A pair of Amtrak P42DC locomotives are nose to nose in the motive power consist of the westbound Lake Shore Limited in Cleveland on Nov. 15, 1997. Both units were trailing in the three-locomotive consist. They’ve picked up some ice during their journey through upstate New York and along the Lake Erie shoreline between Buffalo and Cleveland.
I don’t know if these two guys know each other or not. They were chatting by the vestibule of the first eastbound Pennsylvanian to stop in Cleveland on Nov. 7, 1998. It was an extended stop in order to accommodate a welcome ceremony. The conductor is George Sanders. I never did learn the identity of the other guy or even if he was a passenger aboard the train or just talking with the conductor as the train stood on display in the station.
Dawn will be breaking soon in Cleveland as the eastbound Lake Shore Limited makes its station stop not far from the Lake Erie shore. Four Amtrak trains daily serve Cleveland and all of them are scheduled to arrive between 1:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., meaning that boarding and disembarking passengers see only darkness here until their train is delayed. The scheduling is a product of Cleveland being located on the midway point of the routes of the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited.
It was one of those quintessential November days in Cleveland with gray skies overhead.
But if you were a rail passenger advocate then, metaphorically speaking, the skies could not have been any bluer.
After years of pushing for it, advocates were getting their wish. Amtrak was extending its New York-Pittsburgh Pennsylvanian west of the Steel City.
Finally, Northeast Ohio would see an Amtrak train in daylight hours in circumstances other than an existing scheduled train running several hours late.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s Amtrak would put on show to celebrate the inauguration of new service. On Nov. 7, 1998, it was Cleveland’s turn for that with the Pennsylvanian coming to town.
It was not, though, the first time in the 1990s that an Amtrak publicity train had come to Northeast Ohio.
In fall 1990 Amtrak ran a publicity special through Akron and Cleveland in advance of the rerouting of the Broadway Limited via Akron and the Capitol Limited via Cleveland.
Those publicity trains were greeted by marching bands, speakers and a festive welcoming ceremony.
By contrast, when the Pennsylvanian came to Cleveland the celebration was more subdued.
There was a speaker inside the station and a specially decorated cake. But there were no marching bands and Amtrak did not assign the publicity train an open platform car or a dome car as it had in 1990.
There was a respectable crowd to greet the first No. 44, which arrived on a Saturday from Chicago.
My photographs from that day show people clustered around the vestibules of the Horizon coaches and I’m not sure if they were allowed onboard to tour the train or if some of them were boarding as ticketed passengers.
I struck up a brief conversation with Amtrak conductor George Sanders, noting we shared a last name in common but were otherwise unrelated.
He posed for a photograph and I got his address and later sent him a copy.
The train rolled into the station with two P42DC locomotives, two material handling cars, a Superliner Sightseer lounge, a Superliner transition sleeper, two Horizon fleet coaches, an Amfleet coach, an Amfleet café car and a string of RoadRailers on the rear.
The RoadRailers were a sign of why Amtrak had extended the Pennsylvanian to Chicago.
The Three Rivers, which had replaced the Broadway Limited in 1995 between New York and Pittsburgh and been extended to Chicago in November 1996, had reached its limit of 30 cars, most of which carried mail and express.
To expand its burgeoning head-end business, Amtrak needed another train to Chicago. That would be the Pennsylvanian.
Amtrak had wanted to extend the Pennsylvanian westward before Christmas 1997 but lacked sufficient crews.
Although new operating personnel were hired in spring 1998, Conrail refused to allow the expansion during the summer track work season.
Because the postal service usually dispatched mail around dawn, No. 44 was scheduled to depart Chicago at 6 a.m. while No. 43 left Philadelphia at 6:30 a.m.
The Pennsylvanian reached Cleveland eastbound in early afternoon and westbound in late afternoon.
It was scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 11:59 p.m. and in Philadelphia at 12:25 a.m. That meant no convenient same-day connections in Chicago and few in Philly.
But passenger traffic was less the objective of the Pennsylvanian extension than head-end revenue.
Then Amtrak president George Warrington said at the time that this would put Amtrak on a glide path to profitability.
Those who understood the realities of passenger train scheduling would have understood that this made the Pennsylvanian’s future in Cleveland rather tenuous.
Nonetheless, there was optimism in the air as Nos. 43 and 44 began serving Cleveland, Elyria and Alliance.
I don’t remember anything the speaker said during the welcome ceremony or even who he was. I was there primarily to make photographs of Amtrak in Cleveland in daylight.
Except during holiday travel periods, ridership of the Pennsylvanian would prove to be light. On many days it had only about a dozen passengers aboard in Ohio and Indiana.
Ridership was stunted by chronic delays that occurred in 1999 following the breakup of Conrail by Norfolk Southern and CSX.
The typical consist for the Pennsylvanian was three coaches and a food service car.
A schedule change on April 29, 2002, moved the Chicago departure back six hours to 11:55 p.m., which made No. 44 the “clean up” train to accommodate those who had missed connections in Chicago from inbound western long distance trains to the eastern long-distance trains.
At the same time, the westbound Pennsylvanian began departing Philadelphia two hours later in order to provide additional connections.
No. 43 now was scheduled to reach Chicago Union Station at 1:44 a.m.
A change of administrations at Amtrak led to the carrier announcing in fall 2002 that it would cease carrying mail and express. As a result the Pennsylvanian would revert to New York-Pittsburgh operation.
On Feb. 8, 2003, I went down to the Cleveland Amtrak station with my camera to make photographs of the Pennsylvanian, the first time I’d done that since the November 1998 inaugural train had arrived.
This time, though, I boarded as a paying passenger, getting off in Pittsburgh and returning on the last westbound No. 43 to run west of Pittsburgh.
There were no crowds, cake or speakers to greet the Pennsylvanian in the Cleveland station on this day.
And that sense of optimism that had hung in the air more than four years earlier had long since dissipated.
Rail passenger advocates in Ohio are still trying to get back that sense of optimism.
The Cleveland skyline watches over a very late westbound Lake Shore Limited as it sits in the station. Dining car Silver Restaurant was built by Budd for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and has carried two roster numbers at Amtrak. The image was made in November 1997.
It is Nov. 13, 1998. The eastbound Pennsylvanian is stopped in the Cleveland Amtrak station, having begun service a week earlier.
The photographer is standing in a parking garage overlooking Conrail’s Lakefront Line.
In the background the stadium that will host the expansion Cleveland Browns franchise is under construction.
He said getting this photo of Amtrak train No. 44 was a birthday present that he gave himself.
The Pennsylvanian is best known as a New York-Pittsburgh train but between November 1998 and February 2003 it operated between Chicago and Philadelphia.
The thinking was that mail and express business would enable the train to cover its operating costs. That gambit failed and it reverted to New York-Pittsburgh operation.
But on Nov. 7, 1998, there was optimism in the air as the first eastbound Pennsylvanian arrived in Cleveland.
The Pennsylvanian would be the first and thus far only Amtrak train scheduled to operate on a daylight schedule in both directions through Northeast Ohio.
It’s 0 dark 30 at the Cleveland Amtrak station and passengers are coming and going from the eastbound Lake Shore Limited. I set my camera on a tripod and captured this seen with a telephoto lens.
The view is looking primarily at the Amfleet II coaches. No. 48 still carried a Heritage Fleet dining car and crew dorm in those days.
On most days if you want to photograph Amtrak in Northeast Ohio you’ll need a good tripod because the four trains that cross the region daily do so between 1:30 a.m. and 6 a.m.
Back in the late 1990s I dabbled with making night photographs of Amtrak trains at the Cleveland station.
The two images shown above were made on Aug. 22, 1998. You’ve probably forgotten but it was a momentous day in railroad history because Norfolk Southern and CSX took administrative control of Conrail.
That had no effect on Conrail operations because the carrier continued to operate as normal until being formally divided on June 1, 1999.
In 1998 Amtrak’s P42DC locomotives still wore the Phase III livery in which they were delivered although some had the Phase IV look and the now ubiquitous Phase V livery would be introduced in the next year.
Shown above is dome lounge No. 2511. Like any Heritage Fleet car that was still operating in the late 1990s, this car has an interesting history.
It was built by Budd in April 1950 as Pacific Park for the Union Pacific, a 10 roomette, 6 double bedroom sleeper. At UP it was No. 1430.
It initially carried Amtrak roster 2623 and became the 2923 when rebuilt in September 1977 for head end power capability.
It was transformed into a dorm lounge in April 1998. Amtrak’s thinking at the time was that it could double as a lounge, but that apparently didn’t happen because Amtrak onboard crew members objected to having revenue passengers in their dorm car.
Amtrak retired the 2511 in June 2006. It was stored at the Beech Grove shops for several years until being offered for sale in 2018.
A long row of Amtrak Amfleet coaches gleams in the platform lighting at the Cleveland Amtrak station in May 2014.
No. 49 has arrived from New York en route to Chicago and I have just disembarked after a 10-day circle trip that took me west to Seattle and across Canada on the Canadian of VIA Rail Canada.
I had boarded the westbound Lake Shore Limited in Syracuse, New York.
As much fun as I had riding trains for more than a week, it also felt good to be home.
Amtrak in the Heartland 