Early Morning Lake Shore Limited

I’m standing on the bridge carrying Pennsylvania Route 5 over the CSX Erie West Subdivision tracks west of Lake City, Pennsylvania, on April 27, 2008

Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited is making good time as it heads toward its next station stop of Erie, Pennsylvania.

It is early morning and the rising sun is creating strong back lighting that mutes the colors, but provides a nice glint on the side of the passenger cars.

It is the type of image that when I made it I didn’t like how it turned out. Years later I decided to scan the slide to see what I could do with it.

Upon further review I decided that I liked the glint because it nicely draw out the profiles of the different generations of passenger cars on Train 48.

There are two Heritage fleet members, a baggage car and dining car, three Viewliner sleepers and a string of Amfleet coaches and a food service car.

The differences in how those cars were designed and constructed show up well here even if the image is not all that colorful. It almost appears to be a hybrid with elements of black and white and color photography.

When Heritage Ruled the Day

Amtrak’s eastbound Broadway Limited is shown on May 14, 1994, bound for New York. The image was made east of Youngstown, Ohio, on the CSX New Castle Subdivision. The tracks and signals in the foreground belong to the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie.

Note that much of the consist of Train 40 is Heritage Fleet cars. There is a lone Amfleet food service car four cars from the rear.

The Broadway Limited would be discontinued in a little more a year after this image was made. The P&LE tracks would also be abandoned and removed.

Amtrak Creates Another Heritage Unit

Amtrak has created yet another heritage unit but you’ll need to travel to East Coast to see it.

ACS-64 No. 662 was given a Phase III heritage wrap with a livery similar to what the passenger carrier’s AEM-7 units wore in the 1980s.

No. 662 will be assigned to revenue service in the electrified portions of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington.

The wrap is sponsored by Dovetail Games, which is using the Amtrak 50^th anniversary herald in its Train Sim World 2.

The wrap is intended to be short term and expected to remain in place through next May, Amtrak officials said.

To see a photo of No. 662 and to read more visit https://railfan.com/new-amtrak-heritage-unit-will-be-short-lived/

Waiting For Their Next Move

When Amtrak removed equipment from service it often moves it to its Beech Grove shops near Indianapolis. Such was the case with these Heritage Fleet cars that I found sitting at Beech Grove in March 1995. I was at “the Grove” as part of a tour sponsored by the then named Indiana Rail Passenger Association.

Beech Grove might have looked familiar to these cars as they had been inside the shops years earlier to be converted to Head End Power and to get new interior appointments.

Now they awaited being sold to another operator or, perhaps, donated to a museum. Imagine the thousands of people who rode in these cars to various points on the Amtrak network although as Heritage equipment their assignments were largely confined to the East, South and Midwest.

Long Way From Its Roots

Amtrak dining car 8507 was part of the consist of the eastbound Lake Shore Limited in Albany-Rensselaer, New York, on July 12, 2000.

It is wearing at least its third roster number since being built in 1957 by Budd for the Northern Pacific, which assigned it to the North Coast Limited.

At one time this dining car was NP No. 463 and Amtrak No. 8049.

It became No. 8507 when it was rebuilt in March 1980 with head-end power capability.

It is wearing the Phase IV livery with its emphasis on Federal Standard 15090 blue along the windows.

No. 8507 would be among the last of the Amtrak Heritage Fleet dining cars in active service before it was retired in April 2018.

No Time to Waste at Pesotum

A tardy southbound Saluki races past the former Illinois Central Railroad depot in Pesotum late on a Tuesday morning.

No. 391 had earlier met its northbound counterpart at Rantoul, where the southbound train was 24 minutes behind schedule.

It lost another 14 minutes between Rantoul and Champaign and by the time it reached DuQuoin it was 1 hour, 8 minutes down.

But through the “miracle” of recovery time, a.k.a. schedule padding, No. 391 pulled into Carbondale a mere 32 minutes late.

No passenger train has been scheduled to stop at the depot in Pesotum for several decades.

One Morning at Chicago Union Station

It is mid morning at Chicago Union Station. I’ve just stepped off the inbound Capitol Limited after boarding several hours earlier in Cleveland.

On an adjacent track is the inbound Broadway Limited. Nos. 40 and 41 are living on borrowed time and will be discontinued in just over a month.

It’s difficult to make good images of trains at CUS due to low lighting conditions not to mention the limited sight lines.

The sleepers on the rear of No. 41 caught my attention. Maybe there is just enough light to make a serviceable image on the slide film I was using.

The images turned out dark and a little blurry. But they remind me of something I can’t see anymore, which is Heritage Fleet sleepers on a train that has been gone more than a decade.

I also liked the mood of the subdued lighting, which seems well suited to portray a passenger car designed for nighttime travel.

No. 2432 in the top photograph was built by the Budd Company in 1950 as Union Pacific 1449, Pacific Waves.

Amtrak retained the name and rebuilt the car to HEP capability in June 1980. Its original Amtrak roster number was 2642.

No. 2051 in bottom image has had a more varied history. It was built by Budd in 1949 as New York Central 10360.

The Central rebuilt the all-roomette care in 1961 to a sleeper coach with a configuration of 16 single rooms and 10 double rooms.

Amtrak reapplied the name Fairport Harbor, which had been dropped by either NYC or Penn Central. At one time it carried Amtrak roster number 2001.

No. 2432 was sold in 2001 and according to the book Amtrak by the Numbers by David C. Warner and Elbert Simon No. 2051 at last report was for sale in 2011. It may have been sold or donated to a museum by now.

Lake Shore Limited State of the Art 2010

Amtrak’s westbound Lake Shore Limited rolls through Palmer, Massachusetts, on May 22, 2010, showing the look that it had in the second decade of the 21st century.

No. 449 doesn’t look a whole lot different from its current appearance save for the presence of a Heritage fleet baggage car.

The Heritage baggage car has since been replaced by a Viewliner baggage car that starting in early January 2019 will no longer operate on Nos. 448 and 449.

Amtrak Offering 99 Cars for Sale or Donation

Amtrak plans to offer another 99 passenger and baggage cars for sale, although some might end up being donated to museums or preservation groups.

The cars have been deemed surplus by the passenger carrier include 19 heritage dining cars, which Amtrak began retiring in 2015.

Also up for sale or donation are 51 baggage cars, seven refrigerated express cars, four Hi-level coaches and 18 crew dormitory cars.

The baggage cars were built between 1946 and 1962 while the Hi-level coaches date to 1956 when they were built by Budd for use on Santa Fe’s El Capitan.

The crew dorms are former Union Pacific 10-roomette, six bedrooms sleepers while the express cars were used by ExpressTrak in the late 1990s during a time when Amtrak was actively seeking to boost its mail and express business.

Amtrak said it will consider donating some of the cars to museums or preservation groups that submit a letter “stating the reason for the donation request and the intended use of the equipment should the donation be granted.”

Trains magazine reported that Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the “donation requests will be evaluated within the finance department.”

Magliari would not say what criteria will be used to decide what donation proposals will be accepted or rejected, particularly when there are competing proposals.

The cars will be available for inspection starting next week at the Beech Grove Heavy Maintenance Facility near Indianapolis.

However, the refrigerated express cars and one crew dormitory are being stored elsewhere.

All cars are being sold or donated in an “as is-where is” basis with Amtrak saying it will off no performance guarantees nor will it agree to  perform any work required to make the cars acceptable for interchange by a freight carrier.

Amtrak also said the equipment may not leave the property in Amtrak service and must be removed or scrapped on site within 90 days of the transfer of ownership.

The closing date for bids or requests for donations is Jan. 4, 2019.

Not Open for Meals

Bringing up the rear of Amtrak’s northbound Saluki is Viewliner diner Indianapolis.

But the diner is not open to serve meals to passengers. Instead, it’s purpose is to help Train 390 meet an axle count requirement mandated by host railroad Canadian National.

It’s a safety measure to ensure that the train triggers grade crossing warning devices. Any Amtrak train using a CN route must have a minimum number of axles.

The Indianapolis is the not the only dining car on the Saluki. Ahead of the baggage car is Heritage diner No. 8505, a former Northern Pacific car built by Budd in 1957.

Amtrak may have retired its Heritage diners from their intended purpose, but some of those cars continue to run up miles in a different type of revenue service.

The Saluki is shown departing Effingham, Illinois.