Last Day For Amtrak In Indianapolis

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.

Advertisements

Pere Marquette Now Arriving

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.

Cold Day in Geneva

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.

Gotta Go to Work

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.

Very Late No. 29

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.

Waiting in Seattle

A pair of Talgo trains used in Amtrak’s Cascades Service await a highball at Seattle’s King Street Station.

The train on  the right will head for Portland, Oregon, while the train on  the left is going to Vancouver, British Columbia.

As is typical in Seattle, it is a cloudy, gloomy day.

Amtrak 448 at Bort Road

Bort Road is one of those countless rural roads in America that most people will never travel or know about.

It has a timeless quality about it, as though time has forgotten it.

Yet to the engineers in the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Bort Road is well known.

It crosses the CSX Erie West Subdivision on a one-lane bridge that was built decades ago when these tracks were owned by the New York Central.

In recent years the bridge has received some repairs and been closed for several weeks at times.

PennDOT would like to replace the bridge, possibly by moving it closer to the town of North East.

Perhaps some day in the not too distant future they’ll do that. But for now passenger trains continue to pass beneath this bridge just as countless NYC and Penn Central trains did in the years before Amtrak.

Shown is Amtrak’s Boston-bound Lake Shore Limited in late May.

The crossing signals in the background are for the Lake Erie District of Norfolk Southern, which Bort Road crosses at grade.

 

Racing Through Cassandra

Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian is headed for New York City from Pittsburgh and will run nearly the length of Pennsylvania on its 444-mile journey.

The standard consist of one P42DC locomotive and six Amfleet cars, including a cafe car, is on display as the train passes through a cut at Cassandra, Pennsylvania, on the Pittsburgh Line of Norfolk Southern.

Soon the train will be rounding the famous Horseshoe Curve and arriving in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Much Longer Lake Shore Limited

Since late May Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited has been solely a Chicago-Boston train and on some days it hasn’t operated east of Albany-Renselaer, New York, due to track work on CSX.

The result has been a shorter consists with fewer coaches, sleepers and locomotives. The train has also operated under the 448 and 449 road numbers the length of its journey.

The above photographs were made about a week before the New York section was suspended for the summer of 2018 due to track work in New York City.

Amtrak has said the New York Section will return in early September and, presumably, the Lake Shore Limited will resume its role of being one of Amtrak’s longest trains.

This image was made at North East, Pennsylvania, on the CSX Erie West Subdivision.

Boarding in Durand

Passengers board Amtrak’s westbound Blue Water in Durand, Michigan, with most of them en route to Chicago.

The tracks used by Amtrak here are owned by Canadian National but their ancestry is Grand Trunk Western.

GTW’s trains to Chicago were discontinued with the coming of Amtrak in 1971, but later revived with funding from the State of Michigan.