Amtrak’s westbound California Zephyr comes around a curve on host railroad BNSF and is about to pass the station in Mendota, Illinois.
Mendota is not a stop for Trains 5 and 6 so it will just slip right by. Train 5 has a consist of three sleepers, dining car, Sightseer Lounge, two coaches and a Viewliner baggage car. On the point are the customary two P42DC locomotives.
The image was made on July 14, 2021.
Passengers are waiting on the platform at Joliet Union Station as Amtrak’s St. Louis-bound Abraham Lincoln arrives for its station stop.
The date is Aug. 12, 1972, and the Abe is operating between Milwaukee and St. Louis as part of a short-lived move to route some trains through Chicago Union Station.
On the point today is Gulf, Mobile & Ohio E7A No. 101. The track between Chicago and St. Louis was mostly a GM&O route and the Abraham Lincoln had been a GM&O passenger train.
As a point of interest, this image was made two days after the GM&O and Illinois Central merged to form the Illinois Central Gulf.
The tracks in the foreground belong to the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, which at the time of this photograph operated commuter trains to Joliet and a pair of intercity passenger trains running Chicago-Rock Island, Illinois, and Chicago-Peoria, Illinois.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
It is Sept. 9. 1995, on the north side of Chicago Union Station. A Hiawatha Service train sits adjacent to the equipment to be used later today for the outbound Empire Builder.
At the time, Hiawatha Service trains were using former Metroliner cab cars. This equipment also was common at the time on the Chicago-Detroit route.
Note the mismatching liveries on the Superliner equipment on the Empire Builder. Amtrak was moving into a new look for its rolling stock and the old and new continued to mix for a while.
Amtrak’s westbound Capitol Limited is picking up speed as it accelerates away from its station stop in Waterloo, Indiana, one hour and 15 minutes late.
It is the first image I’ve made of the Capitol in well over a year and getting this photograph took good timing and fast acting.
Before leaving home I had checked the status of Amtrak trains through Waterloo. There wasn’t enough time to get there before the Lake Shore Limited arrived and chances were good I would miss No. 29 by 15 minutes or so.
It had been reported out of Cleveland an hour and 20 minutes but Amtrak’s website projected No. 29 would make up a good chunk of that and arrive in Waterloo 59 minutes late.
If that held, I had no chance. But I also knew Amtrak can get delayed between Waterloo and Toledo.
As I neared Waterloo I checked the Amtrak website again. No. 29 was now projected to arrive in Waterloo at 7:46 a.m. I figured to miss by that about five minutes.
The exit ramp for Waterloo onto U.S. Route 6 from Interstate 69 is just beyond the bridge over the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.
As I passed the exit signs for Route 6 it was 7:47 a.m. on my car’s clock. I slowed for the bridge and exit ramp and looked toward the east. No headlight was in sight.
That was a good sign This just might work after all.
Nearly a month earlier as I had driven over that same bridge I had seen the headlight of a fast approaching Amtrak 49. I was going to fast to get to the side of the road in time to try to get a grab shot and a pickup truck also getting off at the exit was right on my tail.
So close and yet so far away.
This time I drove to a road that crosses the Chicago Line at grade shortly after I got onto Route 6. The gates were up. Another good sign.
I checked the Amtrak website and saw No. 29 was now projected to arrive in Waterloo at 7:53 a.m., three minutes from now. Did I have time to get to the station?
I began driving down a road that runs parallel to the tracks. Then there it was up ahead. I immediately pulled to the side of Lincoln Street, grabbed my camera and dashed into the weeds to make this image.
There was no time so think about what I wanted to do. I barely was able to get all of the train in the frame.
Photographing the Capitol Limited is a challenge because much of its journey occurs at night. On the western end of the route the train is always operating in the wrong light. Only on the eastern end can you get 29 or 30 in good light.
In Northeast Ohio, No. 30 is scheduled into Cleveland at 1:45 a.m. and No. 29 at 2:53 a.m.
Still, you can get an interesting image on the western end of the route if you work it right.
The glint off P42DC No. 190 was happenstance but I also knew that this time of year the early morning light would favor the north side of the train.
I’m hoping it won’t be another year before I can photograph the Capitol Limited again.
Amtrak’s Cardinal typically operates with one P42DC locomotive, three Amfleet II coaches, an Amfleet food service car, a Viewliner sleeper and Viewliner baggage-dorm.
But at least once a week it is used to ferry equipment from the Beech Grove shops to Chicago. The equipment being ferried is placed on the head end of No. 51 at Indianapolis Union Station and provides the appearance of two trains having been combined into one.
That was the case on Memorial Day this week when No. 51 passed through Brownsburg, an Indianapolis suburb, with one section consisting of two P42DC locomotives, two Viewliner baggage cars and a Superliner coach. The second section had the consist that No. 51 operated with from Washington to Indianapolis.
The train on this day was operating one hour, 50 minutes late out of Indianapolis.
Equipment bound for Beech Grove is ferried to Indianapolis in combination with Train 50 in the same manner.
Amtrak’s northbound Illini has finished its station work in Centralia, Illinois, and is headed toward its next station stop in Effingham. Train 392 originated in Carbondale and will end its journey at Chicago Union Station later this evening.
The train has a typical consist for Midwest corridor service of Horizon Fleet coaches along with one lone Amfleet food service car tucked in behind the P42DC locomotive pulling the train.
The image was made on Aug. 4, 2012.
Amtrak’s Superline fleet lounge cars are today known as Sightseer Lounges, but when those cars began revenue in the early 1980s they were named “lounge cafe” cars.
Note also the broad red and blue strips with white accents that ran the length of the car.
When this image was made in Albuquerque in early November 1981, Superliner equipment was still relatively new. The car shown is in the consist of the eastbound Southwest Limited, which later would be renamed the Southwest Chief.
Appearances to the contrary, the train the left is not an Amtrak train. It is a Trinity Railway Express commuter train using leased Amtrak equipment.
That included a pair of F40PH locomotives and two Horizon Fleet coaches.
On the next track over the Texas Eagle is making its daily stop at the Dallas Union Terminal. Note that the Eagle has a new P40 on the point and a veteran F40PH trailing.
When this image was made on March 4, 1997, such mixed motive power consists were not unusual and would continue through the late 1990s until the P42 fleet began arriving.
The Cleveland skyline watches over a very late westbound Lake Shore Limited as it sits in the station. Dining car Silver Restaurant was built by Budd for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and has carried two roster numbers at Amtrak. The image was made in November 1997.
I wanted to get out and photograph Amtrak on its 50th anniversary day last Saturday. I began my quest by setting next to the CSX Monon Subdivision south of Linden, Indiana, to capture the westbound Cardinal.
No. 51 was right on the money about 10 minutes past 5, having made a station stop, in Crawfordsville about 12 minutes earlier. It was about a half-hour after sunrise.
Next I motored over to east central Illinois to get the northbound Saluki, a corridor train funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation that originates in Carbondale and travels to Chicago.
No. 390 is shown above taking a signal at Humboldt, Illinois. It, too, was running on time.
None of the equipment seen in these photographs existed in 1971 and most of it had not been created yet as a concept.
The Amfleet coaches and food service car of the Cardinal come closest because Amfleet equipment was based on the design of the Budd Metroliners of the 1960s. Superliner equipment was inspired by the Hi-Level cars of the Santa Fe.
In 1971 EMD E and F units with a handful of passenger equipped geeps, U boats and SDs were the common motive power. It all wore the markings and liveries of its owners.
The Saluki does not normally operate with Superliner equipment, but has since Amtrak reduced the frequency of most long-distance trains last year to tri-weekly.
Starting May 24 Amtrak plans to begin to restore daily service to most long-distance trains — the Cardinal and Sunset Limited are exceptions — so the Superliners now on the Saluki probably will be replaced with Horizon and Amfleet equipment.
But not for long as Amtrak has begun taking delivery of and testing the new Siemens Venture cars and they are expected to begin revenue service later this year.
The long distance trains are also slated to begin receiving Charger locomotives similar to the SC-44 seen above pullking the Saluki albeit with a difference livery.
With Amtrak things are always changing even if it doesn’t always appear that way at first glance.
