# Florida to the Midwest



## Palmland (Aug 28, 2019)

Another topic on service from Florida prompted this one. While we can all dream of a reincarnation of the South Wind, City of Miami, or even Amtrak’s Floridian for Florida to Chicago service, I think most of us realize that’s not happening.

But, it seems to me the existing schedule of the Silver Star and Capitol Ltd work well with a through train via Washington - about 46 hours. Yes it’s two overnights, but so are two night out trains in the west, why not in the east.

A couple cars could be switched to a regional at Washington for NY (as was often done pre Amtrak). And of course the Palmetto continues to serve the NY to GA market (and should continue to JAX).

The Meteor becomes the primary Florida train, which seems to be Amtrak’s current direction. This eliminates Washington switching and servicing of the Capitol and the useless almost full day layover of the Capitol in DC. What other LD market has this level of service? Time for Amtrak to try something different.


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## brianpmcdonnell17 (Aug 28, 2019)

Amtrak has considered such a change in the recent past; it was mentioned in an improvement plan for the CL. I would personally benefit from such a change, considering I live in Chicago and most of my family lives in Raleigh or Chicago. However, I can think of two clear issues with this plan: there is strong SS ridership north of Washington and OTP issues. IMO, the best solution is to focus on improving OTP to ensure a reliable connection. Once that has occurred, the SS should continue to operate to NYP but have through cars to CHI via the CL, similar to the procedure in San Antonio. However, I honestly doubt this will ever happen and would be very pleased if the connection could be guaranteed northbound and made reliable both ways, even in the absence of thru cars.


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## jiml (Aug 29, 2019)

Did they not try through cars before the Capitol was "Superliner'd"? There certainly were from the Broadway Limited at Philadelphia and the Montrealer at NYP.


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## railiner (Aug 29, 2019)

Running 'thru cars' certainly has its pro's and con's...
It would be an interesting cost-benefit analysis, to see just how it would come out. I suspect they have already done this several times, and hence, the current arrangement prevails....


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## brianpmcdonnell17 (Aug 29, 2019)

jiml said:


> Did they not try through cars before the Capitol was "Superliner'd"? There certainly were from the Broadway Limited at Philadelphia and the Montrealer at NYP.


Yes, it has been done in the past


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