Amtrak F40PH No. 282 heads a late westbound Broadway Limited as it goes through Massillon, Ohio, on June 22, 1978.
At the time Conrail was doing quite a bit of track work, and that may have been the reason the Broadway Limited was late.
A crowd of passengers waits to board Amtrak’s last eastbound Hilltopper in Roanoke, Virginia.
The date is Sept. 30, 1979, and No. 66 is making it final jaunt from remote Catlettsburg, Kentucky, to Boston by way of West Virginia and Virginia.
I rode the train from Catlettsburgh to Richmond, Virginia, before disembarking.
For much of its history, the Hilltopper was lightly patronized. So it was amazing how many people turned out to ride it on its last day.
This would not be the last passenger train in Roanoke, though. Westbound counterpart No. 67 would make its last stop here later in the day.
Also, many excursions trains, some pulled by home-built Norfolk & Western No. 611 would depart from Roanoke over the years during the two iterations of the Norfolk Southern steam program.
Amtrak itself would return to Roanoke 38 years after the demise of the Hilltopper when it extended a Northeast Regional train there in October 2017.
Perhaps some of those in this crowd were on hand to welcome Amtrak back that day.
Thursday was a rough day for Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited.
The woes started on Wednesday night when the scheduled 9:30 p.m. departure from Chicago slipped to 1:50 a.m. the next morning.
And you know what happens with late trains and how they just get later.
After leaving Chicago 4 hours and 20 minutes late, No. 48 continued to lose time as it made its way east.
It lost 24 minutes between Chicago and South Bend, Indiana, seven minutes between South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana, and another 15 minutes between Elkhart and Waterloo, Indiana.
And so it went that by the time it left Toledo it was 5:25 down, and more than six hours late leaving Sandusky and Elyria, Ohio.
It had picked up some time when I photographed it rushing past the Olmsted Falls station just after 11 a.m.
Amtrak reported that No. 48 arrived in Cleveland 5:41 late. It pretty much held that pace to Erie, Pennsylvania, but began losing time again, arriving in Buffalo, New York, 6 hours late.
By the time No. 48 reached Syracuse, New York, at 6:37 p.m. it was 7:14 down.
Things improved somewhat east of there. As Amtrak Julie reminds callers, trains can gain or lose time en route.
In this case, No. 48 picked up an hour by the time it left Albany-Rensselaer, New York, and arrived in Penn Station in the Big Apple at 12:41 a.m., six hours and 18 minutes late.
I hope no one had reservations last night for dinner and a play in Manhattan.
Today No. 48 was a mere 39 minutes late arriving in Cleveland.
In its final years, Amtrak’s Broadway Limited was the last train of the day to depart Chicago Union Station from the south boarding gates.
That was a far cry from its glory days during under the Pennsylvania Railroad when its department was late afternoon and much more heralded.
It is Sept. 9, 1995, and No. 41 is departing Chicago for the final time. Tomorrow Nos. 40 and 41 will be discontinued between Pittsburgh and Chicago and renamed the Three Rivers east between Pittsburgh and New York.
An Amtrak car attendant perches on the step box as he looks down the platform at Jackson, Mississippi, during a station stop for the northbound City of New Orleans.
Jackson is one of the busiest stops for Nos. 58 and 59, but most of the passengers in the distance are boarding one of the coaches and not holding sleeping car tickets.
It’s Oct. 1, 1979, and Amtrak’s National Limited is halting for the final time in Indianapolis.
With the on-time departure of No. 31 in late morning, the capital of Indiana will be without intercity rail passenger service.
But it won’t last for long. About a year later Amtrak launched the Chicago-Indianapolis Hoosier State and Indy returned to the Amtrak route map.
The Ohio cities of Dayton and Columbus would not be so fortunate. When the National Limited stopped there for the final time, those cities would lose intercity rail passenger service for good.
Although Amtrak’s Pere Marquette originates and terminates in Grand Rapids, Michigan, it didn’t always sit overnight in the station.
For several years the equipment for the Chicago-Grand Rapids train sat overnight in a CSX yard and deadheaded to the station the next morning.
The photo above was made in June 1995 and the train is shown about to arrive at the station.
Outside the temperature is in the single digits, but inside Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited the passengers are nice and warm as their train heads for points in New York and Massachusetts.
The train is shown passing through Geneva, Ohio, with the next scheduled stop being Erie, Pennsylvania.
An Amtrak locomotive engineer climbs the steps to a P42DC locomotive in Memphis to go to work aboard the northbound City of New Orleans.
He will take No. 58 to Carbondale, Illinois, where another engineer will go on duty to finish the journey into Chicago.
A very late westbound Capitol Limited charges through Olmsted Falls, Ohio, in July 2017.
I’m not sure why the train was behind schedule, but it should have come through here about eight hours earlier.
There will be a lot of missed connections today in Chicago.
