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.
Amtrak’s eastbound Cardinal is passing milepost 479 on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad in Hurricane, West Virginia, on Oct. 18, 1987. The photographer was in Hurricane to photograph the New River Train which in this year was being pulled by former Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765. The distance is measured from Newport News, Virginia.
It is May 30, 1994, in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. Amtrak’s westbound Pennsylvanian has just popped out of Gallitzin Tunnel en route to Pittsburgh from New York.
Gallitzin Tunnel is the northern most of the then three tunnels in Gallitzin on the former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
The tunnel on the right is the Allegheny Tunnel. During the summer of 1994 an enlargement project was begun to double track and enlarge this tunnel to accommodate double-stacked container trains.
When the work was completed in the summer of 1995 the Gallitzin Tunnel was closed.
The tunnels in Gallitzin are not all that has changed. The Pennsylvanian is no longer pulled by F40PH locomotives and no longer has material handling cars. But Amfleet equipment is still standard.
In July 1993, the photographer and a friend ventured East from their homes in Northeast Ohio on a photography expedition.
Among their stops were Princeton Junction, New Jersey, on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. They also stopped on their way home at Horseshoe Curve and caught Amtrak’s Broadway Limited.
Much has changed with Amtrak’s motive power since then. In the early 1990s Northeast Corridor trains were still pulled by AEM-7 locomotives and long-distance trains outside the corridor were handled by F40PH locomotives.
In the top photograph the Silver Meteor comes thundering by Princeton Junction, led by a GE E60 electric engine.
Next up the Pennsylvanian makes an appearance hauling a deadheading slumbercoach.
The last image from Princeton Junction shows the Silver Star.
I’ve long thought that the halcyon days for Amtrak’s Cardinal were in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Sure, the train only operated three days a week, just as it still does today, but the level of service provided was much higher then it would become starting in 1995 when it was assigned Superliner equipment and reduced to a Chicago-Washington operation.
In the late 1980s, Nos. 50 and 51 operated with two sleeping cars, one of which was a slumber coach. The fare was reasonable enough that I could afford to buy a slumbercoach room for travel between Chicago and Indianapolis.
The Cardinal also still had a full-service dining car during this era.
In the photograph above, the Cardinal is shown at Fort Spring, West Virginia, on July 26, 1987, exiting a tunnel on the former Chesapeake & Ohio mainline.
For several years starting in the late 1970s the F40PH was the workhorse of the Amtrak motive fleet outside electrified territory in the Northeast.
There were a handful of P30CH locomotives in service then as well as a few GP40TC units acquired from Toronto’s GO Transit, some P32-8s and a few FL9s in the East.
But chances are through the early to middle 1990s your train was pulled by an F40, particularly if it was a long-distance train.
By the late 1999s the Genesis models P40DC an P42DC had begun taking over primary motive power duties.
A handful of F40s hung on in service, but they seldom were leading units.
Such is the case above with the eastbound California Zephyr making its station stop in Sacramento, California, where F40PH No. 302 is the third unit behind a pair of P42DC units.
No. 302 was built in April 1979 and still in active service until being retired by Amtrak in December 2001.
My recollection is that it was late afternoon when I made this photograph of Amtrak’s westbound Capitol Limited in Berea, Ohio.
That would make Train No. 29 about 12 hours late. I don’t know what happened to cause the delay.
It is July 1996 and the Capitol reflects a transition period for Amtrak motive power.
On the point is a new P40 locomotive wearing the Phase III livery. Behind it is an F40PH.
Between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s the F40 was the primary road locomotive used to pull Amtrak’s long-distance trains. Most corridor trains outside the Northeast Corridor also F40s on the point.
This mixing of Genesis units and F40s would not last long. The P42DC began to join the fleet and away went Phase III paint and F40s aside from a few that were rebuilt into cab control units without prime movers.
Passengers are lined up on the platform in Joliet, Illinois, as the southbound Ann Rutlege is about to arrive on Oct. 3, 1981.
Joliet is the first stop for Train No. 303, which is en route from Chicago to St. Louis and Kansas City.
If F40PHR No. 386 looks new, it is. EMD built it in August 1981 It was built as a trade in for an SDP40F, in this case No. 531.
I had disembarked not long before this photograph was made from the East Peoria, Illinois, to Chicago Prairie Marksman, a short-lived State of Illinois funded corridor service that would make its final trips the weekend that I traveled.
Amtrak is hardly a fallen flag, but some of its trains and locomotive models are.
Such is the case for the Broadway Limited, a onetime Chicago-New York/Washington train that was the only intercity passenger train in Northeast Ohio after Amtrak began on May 1, 1971.
At that time the Broadway operated on the Fort Wayne Line via Alliance, Canton and Massillon.
In the photograph above, F40PH No. 361 is leading the Broadway through Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, on April 23, 1983.
The F40 was once the standard locomotive for most of Amtrak’s long-distance but it has since been retired as a locomotive although a few F40 frames are still on the roster for cab car service.
Amtrak in the Heartland 