Proponents of connecting three Amtrak routes by launching new service in the I-20 corridor recently met to discuss that propsect during a conference sponsored by the Southern Rail Commission.
The meeting was held in Monroe, Louisiana, and SRC officials discussed how funding available under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act might spur development of the service.
The I-20 corridor route would originate in Atlanta, where it would connect with the New York-New Orleans Crescent, and run west to Fort Worth, Texas, to connect with the Chicago-San Antonio Texas Chief.
It also would connect with the City of New Orleans (Chicago-New Orleans) in Jackson, Mississippi.
The route would bring intercity rail service to interim points including Monroe; Shreveport and Ruston, Louisiana, and Vicksburg, Mississippi.
SRC officials told attendees at the meeting that funding provided by the IIJA “increases the likelihood of the project coming to fruition.”
Amtrak has extended the suspension of two Wolverine Service trains until Oct. 24.
In announcing the suspensions earlier this month, the passenger carrier had said that Nos. 350 and 355 were being suspended due to lack of crews and equipment.
At the time, the trains were to have been reinstated on Sept. 17.
No. 350 is the early morning departure from Chicago while No. 355 departs Pontiac, Michigan, in suburban Detroit in late afternoon.
Two other Wolverine Service roundtrips are unaffected by the service suspensions.
Service suspensions also remain in effect on two other Midwest corridor routes.
Lincoln Service Trains 300 and 305 remain suspended through at least Oct. 23.
No. 300 is scheduled to depart St. Louis at 4:35 a.m. while No. 304 is scheduled to depart Chicago at 5:20 p.m.
The Chicago-St. Louis route continues to field three other Lincoln Service roundtrips plus the Chicago-San Antonio Texas Eagle.
Suspended until at least Dec. 5 is the Saluki from Chicago to Carbondale, Illinois, and the Illini from Carbondale to Chicago.
The former departs Chicago in the morning while the latter leaves Carbondale in late afternoon.
The trains were suspended last January due to shortages of operating crews and equipment.
One factor keeping the trains sidelined is the insistence of host railroad Canadian National that all trains on the Chicago-Carbondale route use Superliner equipment.
Until about two years ago, the State of Illinois-sponsored Chicago-Carbondale trains used Horizon and Amfleet equipment.
Other trains in the Chicago-Carbondale corridor include the northbound Saluki, which departs Carbondale in the morning, and the southbound Illini, which departs Chicago in late afternoon.
The City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans also covers the corridor but is operating just five days a week. Nos. 58 and 59 are slated to resume daily operation on Oct. 8.
Amtrak’s new ALC-42 Charger locomotives are operating on three long-distance routes, but not all trains on those routes are yet pulled by the Siemens-built locomotives.
A report on the website of Railfan and Railroad magazine said Chargers have seen service in recent weeks pulling the Empire Builder (Chicago-Seattle/Portland), the City of New Orleans (Chicago-New Orleans) and the California Zephyr (Chicago-Emeryville, California).
Four ALC-42 locomotives were in the motive power of a recent eastbound California Zephyr, although just two of them were online with the other two new deliveries being towed.
Those new deliveries were later towed by the Chicago to Washington Capitol Limited.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told the magazine that it will be some time before all runs on the three aforementioned routes will be covered by ALC-42 units.
Magliari said 11 Chargers are in service in long-distance train service but not all 11 are necessarily operating at the same time.
At least 25 locomotives are needed to cover all runs of the three routes.
The ALC-42 Chargers debuted last spring on the Empire Builder. It was a troubled inauguration with technical issues hindering the positive train control system of the locomotives.
Those issues largely have since been worked out.
The Railfan and Railroad report said that often an ALC-42 is paired with a P42DC. The report said typically the Charger trails the P42 on westbound trips of the Empire Builder.
However, Chargers have worked as solo units on the City of New Orleans in recent weeks. Between Chicago and Carbondale, Illinois, on the City route, Amtrak crews are already familiar with similar locomotives, the SC-44 Chargers.
On the Empire Builder route, an ALC-42 often leads Train 7 from Spokane, Washington, to Seattle as a solo unit while a P42 pulls the Portland section.
Amtrak has agreed to purchase 125 ALC-42 units and all of them are expected to be in revenue service as replacements for P42 and P40 units by 2029.
Shown above is the first of what I expect to be dozens if not hundreds of photographs of Amtrak trains pulled by Siemens-built ALC-42 Charger locomotives.
The City of New Orleans is just under an hour late as it rips through Humboldt, Illinois, on the Champaign Subdivision of Canadian National with No. 304 in charge.
Amtrak began phasing the new Charger locomotives into revenue service last spring on the Chicago-Seattle/Portland Empire Builder. The CONO was the second train to receive the units.
However, not all CONO train sets have the ALC-42s. The day before this image was made, the northbound CONO was pulled by a P42DC.
Over the next few years the ALC-42 units will replace P42 and P40 locomotives on long-distance and select corridor service trains. In the Midwest, corridor trains have been pulled for the past three to four years by Siemens-built SC-44 Chargers.
The ALC-42s have introduced Amtrak’s Phase VII livery, which features a dark blue carbody with red accenting and white stripes.
Perhaps in time I’ll become as tired of seeing this livery and locomotive as I’ve come to be with seeing the P42DC in action in the Phase V scheme. But that day is years away for now.
Canadian National track work will result in Amtrak’s City of New Orleans operating on a modified schedule on some days through Oct. 14.
In a service advisory posted on Amtrak’s website, the passenger carrier said trains 58 and 59 will operate earlier or later than their current schedules.
For the period Aug. 17 to Aug. 19, No. 58 will operate as Train 1058 and depart New Orleans at 2:45 p.m., an hour later than normal.
At Jackson, Mississippi, the train will be held until 8:14 p.m. and depart 2.5 hours later than its scheduled departure time. It will maintain that later schedule all the way to Chicago.
During the same time period, No. 59 will depart Chicago Union Station a half hour later than normal at 8:35 p.m. and maintain that schedule to New Orleans.
On Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, No. 59 will operate as No. 1059 and depart Chicago 90 minutes earlier than normal at 6:35 p.m. It will operate 90 minutes earlier to all stations en route to New Orleans.
For the period of Aug. 24 through Oct. 4, No. 58 will depart Jackson 30 minutes later than normal at 6:14 p.m. and maintain this schedule to Chicago. No. 58 will operate on its normal schedule on Labor Day (Sept. 5).
The City of New Orleans is slated to resume daily operate on Oct. 8. From that date through Oct. 14, No.58 will operate as No. 1058 and leave New Orleans at 2:45 p.m., an hour later than normal.
It will be held at Jackson until 8:14 p.m. where it will depart 2.5 hours later than normal. It will maintain that schedule to Chicago.
During this same time frame, No. 59 will depart Chicago at 8:35 p.m., 30 minutes later than normal and maintain that schedule to New Orleans.
Daily operation on three Amtrak will be phased into place during the first week of October.
Trains magazine reported on its website that daily operation of the New York-New Orleans Crescent will resume on Oct. 4 and for the City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans on Oct. 8.
Those dates correspond to the first dates that those trains would not have operated under the current operating conditions of running five days a week.
The New York-Miami Silver Meteor, which has been suspended since last January, will resume operating on Oct. 3.
The Trains report said that originally Amtrak said it would reinstate daily service on all three routes starting Sept. 11. But the service suspensions have been extended into October.
In suspending service on these and other routes last mid-January Amtrak cited a shortage of workers in its mechanical and onboard services departments as well as COVID-19 pandemic complications.
The suspended service on most long-distance routes has since been restored.
Amtrak has also restored some suspended services in the Northeast Corridor, including an overnight train between Boston and points in Virginia.
The New York-Toronto Maple Leaf was restored over the length of its route on June 27 and a second St. Louis-Kansas City Missouri River Runner was restored on July 17.
Still suspended are the New York-Montreal Adirondack, the Chicago to Carbondale, Illinois, Saluki, and the Carbondale to Chicago Illini.
Trains reported service restorations made or planned thus far reflect Amtrak’s belief of what service can be reliably supported with the existing labor force and the equipment that is operable.
Amtrak will restore fully daily service on Oct. 3 to long distance trains that are now operating five days a week.
The Rail Passengers Association reported on its website that the change affects the New York-New Orleans Crescent and the City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans.
Also on Oct. 3, RPA, said the now suspended Silver Meteor will resume operation between New York and Miami.
In recent months the only service between New York and Miami has been the Silver Star, which follows a different route from the Meteor in North Carolina and South Carolina.
RPA also said some improvements in food service aboard trains might be rolled out this fall but no details on what those changes might entail are yet available.
Amtrak cited staffing shortages for reducing the frequency of most long-distance trains in January to five days a week.
Most of those service cuts have since been reversed and train operations have reverted to seven days a week.
The RPA report said Amtrak is now confident that it will have the staff and equipment needed to bring the rest of the trains back on to pre-pandemic schedules.
However, the RPA report did not say whether the service restorations includes reinstating service now suspended in the Chicago-Carbondale, Illinois, corridor.
Since January the State of Illinois supported service on that route has been only the northbound Saluki in the morning and the southbound Illini in late afternoon and evening.
A bridge project being conducted by host railroad Canadian National will affect the operation of Amtrak trains in the Chicago-Carbondale, Illinois, corridor March 19-21.
In a service advisory, Amtrak said Nos. 390 and 393 will not operate between Chicago and Homewood, Illinois, on all three days.
Passengers will be transported by bus between those two stations.
Train 390, the northbound Saluki, and Train 393, the southbound Illini, will originate and terminate in Homewood.
Train 390 will depart Carbondale at 8 a.m., 30 minutes later than normal while Train 393 will depart Homewood at 5:16 p.m., 30 minutes later than normal.
The bridge work will not affect operations of the City of New Orleans, which operates between Chicago and New Orleans.
Two Tennessee state lawmakers have introduced legislation to direct a state agency to conduct a study of the feasibility of Amtrak service within the Volunteer state.
The study would review launching service within Tennessee connecting Chattanooga, Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis.
A similar bill was approved by the state senate in 2020 but languished in the house after that body adjourned earlier than expected due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Tennessee is currently served by one Amtrak train, the Chicago-New Orleans City of New Orleans, which stops in Memphis and Newbern.
Until early October 1979 the Chicago-Miami/St. Petersburg Floridian stopped in Nashville before that train was discontinued during an Amtrak route restructuring.
Amtrak has proposed establishing corridor service between Nashville and Atlanta via Chattanooga.
The idea has been subject of legislative hearings but the state has yet to commit funding to the proposal.
The study of Tennessee Amtrak service expansion would be conducted by the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and focus on cost and feasibility.
Looking north on the CN Champaign Subdivision at Tonti, Illinois. The June 10, 1971 derailment began just beyond that switch.A battered sign identifies Tonti, Illinois. Shown is the crossing of CN and County Road 20
Tonti, Illinois, is a mere wide spot in the road with a few houses, a business catering to agriculture, and a grade crossing on the Champaign Subdivision of Canadian National.
On June 10, 1971, Tonti briefly occupied the national spotlight as the location of Amtrak’s first fatal train derailment, which left 11 dead and 163 injured.
That was the most fatalities in a derailment involving an Amtrak train until the Jan. 4, 1987, derailment of the northbound Colonial at Chase, Maryland, which collided with three Conrail locomotives that had failed to stop for a red signal. The Chase collision left 16 dead.
I was reminded of the Tonti derailment this week when the first quarter 2022 issue of Passenger Train Journal arrived in my mailbox.
It contains a story written by Robert P. Schmidt about what caused Amtrak’s first fatal derailment with the author describing it as the culmination of a series of events that if any one of them had occurred in isolation would not have led to a serious accident.
Accompanying the story are photographs, some of which I’ve never seen before.
Reading that story reminded me that I visited Tonti in early August 2012 while railfanning the former Illinois Central mainline from Effingham to Centralia.
That prompted me to dig into a digital folder to find photographs I had almost forgotten that I had made.
The story of the Tonti derailment has been told many times although as usually happens with such events they tend to get forgotten or relegated to footnote status.
The train was the southbound City of New Orleans, which at the time was operating as Illinois Central Train 1. The operating crew was employed by the IC, which also owned the four locomotives and the train’s 15 passenger cars.
It was a transition era. The passenger equipment carried no Amtrak markings or heralds. The IC herald on the nose of the lead locomotive have been painted over.
That was typical in Amtrak’s early weeks when the newly-formed company had a skeletal staff and its host railroads operated, staffed and maintained equipment and trains that these companies had, by and large,operated before Amtrak began on May 1, 1971.
Train 1 had departed Chicago Central Station at 8 a.m. and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans at 1:30 a.m. the next day. It had left its scheduled stop in Effingham at 11:53 a.m., nearly a half hour late.
The IC operator at Edgewood reported No. 1 past at 12:05 p.m. Unknown to the crew or any of the railroad employees who inspected the train as it passed them, the axles of two wheels in the trailing tuck of lead engine E8A No. 4031 had locked and slid along the rails for 27 miles after No. 1 departed Effingham. One of those wheels developed a 10-inch flat spot and a false flange.
Twenty-miles south of Edgewood, No. 1 came to a crossover at Tonti. Just beyond the crossover switch was a turnout for a business track to a grain elevator that diverged from the southbound mainline track.
This section of the IC had an automatic train stop system and passenger trains were authorized speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour. No. 1 averaged 97 mph between Effingham and Tonti.
Engineer Lacy Haney would say later he felt a bump as the 4031 passed over the south crossover switch and then noticed his locomotive start to derail. The locomotive turned over on its right side and slid on the ground nearly 400 feet.
Haney and his fireman survived the crash and crawled out the side of the engine facing upward.
Six passenger cars and the baggage car also turned over on their sides. The remaining eight cars remained upright but most had jackknifed.
Six of those killed were ejected through broken windows and trapped beneath the side of their coach.
Many of the injured were taken to a hospital in nearby Salem. Most of the first responders came from there and the IC presented the town with a plaque recognizing the townspeople for their help. Some even took passengers from the train into their homes until they could continue their journey or return home.
The plaque, which is now in the Salem Area Historical Museum, has attached to it a silver plated bent spike from the derailment site.
One passenger who was killed in the derailment was never identified and is buried in the Salem cemetery. A headstone was donated by a local funeral home director.
Accidents are part of any transportation company’s history. Amtrak’s deadliest crash occurred Sept. 22, 1993, when the Sunset Limited struck an out-of-alignment bridge at Big Bayou Canot in Alabama, leaving 47 dead.
The City of New Orleans would be involved in a derailment on March 15, 1999, that left 11 dead. The southbound train, by now numbered No. 59, struck a truck at a grade crossing in Bourbonnais, Illinois.
* * * * *
Aug. 4, 2012, was a warm sunny day in south central Illinois as I set out to follow the former IC mainline. I had planned to stop in Tonti to see the location of a derailment I had read about many times.
Much has changed since 1971, including Amtrak operations. Five months after the derailment of IC No. 1, Amtrak renumbered all of its trains.
The Chicago-New Orleans trains were numbered 58 and 59, placed on an overnight schedules and renamed the Panama Limited. The CONO name was revived on Feb. 1, 1981.
Amtrak didn’t want much of IC’s passenger locomotives and cars and by middle to late summer 1971, they were being replaced with equipment with different railroad heritages. It wasn’t long before that equipment had taken on an Amtrak identity.
Starting in May 1989, IC began single tracking its mainline between Chicago and Memphis in favor of passing sidings and centralized traffic control.
In Tonti, that meant removing the southbound mainline track and the crossover that had figured in the 1971 derailment.
Although the business track in Tonti was retained, by the time I got there in 2012 the grain elevator had been razed and the business track made into a stub-end track that ends before County Road 20 (a.k.a Tonti Road).
A farm-oriented business still exists on the site and perhaps it gets occasional bulk shipments such as fertilizer.
Also gone is the grade crossing of County Road 900. Aerial photographs of the derailment show overturned cars on their sides blocking that road.
My stay in Tonti was brief. I snapped a few photographs and continued southward. It was quiet and no CN or Amtrak trains were nearby. In fact, I would not see a CN train the rest of the day.
Nor did I find a historical marker or monument commemorating the 1971 derailment.
I did discover while conducting research for this article that in 2003 a band known as the Chicago Kingsnakes released a song titled Tonti Train Wreck.
You can also find some YouTube programs containing photos made of the derailment.
As for what the site looks like today, the top two photographs are looking north toward the derailment site.
In the distance is the bridge carrying Interstate 57 over the tracks. At least two drivers on that highway that day saw the derailment unfolding below them.
One of them got off at the next exit and found a gas station from which to call for help.
I presume the switch to the business siding is still where it was in 1971. The crossover switches would have been just beyond that.
The derailed train came to rest in the area between the I-57 bridge and the area you can see closest to the camera.
Photographs from 1971 show the property on both sides of the tracks to have been an open area then. Trees have since grown up along both sides of the tracks.
I wouldn’t say the Tonti derailment has been forgotten. But like any historical event, it takes on lesser importance as the population comes to be dominated by those who did not live through it.
In a sidebar article in the aforementioned issue of Passenger Train Journal, Preston Cook wrote that the legacy of the Tonti derailment was the development of training programs for first responders as to how to best respond to a passenger train derailment.
That has included planned coordination of responses to railroad accidents and training of first responders to educate them on the unique qualities of rail transportation.
The National Transportation Safety Board had recommended such improvements in its report on the Tonti derailment.
* * * * *
I’m thinking of going back to Tonti this year, perhaps in late spring or early summer to photograph Amtrak’s southbound Saluki passing through at about the same time as IC No. 1 did 50 years ago.
Amtrak No. 391 operates on a schedule similar to what IC’s City of New Orleans followed for many years.
It’s doubtful that many Amtrak passengers riding through Tonti today know about what happened there 50 years ago.
I wonder how many of the Amtrak operating personnel know about it or ever think about that wreck as they rush through.
Some disasters are the subject of books and inspire movies. Others may be remembered by the occasional magazine or newspaper article, particularly on an anniversary of the disaster.
Eventually, they all wind up occupying only a distant part of our collective consciousness.
Amtrak in the Heartland 