Can We Have A Better Cardinal Schedule, Please?

[MARC Rider]

The airlines think that there's no alternative and the cattle will take what they're given.

But the local AIRPORTS publish the schedules for the planes leaving that airport, because it's crucial marketing for a smaller airport. If they don't, people will just drive to the larger airport and never realize the small airport has suitable flights. (Google Flights's "search nearby airports" and "see all destinations from this airport" options help.)

Yeah, but those are "schedules" not "timetables. For example, I might be willing to fly out to the coast on a 1 or 2 stop through flight, especially if the fare is significantly cheaper than the nonstop. And I want to avoid actually having to changes planes, as the stopovers are longer and there's always the risk of your luggage getting lost or your missing the connecting flight. The "schedules" on the airlines web site will give you this information, just as the "schedules" on the Amtrak website or app do. But I don't think any airline has timetables that let you figure out that Southwest runs a through plane from Manchester to BWI to San Antonio to El Paso. I think most passengers only care about getting from one point to the other with a minimum number of plane changes along the way. While I'm a timetable fan, too, it's possible that the only people who really care about them are railfans who like to figure out how the system works in detail. Of course, they should publish timetables, I'm sure they have them for the employees, it's a matter of transparency for the public that they be readily available, and it doesn't cost that much to provide them.

 

[Palmland]

Only Amtrak - I found the timetable in the most convoluted manner: Amtrak.com/Destinations/South/SilverService-Palmetto/schedules. Of course it's the one from last October so will probably be conveniently deleted soon.

 

[me_little_me]

Timetables give you an idea as to where you are, how far behind you are running, and where the next long stop is if you are on a train. If you are planning a trip and can take multiple trains, they let you know how often the trains run, which trains you can catch if you want a few hours in an intermediate city or when changing trains, which city to drive to based on train time if you are not particularly close to where you can catch the train.

For example, I have driven as much as five hours to get to the best city for different routes and sometimes will drive further to catch the one available train (which hits all cities) based on what I need for amenities (baggage? Not to early in the AM? Need to check out a different city to see if local food can be bought early in AM before boarding? Amount of parking? Willingness to drive that distance?, etc).

I have taken the Carolinian from Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro and more and the timetable helps since Amtrak only gives me one choice at a time. I've taken the Cardinal from Hinton, WSS and Prince to help decide which is best for me.

I have picked up the Silvers from Charleston, Jessup and Savannah.

Where I get off depends on numerous criteria and the easiest way to compare time of arrival is to look at the timetable. The easiest way to check the Amtrak listed time of arrival with historic information is to have a timetable and access to ASMAD.

When I plan a trip, I look at all the other stops to see if I want to stopover for a day and if I am changing trains in an expensive city like NY or CHI, since I often spend the night there, I can see which "local" train might benefit me to go a short distance to the first LD stop where I can stay overnight at a lower cost and pick up my LD train from there.

Much easier to use timetables which can be downloaded and read offline on my cellphone or computer than to constantly have to got to Amtrak's web site to look up some simple info.

 

[Cal]

Timetables give you an idea as to where you are, how far behind you are running, and where the next long stop is if you are on a train. If you are planning a trip and can take multiple trains, they let you know how often the trains run, which trains you can catch if you want a few hours in an intermediate city or when changing trains, which city to drive to based on train time if you are not particularly close to where you can catch the train.

For example, I have driven as much as five hours to get to the best city for different routes and sometimes will drive further to catch the one available train (which hits all cities) based on what I need for amenities (baggage? Not to early in the AM? Need to check out a different city to see if local food can be bought early in AM before boarding? Amount of parking? Willingness to drive that distance?, etc).

I have taken the Carolinian from Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro and more and the timetable helps since Amtrak only gives me one choice at a time. I've taken the Cardinal from Hinton, WSS and Prince to help decide which is best for me.

I have picked up the Silvers from Charleston, Jessup and Savannah.

Where I get off depends on numerous criteria and the easiest way to compare time of arrival is to look at the timetable. The easiest way to check the Amtrak listed time of arrival with historic information is to have a timetable and access to ASMAD.

When I plan a trip, I look at all the other stops to see if I want to stopover for a day and if I am changing trains in an expensive city like NY or CHI, since I often spend the night there, I can see which "local" train might benefit me to go a short distance to the first LD stop where I can stay overnight at a lower cost and pick up my LD train from there.

Much easier to use timetables which can be downloaded and read offline on my cellphone or computer than to constantly have to got to Amtrak's web site to look up some simple info.

This!

 

[William W.]

Me, just waiting for a daily Cardinal.

 

[Cal]

Me, just waiting for a daily Cardinal. View attachment 22734

Us, waiting for a return of the Sunset East.

 

[neroden]

me_little_me, I hope you don't mind but I quoted you in an email direct to Bill Flynn and other Amtrak senior management. You wrote that very eloquently.

 

[me_little_me]

me_little_me, I hope you don't mind but I quoted you in an email direct to Bill Flynn and other Amtrak senior management. You wrote that very eloquently.

No problem and thanks for the compliment.

I'm sure they'd love to read all those comments about them that I've written - NOT!

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

I remember that the Cardinal ran on a schedule rather like what you propose (evening westbound from WAS, morning eastbound into WAS) until the mid-1980s. Then Amtrak flipped it to a daylight schedule across West Virginia, initially as an experiment, and they claimed ridership went way up. The current schedule has the advantages of covering the most scenic parts in daylight and making all connections to/from the west at Chicago. But the times at Cincinnati are horrible. And to me the Cardinal has always been very difficult to use, because the times at NYP are so early/late that one can't make connections to/from upstate NY or New England. At least the restored sleeper on 66/67 makes the latter somewhat more palatable.

Historic Cardinal schedules:

50 Years of Amtrak--George Washington/James Whitcomb Riley/Cardinal (on-track-on-line.com)

I agree with the OP, the train needs to serve Cincinnati and Indianapolis at better hours. Of course my opinions are a lot more extreme than others.

 

[zephyr17]

Historic Cardinal schedules:

50 Years of Amtrak--George Washington/James Whitcomb Riley/Cardinal (on-track-on-line.com)

I agree with the OP, the train needs to serve Cincinnati and Indianapolis at better hours. Of course my opinions are a lot more extreme than others.

What is really needed is a Chicago-Indy-Cincinnati corridor train with times tailored to those cities, and leave the LD schedule alone.. It is in Amtrak's corridor proposal.

It could also use some improvements Chicago-Indy to decrease the way too long running time, like the completion of the 75th Street interlocking project, getting signals on the "dark territory" between Crawfordsville and just outside Indy. The entry to Indy generally requires work, especially the grand loop route heading out of town initially to the southwest. Improving the old Monon between Crawfordsville and Dyer.

 

[Seaboard92]

The Cardinal's route in Indiana is really a holdover route from the Penn Central implosion in the eastern midwest. Remember initially the train used the EX New York Central Big Four route from Cincinnati, OH to Chicago via Indianapolis, Lafayette, and Kankakee. For the most part this route was arrow straight and was a very high quality passenger route. The Pennsylvania Railroad route was much more convoluted and slower between the two points via Logansport.

When Penn Central imploded in the 70s a lot of high quality passenger lines were lost in Indiana. At the beginning of the implosion Amtrak rerouted off the derailment plagued and slow order dominated lines which then allowed Penn Central/Conrail the ability to abandoned them. Initially the Riely/Cardinal was rerouted via the now abandoned C&O line across the state which had previously lost service prior to 1952!!!

The original New York Central route is actually for the most part in place between Cincinnati and Indianapolis the first 40 or so miles are a shortline, with a 20 mile section with the rails still in place but out of service, and the remainder is a CSX branch line. It is significantly shorter than the EX B&O routing that the Cardinal uses. Fun fact the B&O from Hamilton, OH to Indianapolis, IN also lost passenger service before 1952. You have far larger towns on the EX NYC like Greensburg, Batesville, and Shelbyville. Then on the other side going west from Indy the New York Central is abandoned all the way from Zionsville (a few miles NW of Indy) to Lafayette with the larger population centers being Lebanon. After that the line from Layfayette to Kankakee is a shortline property that all but runs on Purdue's Campus. Kankakee to Chicago is the current CONO route. Honeslty if the state wanted to make a serious improvement to the Cincy service it would make sense to upgrade the ROW from IND-CIN which could probably cut a good 45 minutes from the timetable. I don't think there ever will be service on the Big Four route west of Indy as that ROW is completely gone at this point.

Currently the Cardinal takes the EX Pennsylvania Panhandle Route from Union Station Indianapolis to the IND Airport. Joins the EX Pennsylvania Louisville-Chicago line to run about five miles to a connection with an EX New York Central Branch Line to Pekin, IL. Where it then gets on the Monon from Crawfordsville to Dyer. There it gets on the old Grand Trunk & Western to Thornton Junction. There it gets on the EX Chicago & Eastern Illinois to go to the former Chicago and Western Indiana which was a terminal road for Dearborn Terminal.

Of course the other good route which was Indianapolis to Chicago via the Pennsylvania Railroad is long gone as well. It also had a convoluted route into Chicago as those Pennsylvania Railroad trains ran into the North Side of Union Station.

 

[IndyLions]

…the train used the NYC Big Four route from Cincinnati, OH to Chicago via Indianapolis, Lafayette, and Kankakee. For the most part this route was arrow straight and was a very high quality passenger route…on the other side going west from Indy the New York Central is abandoned all the way from Zionsville (a few miles NW of Indy) to Lafayette with the larger population centers being Lebanon.

Thanks for the summary. It’s a shame the Big Four route is gone. No question it’s a direct route.

Here’s what it looks like to “ride” it now. This was recorded yesterday about 13 miles north of Lebanon.

View attachment trim.6A2118E4-0678-4B8D-B0E1-A2C710990D66.MOV

While I enjoy it as a bike trail - I’d rather it was a passenger line…

(sorry for the wind noise…)

 

[railiner]

The Cardinal's route in Indiana is really a holdover route from the Penn Central implosion in the eastern midwest. Remember initially the train used the EX New York Central Big Four route from Cincinnati, OH to Chicago via Indianapolis, Lafayette, and Kankakee. For the most part this route was arrow straight and was a very high quality passenger route. The Pennsylvania Railroad route was much more convoluted and slower between the two points via Logansport.

When Penn Central imploded in the 70s a lot of high quality passenger lines were lost in Indiana. At the beginning of the implosion Amtrak rerouted off the derailment plagued and slow order dominated lines which then allowed Penn Central/Conrail the ability to abandoned them. Initially the Riely/Cardinal was rerouted via the now abandoned C&O line across the state which had previously lost service prior to 1952!!!

The original New York Central route is actually for the most part in place between Cincinnati and Indianapolis the first 40 or so miles are a shortline, with a 20 mile section with the rails still in place but out of service, and the remainder is a CSX branch line. It is significantly shorter than the EX B&O routing that the Cardinal uses. Fun fact the B&O from Hamilton, OH to Indianapolis, IN also lost passenger service before 1952. You have far larger towns on the EX NYC like Greensburg, Batesville, and Shelbyville. Then on the other side going west from Indy the New York Central is abandoned all the way from Zionsville (a few miles NW of Indy) to Lafayette with the larger population centers being Lebanon. After that the line from Layfayette to Kankakee is a shortline property that all but runs on Purdue's Campus. Kankakee to Chicago is the current CONO route. Honeslty if the state wanted to make a serious improvement to the Cincy service it would make sense to upgrade the ROW from IND-CIN which could probably cut a good 45 minutes from the timetable. I don't think there ever will be service on the Big Four route west of Indy as that ROW is completely gone at this point.

Currently the Cardinal takes the EX Pennsylvania Panhandle Route from Union Station Indianapolis to the IND Airport. Joins the EX Pennsylvania Louisville-Chicago line to run about five miles to a connection with an EX New York Central Branch Line to Pekin, IL. Where it then gets on the Monon from Crawfordsville to Dyer. There it gets on the old Grand Trunk & Western to Thornton Junction. There it gets on the EX Chicago & Eastern Illinois to go to the former Chicago and Western Indiana which was a terminal road for Dearborn Terminal.

Of course the other good route which was Indianapolis to Chicago via the Pennsylvania Railroad is long gone as well. It also had a convoluted route into Chicago as those Pennsylvania Railroad trains ran into the North Side of Union Station.

Thanks for that great research... Could you break down in more detail how the Panhandle trains got into the North side of CUS?

 

[railiner]

Besides the Cardinal predecessor, the Floridian predecessor also wandered around various Indiana routes in seeking better track in the PC era. For a brief time, it even used the former C&EI via Danville and Evansville, although I don't believe it is shown in any timetables. It probably was just an extended detour route...
The National Timetable did have a little blurb apologizing for the deteriorated track condition's in Indiana, promising that they were in search of a better track.

To rub salt in the wound, The Grand Trunk Western during that era, touted itself as the Good Track railroad, in wooing shippers....

 

[Ziv]

The irritating thing for me isn't that the schedules are in an out of the way spot, it is that there is no rhyme or reason for which trains have a schedule posted and which ones do not.
I followed the Destination > See All Routes > View Detail > Schedule route and half the routes have a Schedule in the dark blue box and half do not.
The "Haves" are:
AT, Card, Carolinian, HF, MRR, NER, LM, PacSurf, SL and Vermonter

The "Have Nots" are:
CZ, CL, CoNO, CS, Crescent, EB, LSL, SS, SWC and TE


It is just an odd way to look for schedules and then half don't even have them at the spot the rest do. Am I missing something? That has been known to happen...

That's why I said "to me". I found it in a matter of seconds.


This claim remains false.

 

[Seaboard92]

Thanks for that great research... Could you break down in more detail how the Panhandle trains got into the North side of CUS?

Now get ready for some real fun.

So the line left North Judson, IN heading northwest to LaCrosse, IN which was a junction point but I forget who the cross railroad was. That little section is actually open as the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum.

From LaCrosse it went west to Hebron, IN alongside Indiana Route 8 before it turned northwest again to Dolton, IL.

At Dolton it continues Northwest to Beverley View near NS's EX Wabash Landers Yard via West Pullman.

Then it continues due north via McKinley Park where it crosses the Gulf, Mobile, & Ohio (Lincoln Service), and the Santa Fe, and crosses the Burlington Route at Douglas Park.

Then it reaches the diamonds of the Milwaukee Road, and the Chicago and Northwestern where it enters the Metra Milwaukee District, or I should say the Milwaukee enters the Pennsylvania Railroad. As the Pennsy owned this section here and continues into Union Station.

 

[niemi24s]

The irritating thing for me isn't that the schedules are in an out of the way spot, it is that there is no rhyme or reason for which trains have a schedule posted and which ones do not.
I followed the Destination > See All Routes > View Detail > Schedule route and half the routes have a Schedule in the dark blue box and half do not.
The "Haves" are:
AT, Card, Carolinian, HF, MRR, NER, LM, PacSurf, SL and Vermonter

The "Have Nots" are:
CZ, CL, CoNO, CS, Crescent, EB, LSL, SS, SWC and TE


It is just an odd way to look for schedules and then half don't even have them at the spot the rest do. Am I missing something? That has been known to happen...

I think the reason is that you're using that path on this website: Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes This website is the one with the Covid (3X a week) timetables, none of which are currently in effect as we're now back to (mostly) daily departures.

While there are no current daily timetables provided by Amtrak, the best I can find are the old pre-Covid daily ones which are available here... Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes ...using that same path (Destinations > See All Routes > View Details > Schedules). Here's the one for the CZ dated March 16, 2020: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf

Would sure like to know if there's a daily post-Covid set of timetables/schedules available somewhere. But doing so is probably too much bother for Amtrak.

 

[Ziv]

Niemi, thank you for the reply but nothing in the link you gave me says anything about “Destinations > See All Routes > View Details > “
The link you sent has the same lack of info that I have found on my own. Is this an Apple vs Microsoft issue?
And isn’t Amtrak big enough to hire decent IT people and avoid these sophomoric own goals? Frustrating, but I have always expected Amtrak to be run by fools so it isn’t like it hurts my opinion of them.

I think the reason is that you're using that path on this website: Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes This website is the one with the Covid (3X a week) timetables, none of which are currently in effect as we're now back to (mostly) daily departures.

While there are no current daily timetables provided by Amtrak, the best I can find are the old pre-Covid daily ones which are available here... Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes ...using that same path (Destinations > See All Routes > View Details > Schedules). Here's the one for the CZ dated March 16, 2020: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf

Would sure like to know if there's a daily post-Covid set of timetables/schedules available somewhere. But doing so is probably too much bother for Amtrak.

 

[niemi24s]

Niemi, thank you for the reply but nothing in the link you gave me says anything about “Destinations > See All Routes > View Details > “

Maybe I messed up the first link. Try this one: Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes Works OK on my Chrome browser.

The key getting the daily pre-Covid timetables is the "aemtest" portion of the url.

 

[Willbridge]

Airline and rail schedules are two different animals. Almost all airline flights are only point to point and easy to search via computer, whereas rail has many intermediate stops which matter to a sizable number of riders. I don't view the ending paper schedules as part of the grand conspiracy, but it is still an easy task to keep up with .pdf schedules and make them available on Amtrak's website for passengers to download and print, or save to their devices.

The best example of airline passengers not being interested in the route is the recent experience with the flight across Belarus being interrupted. I'm sure that was a surprise to most on the plane.

Airlines used to publish linear stop by stop schedules but ran into problems when faster planes made zigzag routes common. They went to the on-to-off format even before most customers had access to computers. It was an easy step to discontinue the print version.

 

[Seaboard92]

The best example of airline passengers not being interested in the route is the recent experience with the flight across Belarus being interrupted. I'm sure that was a surprise to most on the plane.

Airlines used to publish linear stop by stop schedules but ran into problems when faster planes made zigzag routes common. They went to the on-to-off format even before most customers had access to computers. It was an easy step to discontinue the print version.

Well what can make things really confusing is when airlines recycle flight numbers for a turn. I'm working a Turn on Thursday that has the same flight number from CLT to BNA, as it does from BNA to CLT.

 

[Ziv]

Thank you! That link worked for the Empire Builder and the Capital Limited! That is useful and it works on my MacBook.

Maybe I messed up the first link. Try this one: Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes Works OK on my Chrome browser.

The key getting the daily pre-Covid timetables is the "aemtest" portion of the url.

 

[jiml]

Well what can make things really confusing is when airlines recycle flight numbers for a turn. I'm working a Turn on Thursday that has the same flight number from CLT to BNA, as it does from BNA to CLT.

That became "a thing" on AA shortly after the merger. Not sure whether they inherited it from US Scare (which I seldom flew), but prior to that AA had strict guidelines regarding the directions of flights and odd/even numbering.

 

[jruff001]

That became "a thing" on AA shortly after the merger. Not sure whether they inherited it from US Scare (which I seldom flew), but prior to that AA had strict guidelines regarding the directions of flights and odd/even numbering.

It's been a thing at all of the majors since the mega-mergers (UA/CO; AA/US; DL/NW). They were running out of flight numbers when they combined ops.

 

[niemi24s]

Thank you! That link worked for the Empire Builder and the Capital Limited! That is useful and it works on my MacBook.

If that link quits working, here's a link to an archive of them that should (hopefully) be around until the cows come home: Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home

IIRC we have Acela Fan to thank for these!