Photographs of Amtrak Trains and Operations

The northbound Saluki arrives in the station in Mattoon, Ill., in March 2014. It was from this platform in November 1972 that I embarked upon my first Amtrak trip.

I’ve been photographing Amtrak trains since early 1977. When I began making images of Amtrak, the company had placed in service a year earlier its new Amfleet equipment.  Superliners were on the way.

Motive power was a mixture of old and new. E units inherited from the Amtrak contract railroads were still very much around and SDP40F locomotives that had been delivered new in 1973 and 1974 still pulled most long-distance trains, but they were about to be retired en mass due to suspected performance  issues that were identified after a series of derailments.

The rainbow era, though, was just about over. It was rare by the late 1970s to see a passenger car or locomotive still wearing the livery of a previous railroad owner.

Presented in these pages are some of the photos I’ve made of Amtrak over the years along with a few images done by others.