Amtrak’s outbound Capitol Limited is less than 10 minutes out of Chicago Union Station and has just crossed Lumber Street at the southern end of shop and service complex. If you look carefully you will see a P42DC siting on a service track awaiting servicing or its next assignment.
This is still Amtrak-owned trackage although in a few minutes No. 30 will be on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern, which it will use all the way to Cleveland.
On Amtrak these signals are known as CP Lumber and are a familiar sight to Amtrak locomotive engineers piloting trains from the East, Michigan and St. Louis on their final few miles into Chicago.
Seeing them means their shift is about over and their train is about reached its terminus.
Not every Amtrak train coming into Chicago sees these signals. Trains coming in from the BNSF Raceway from Aurora don’t go past here nor on most days do trains coming off the route from New Orleans and Carbondale, Illinois. And of course trains coming down from Milwaukee use the north concourse at Union Station and don’t see these signals either.
They are, of course, one set of dozens of signals that Amtrak trains pass along their respective routes. But most of those signals don’t offer a city skyline view as these do.
In recent years I’ve become intrigued by programs featuring photographs made from aboard Amtrak trains. A few years ago the Rail Passengers Association posted on its website one photograph every week made aboard an Amtrak train by one of its members.
The Center for Railroad Photography and Art last November presented a virtual program by Stacey Evans of images she made while making 29 trips aboard trains in America. The description of the program, which can be viewed on the Center’s YouTube channel, likened it to using trains as a moving studio.
“Stacey makes photographs focused on regional similarities and differences while composing how we occupy, shape, and transform the land,” the Center wrote about her program.
I’ve never sought to create a similar program although I might be able to based on images I’ve made aboard trains I’ve ridden in the past decade.
In my experience of riding trains, few passengers spend much time watching the scenery roll past let along contemplate how the world looks from the window of a train.
Instead, their focus is on their smart phones, laptops, tablets or traditional print media such as books. I remember once being in the sightseer lounge aboard the Empire Builder “listening” to a young woman talking on her phone. She might have been looking out at the North Dakota countryside west of Minot, but I doubt that she was seeing any of it.
The view from the train is not all that much different than that seen from a bus or automobile. In both instance you are in a moving object and have to look quickly lest you miss something.
In describing Evans’ program, the Center said it would show “her unique perspective not accessible by foot, plane, or car.” That suggests that seeing from a train is somehow different from any other way of travel.
Perhaps to appreciate that perspective it helps if you have a passion for trains, something many Amtrak passengers do not necessarily have. For them Amtrak is a means of getting from Point A to Point B that just happened to fit their schedule, budget and availability.
Both images shown above were made from the rear door of a Superliner coach on the westbound Capitol Limited as it traveled between Edgerton, Ohio, and Butler, Indiana, on May 22, 2014. The sun began rising as we neared Edgerton, the last town on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern, so I moved to the back of the car to capture it.
Perhaps these photographs reflect what the Center for Railroad Photograph and Art meant in saying that there are views from a train that are different from any other form of travel. In their own way, these are glimpses of the nature of rail travel.
It is early July 1977 and the conductor of Amtrak’s southbound Floridian is preparing to get down as the train makes its station stop in Waycross, Georgia.
A few passengers are waiting on the platform and perhaps a few other will disembark here. Waycross has been off the Amtrak map since the Floridian was discontinued in early October 1979.
I wonder if that is the original station off to the right.
Here is your seat in your Viewliner roomette aboard Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited.
You’ve just boarded and are looking forward to a relaxing trip to the East Coast.
But right now you’re just getting settled in your room as No. 48 sits in Chicago Union Station.
As a sleeper class passenger you were able to board ahead of most passengers so it will be several minutes before the Lake Shore leaves Union Station behind.
One downside to your seat is that it doesn’t recline as much as a coach seat does. But your seat does fold down into a bed, which is a benefit those in coach doesn’t have.
So have a seat and welcome aboard. Your train travel journey is about to begin.
Back in the 1970s Amtrak trains 5 and 6 were named the San Francisco Zephyr, an amalgamation of the names of two trains that were combined to create the route in 1971.
That would have been the City of San Francisco from Union Pacific and the Denver Zephyr from Burlington Northern.
Amtrak wanted to operate the California Zephyr, but by 1971 it’s Western Pacific segment had been discontinued.
That left a “California Service” remnant that used BN, the Denver & Rio Grande Western, and Southern Pacific.
Then the D&RGW declined to join Amtrak thus the amalgamation.
It is July 31, 1979, and I am riding Train No. 5 to Oakland. We’re twisting and turning our way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the crew doesn’t mind if you make photographs from open vestibule windows.
It is July 31, 1979. I’m riding the westbound San Francisco Zephyr en route to Oakland, California, after having boarded in Denver the day before.
No. 5 is twisting and turning through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California on the tracks of Southern Pacific.
Up front pulling the train is a pair of SDP40F locomotives.
It’s my first trip on this route and I’m not sure where I made this photograph.
But it was out an open vestibule door window. It was quite a warm day and by the time we got out of the mountains the air conditioning has ceased working in some cars.
I made this image of the upper level of an Amtrak Superliner Sightseer lounge while riding aboard the Capitol Limited from Cleveland to Chicago on May 31, 2012.
It got me to wondering if Amtrak has ever used the upper serving area of a Sightseer lounge.
I’ve never seen anyone working this area in a Sightseer lounge car. It appears that the purpose of this serving station is to provide beverages.
I asked a friend who once worked as a lounge car attendant for Amtrak if he knew whether this serving station had ever been used.
He primarily worked Amfleet cars in the Northeast Corridor, but had made a few runs aboard Nos. 29 and 30 between Chicago and Washington.
He could not recall this serving area being used and suggested that was because that would mean paying two attendants to work the lounge car.
Perhaps in the early years of the use of Superliners aboard Amtrak this area was used. Yet the Superliner equipment began arriving at a time when Amtrak was being squeezed financially.
Perhaps its a case of it seemed like a good idea at the time the car was designed but in practice the carrier decided it didn’t need to use this area.
Yet the fact that a modern soap dispenser is present suggests that maybe, yes, this area is used at times. I’ve just never seen it done.
Amtrak in the Heartland 