Differences Between Today's Timetable, and 1994's Timetable.

[Seaboard92]

I don't know why I was looking at this but I looked at the timetable for the year I was born in and then looked at what has changed.

Service Discontinued
~Niagara Rainbow: A night train that departed NYP on FR, SA at 10:30 PM arriving in Niagara Falls at 7 AM. Returning on SA, SU at 8:45 PM Arriving in NYP at 7:45 AM. Odd that it ran only two days of the week but definitely something that could be useful these days. There was a cross platform transfer in Niagara Falls, Ontario to Toronto on VIA.
~Montrealer: A night train between Washington and Montreal on the current Vermonter's route.
~S Line in Florida: The Silver Meteor Miami Section rerouted via Orlando.
~Sunset Limited east of New Orleans. It did manage to build the run from JAX and MIA in 8.5 Hours. Which tells me a train from Charlotte of the Palmetto style might work to Miami.
~Gulf Breeze: Birmingham-Mobile with thru cars to New York on the Crescent
~The Broadway Limited. Stations that have lost service are on the B&O routing across Ohio and Indiana. Ran in todays No. 42 slot from PGH-NYP. And two hours later than No. 43's current slot NYP-PGH
~City of New Orleans: Memphis to Jackson via Grenada due to the downgrading of the IC passenger main.
~The International: Chicago-Flint-Toronto
~Lake Cities/Wolverine No. 352/353 Discontinued Detroit-Toledo
~Hoosier State
~Southwest Chief Chicago-Galesburg via Joliet
~The Loop Chicago-Springfield-Chicago
~Sunset Limited at Phoenix due to track closure
~Texas Eagle Houston Section Dallas-Houston via College Station
~Desert Wind Salt Lake City-Los Angeles
~Pioneer Denver-Portland-Seattle
~Atlantic City Express New York/Washington-Atlantic City

Service Additions
~The Vermonter: A day train from St. Albans to New York has been added to replace the Montrealer.
~City of New Orleans: Memphis to Jackson via Yazoo City due to rerouting
~The Blue Water: Chicago-Port Huron replaced the International.
~No. 352/353 added to Detroit-Pontiac
~Saluki Carbondale-Chicago added
~Carl Sandburg Quincy-Chicago
~Southwest Chief Chicago-Galesburg via Naperville
~Lincoln Service No. 301, 307, 306 Added
~Sunset Limited at Maricopa due to track closure
~Heartland Flyer
~Cascades Trains No. 501, 507, 502, 504, 516
~Pacific Surfliner Santa Barbra to San Luis Obispo
~Pacific Surfliner went from 10X Daily to 11X Daily LAX-SAN. 3X Daily to 5X Daily north of LAX.
~Capitol Corridor went from 3X Daily to 15X Daily also extended to Auburn
~San Joaquin went from 4X Daily to 6X Daily. Sacramento Branch opened as well.
~Ethan Allan Express

Service Changes
~Adirondack: The Southbound No. 68 stays the same as it is now. But on Sunday's it departs Two Hours and Thirty Minutes later at every station
~Carolinian: It runs an hour later going southbound now, and two hours earlier going northbound now.
~Palmetto: Shortened from Jacksonville to Savannah. Now runs an hour and a half earlier going southbound and just about the same going northbound. Now it has multiple stops in the NEC thanks to merging with a regional.
~Silver Star and Silver Meteor no longer split in Florida to become west coast and east coast sections. The Star split at Auburndale, FL, and the Meteor at Jacksonville.
~Silver Star now runs an hour and a half later going southbound, but stays close to the same going northbound.
~Silver Meteor now runs three hours earlier southbound, but the same northbound.
~Cardinal now runs three hours earlier westbound, and 1 hour earlier eastbound
~The Pennsylvanian has shifted 2 Hours Earlier going Eastbound, and runs the same schedule all week long, No. 43 runs 3 Hours and 15 minutes later.
~Lake Shore Limited going eastbound runs Two Hours and Thirty Minutes Later now, and westbound it runs Three Hours earlier.
~Capitol Limited going eastbound runs an hour and a half later, westbound is just the same. Also it now stops in Sandusky.
~Train No. 352 (Lake Cities/Wolverine) Moves 2.5 Hours Earlier, Train No. 353 (Lake Cities/Wolverine) moves One Hour Earlier. No. 355 (Twilight Limited/Wolverine) Moves One Hour Later
~Wolverine Corridor moves from Rose St. Station (Outside Michigan Central) to the current station.
~Pere Marquette eastbound moves an hour later, westbound moves an hour and forty five minutes earlier.
~Train No. 303 (Ann Rutledge/Lincoln Service) moves an hour earlier.
~Train No. 305 Moves Two Hours Later
~Train No. 302 goes Daily
~Sunset Limited No. 2 1.5 hours earlier Tucson east
~Sunset Limited No. 1 4.5 Hours Earlier out of New Orleans, An Hour earlier at LAX
~Texas Eagle No. 21 2 Hours Earlier
~Southwest Chief No. 3 Two Hours Earlier from Chicago, same arrival into LAX.
~Southwest Chief No. 4 Two Hours Earlier from Los Angeles, same arrival into CHI.
~Empire Builder No. 7 One Hour Earlier from Chicago, Same arrival into SEA
~California Zephyr No. 5 One Hour Earlier from Chicago, Same arrival into OAK
~California Zephyr No. 6 One Hour Earlier


Stays the Same
~The Maple Leaf
~The Crescent

Dome Car Routes
~Capitol Limited
~Lake Shore Limited (ALB-CHI)

Names Dropped
~Wolverine Corridor
------No. 350/351: The Wolverine originally a NYC Train that ran New York-Chicago via Detroit
------No. 352/353: The Lake Cities an Amtrak Era Name
------No. 354/355: The Twilight Limited originally a NYC Train that was the flagship on the Detroit-Chicago Route

~Lincoln Corridor
------No. 303/304 Ann Rutledge
------No. 305/300 The State House

~Missouri River Runner
-------Morning Train WB Kansas City Mule
-------Afternoon Train WB Ann Rutledge
-------Morning Train EB Ann Rutledge
-------Afternoon Train EB St. Louis Mule

~Cascades Corridor
-------11:00 AM from SEA SB Northwest Talgo
-------6:00 PM from PDX NB Northwest Talgo
-------5:30 PM from SEA SB Mount Rainier
-------7:35 AM from PDX NB Mount Rainier

~San Diegan became Pacific Surfliner

 

[jiml]

Wow.

 

[Palmland]

Good recap, Seaboard. For us Carolinians, I certainly liked better the ‘94 southbound schedules of the Star and Meteor. And, bring back the Palmetto/Silver Palm to FL!

 

[Seaboard92]

Good recap, Seaboard. For us Carolinians, I certainly liked better the ‘94 southbound schedules of the Star and Meteor. And, bring back the Palmetto/Silver Palm to FL!

I agree with you there. That schedule with the exception of No. 92 which could be tweaked a little bit would be far better. If you could just push it to about 6 AM out of Columbia it would be perfect. When I took the Meteor for the first time in 99 or 2000 it was still at the 6 AM time going south.

 

[neroden]

Really prefer the 1994 LSL schedule. Need to restore that.

 

[jis]

I don't know why I was looking at this but I looked at the timetable for the year I was born in and then looked at what has changed.

Service Discontinued
~Sunset Limited east of New Orleans. It did manage to build the run from JAX and MIA in 8.5 Hours. Which tells me a train from Charlotte of the Palmetto style might work to Miami.

Could you explain what you are trying to say in that? 8.5 hours from where to where exactly? JAX to MIA is still between 8.5 and 9 hrs on the Meteor. There was nothing special in the Sunset Limited schedule on that segment. Actually a day trin mmight be able to do it a little faster since it would not have the baggage (figuratively speaking) of a night train at station stops, and would like be a better acceleration/deceleration performer too. Columbia to JAX is 5 hours, If Charlotte to Columbia can be done in a couple of hours or three, sure there could be a Palmetto style day train between Charlotte and Miami. It would even be an LD train by the 750 mile rule.

 

[Seaboard92]

Could you explain what you are trying to say in that? 8.5 hours from where to where exactly? JAX to MIA is still between 8.5 and 9 hrs on the Meteor. There was nothing special in the Sunset Limited schedule on that segment. Actually a day trin mmight be able to do it a little faster since it would not have the baggage (figuratively speaking) of a night train at station stops, and would like be a better acceleration/deceleration performer too. Columbia to JAX is 5 hours, If Charlotte to Columbia can be done in a couple of hours or three, sure there could be a Palmetto style day train between Charlotte and Miami. It would even be an LD train by the 750 mile rule.

You could conservatively do CLT-CLB in 2:30. In reality it's only 103 track miles and the track is Class III good for 60 MPH minus the curves. So you could probably get it down to 2 hours or so. Which wouldn't be bad.

 

[Anderson]

Worth noting is that this timetable allowed the Meteor and the LSL to interchange pax both ways (right now you can do it going North/West but not South/East).

 

[jis]

Amtrak generally offers the Washington DC connection off of the Capitol Limited from Chicago for journeys to the South of Washington DC. In any case the LSL connection that is available north/west usually is way more expensive than the Cap connection in Sleeper too.

The one good reason for moving the Meteor departure to post Commission Hour slot at Penn Station NY is so that a consist can be turned on the saem day in NY thus reducing the total number of consists needed by the Meteor by one. As for the LSL arriving in NY earlier, implying departing Chicago earlier by the same amount of time, generally they avoid LD trains scheduled for arrival into NY after 4pm and before 6pm, so there is that to contend with too. But even considering that a 6:30-ish departure from Chicago should work just fine with a 3:30pm arrival, but maybe a bit dicey with the NS/CSX induced unreliability of OTP.

 

[brianpmcdonnell17]

Why does the LSL take so much longer eastbound than westbound? It's just over a full hour difference.

The eastbound LSL also takes an hour longer than the eastbound CL over the shared portion of the route from Chicago to Cleveland.

 

[jis]

Why does the LSL take so much longer eastbound than westbound? It's just over a full hour difference.

The eastbound LSL also takes an hour longer than the eastbound CL over the shared portion of the route from Chicago to Cleveland.

I think it has to do with killing time en route so that it arrives in Cleveland at almost civilized hours and arrives in New York after 6pm, that is after the evening rush hours have subsided. Notice that even sits in Toledo for half an hour eastbound compared to ten minutes for the Cap.

 

[railiner]

I think it has to do with killing time en route so that it arrives in Cleveland at almost civilized hours and arrives in New York after 6pm, that is after the evening rush hours have subsided. Notice that even sits in Toledo for half an hour eastbound compared to ten minutes for the Cap.

The extra padding may also be to allow recovering some time, after delaying departure from Chicago for really late western connections....

 

[neroden]

Amtrak generally offers the Washington DC connection off of the Capitol Limited from Chicago for journeys to the South of Washington DC. In any case the LSL connection that is available north/west usually is way more expensive than the Cap connection in Sleeper too.

The Capitol Limited doesn't help if you're coming from Erie, or Syracuse! The Empire Service connection to thd Silver Meteor is unreliable, BTW; the one time I tried it it misconnected. :-(

The one good reason for moving the Meteor departure to post Commission Hour slot at Penn Station NY is so that a consist can be turned on the saem day in NY thus reducing the total number of consists needed by the Meteor by one. As for the LSL arriving in NY earlier, implying departing Chicago earlier by the same amount of time, generally they avoid LD trains scheduled for arrival into NY after 4pm and before 6pm, so there is that to contend with too. But even considering that a 6:30-ish departure from Chicago should work just fine with a 3:30pm arrival, but maybe a bit dicey with the NS/CSX induced unreliability of OTP.

So fix OTP! The LSL has enough eastbound padding which can be taken out (as you noted) that it should be arriving in NY well before 3 if it leaves Chicago at 6:30 PM.

 

[Anderson]

Amtrak generally offers the Washington DC connection off of the Capitol Limited from Chicago for journeys to the South of Washington DC. In any case the LSL connection that is available north/west usually is way more expensive than the Cap connection in Sleeper too.

The one good reason for moving the Meteor departure to post Commission Hour slot at Penn Station NY is so that a consist can be turned on the saem day in NY thus reducing the total number of consists needed by the Meteor by one. As for the LSL arriving in NY earlier, implying departing Chicago earlier by the same amount of time, generally they avoid LD trains scheduled for arrival into NY after 4pm and before 6pm, so there is that to contend with too. But even considering that a 6:30-ish departure from Chicago should work just fine with a 3:30pm arrival, but maybe a bit dicey with the NS/CSX induced unreliability of OTP.

This is true, but that implies that you're only talking about folks coming from Cleveland or points west. As of now, I can not book a ticket from Buffalo to anywhere south of Virginia, and because Amtrak has their head up their rear I can't even book a sleeper out of NYP to anywhere south of WAS. Now, I think this will improve if/when NY returns to a full schedule (they're not there yet), but for now the "forced overnight in Albany, New York, or Washington" approach...yeah, that's not a winner.

(I mean, I think the ultimate winning move is to split the LSL's sections into two trains and cut the lengthy stop at Albany into a short locomotive swap like you see with the Adirondack...but boy do I miss being able to pop into the station to get a cup of soup or something on the way south from Montreal.)

 

[jruff001]

The Capitol Limited doesn't help if you're coming from Erie, or Syracuse! The Empire Service connection to thd Silver Meteor is unreliable, BTW; the one time I tried it it misconnected. :-(

ALL LD Amtrak service is "unreliable" by my definition.

So fix OTP!

Great insight! I am sure no one has ever thought of that before.

 

[tricia]

It's well worth (re)stating "So fix OTP!"

Even on this board, discussion tends to assume that bad OTP, due primarily but not entirely to freight interference, is something that Will Never Change. Restoring reasonably reliable OTP doesn't require changing the laws of physics. And it's probably the single most critical thing that needs to be done to improve Amtrak's functionality as public transportation.