve higher speeds and better operating conditions.

It will take even longer for new systems to be planned, built and opened. No doubt there is going to be a lot of NIMBY opposition to true high-speed rail in America.

For rail passenger advocates, these are not ordinary times. Nonetheless, it is still not clear that a passenger rail renaissance is beginning to unfold. A lot of things still need to happen and many of them are subject to the vagaries of a political system that has never embraced intercity rail passenger service as anything other than a novelty.

We should not underestimate the value of having a president who favors rail development and is willing to spend public money on it. Yet I wonder how much Obama really understands about how expensive the high-speed rail systems that he admires are going to
be. Does he grasp what needs to be done to create such systems in the United States? Will he be willing to spend the political capital needed to win the fights? Will he be around long enough to win the war?

Much of the money that is being allocated toward rail development these days is being done in the name of economic stimulus. Presumably, the economy will recover in the next couple of years and the need for and political support of economic stimulus will
wane, a victim of bailout and stimulus fatigue.

As it is, many voices in Washington and elsewhere are sounding the alarm that the government is spending too much money on stimulus. They can be expected to continue to seek to reign in government spending and it is not likely that they are going to grant passenger rail development an exception.

The political climate favoring passenger rail development may cool about the time that the projects now in the germination stage reach full bloom. If that happens, the future funding of high-speed rail, Amtrak and other things rail related will be thrown into doubt
if not outright throttled.

A lot of public officials continue to believe that spending money on intercity rail development is wasteful. They are not going to go away, not going to stop speaking out about “pork barrel” spending and not going to cease applying the pressure that has kept Amtrak funding under tight wraps all these years.

There is no evidence that those who favor high building and airport development have curtailed their appetites for public money for their own development interests. If anything the desire and need for highway and aviation development is growing.

And there is only going to be so much money to go around. There is so much pent up desire for new and expanded rail service that some desires are going to go unfulfilled and some rail passenger advocates are going to come away from this rennaisance bitterly disappointed if not disillusioned. There just is not enough money and political will to make everyone’s wishes come true.

Still, if you care at all about passenger trains, these days are ones to be savored. A lot is going to happen, some of it good, some of it not so good. It remains to be seen if this is the springtime of rail passenger development or one of spells in the middle of October
when it warms up enough to make you think that it is summer again and freezing temperatures promise to return the next day.

Whatever the case, it promises to be an interesting ride. When was the last time we could say that?

Notes From 2,500 Miles Aboard Amtrak

The second seating in the diner of the City of New Orleans is just getting underway as the trains heads north through the Mississippi delta country on March 20, 2009.

Just over a week ago, my wife and I returned from an Amtrak trip between our home in  Cleveland and New Orleans. The journey covered more than 2,500 miles and involved riding the Capitol Limited between Cleveland and Chicago, and the City of New Orleans between Chicago and the Big Easy. Here are a few observations about our excursion.

Timekeeping was pretty good on all trains. No. 29 was seven minutes late arriving in Cleveland, but that was largely because the train had to do a run-around move and then back into the station. Arrival in Chicago was 31 minutes early. No. 59 reached New Orleans 48 minutes early and No. 58 halted at Chicago Union Station 15 minutes early. The eastbound Capitol Limited was three minutes late arriving in Cleveland.

To be sure, schedule padding had a lot to do with the early arrivals at the terminal points. No. 59 was late departing every station except Homewood and Jackson. The other three trains were often late at intermediate points, as much as 44 minutes late leaving Newbern on the southbound City of New Orleans.

Granted, I was asleep during many hours of our journeys, but I noted very little freight train interference en route. The longest delay we incurred was when the northbound City of New Orleans sat for a while next to the New Orleans airport waiting for the southbound City to clear the single track ahead.

Upon leaving Memphis on No. 58, I heard the CN dispatcher tell our engineer on the radio that a freight would be in the siding at Tipton and that we might catch up with another freight ahead of us and experience a slight delay. I’m not sure if that was the case or not.

Arguably, it helped that the track work season has yet to start in earnest. There was no severe weather to contend with. We traveled in March and in my experience that’s a good month to ride Amtrak. Perhaps with the recession there are fewer freight trains to get in the way. Still, it seemed that the dispatching provided by the host railroads has improved.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the meal service in the dining cars. Amtrak seems to slowly be upgrading food quality and perhaps the worst of the “diner lite” era is over. On the Capitol Limited to Chicago, I noted that you have something of a choice with the omelet. Last September when I rode the Capitol you had no choice because, I was told, the omelet was made from a mix and you could not leave anything out that you didn’t want.

It was my first experience with the cross country diner on the City of New Orleans and I couldn’t tell any difference in the quality of food or service in this car compared with other Amtrak diners. I did note, though, that the New Orleans style cuisine touted in the Amtrak timetable did not live up to its billing. There was no bread pudding in either direction, no jambalaya or red beans and rice. The menu did feature seafood gumbo, which I did not try.

The diner on the southbound trip did not have the chef’s special of crab cakes. The server claimed that those are put on by the commissary in New Orleans, which had failed to stock the diner well enough for the trip to Chicago and return. The crab cakes were
available on the northbound trip. I found them quite good, accompanied by a very tasty sauce. Sure, the crab cakes were not as good as the one I had in a French  Quarter bistro, but given what Amtrak has to work with that is probably not a fair comparison. It was good enough that I ordered the crab cakes on the Capitol Limited.

For the most part, the menu on the City of New Orleans was the same as that on the Capitol Limited, but with some variation. The City offered a cheddar and broccoli quiche at breakfast that was more like a casserole. It was so good that I ordered it twice. This offering was not available on the Capitol Limited, whose catch of the day at dinner was Mahi Mahi as opposed to salmon on the City of New Orleans. I sampled the salmon on the southbound trip and found it good, although not great. It was enhanced with a nice  sauce and garlic mashed potatoes. The latter tasted like homemade, not instant.

On all four trains, we had diners set up in the new configuration. I’m not sure what to think about this. Yes, it does give the diner a non-traditional look, but if you draw one of the short tables, you wind up sitting with your back to the window. That I didn’t like. Yes, I could see out the window on the opposite side of the car, but that required looking over someone else’s table.
 
I wonder if this new seating arrangement has reduced the capacity of the diner. That did not appear to be much of a problem on the City of New Orleans, but was an issue on the Capitol Limited. Shortly after leaving Chicago, a dining car employee announced he would soon come through the coaches to take dinner reservations with the earliest seating at 9 p.m. The train departs Chicago at 7:05 p.m. Serving begins as early as 6:30 p.m. but sleeping car passengers get first crack at reservations. With three sleepers on the train, there are a lot of first class passengers to feed.

The dining car guy never did come through the coaches to take reservations. When he announced the 9 p.m. seating, he apparently said something about open seating now. We went to the diner and were promptly seated. That the server never came through the coaches was hardly surprising. With just two servers and seatings every half-hour I just didn’t see where there would be time for anyone to break away to the three coaches to take dinner reservations. On nights like these, the diner could use some more help.

If you have not dined on Amtrak lately, they are still using the paper plates and stainless steel silverware with cloth napkins at some meals. This does not appear to compromise the quality of the food much, although real china would be better.

The on-board personnel of the City of New Orleans in particular was friendly and accommodating. There were coach attendants on the Capitol Limited, but they never seemed to be around much and I had no dealing with them. 

New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal has a first class lounge called the Magnolia Room. It is not staffed and you enter it by punching in a code that you must get from the ticket counter. It was a nice lounge, although it does not have enough chairs. Also, if you don’t wish to watch TV you are out of luck.

From my observations, all of the trains were full or near capacity. Although we had sleepers on the City of New Orleans, I heard an announcement as we sat in Chicago that the train was full and that every seat was needed. This was in March on a Monday night.
Presumably, Amtrak would be able to sell more seats during the peak travel season this summer if it has cars to add to the trains.

In summary everything worked out the way that it should. The few glitches that occurred were not significant enough to spoil our enjoyment. We both had a very good trip. This was Amtrak as good as it can be given the resources it has and the conditions under which it must operate these days.