Chicago-Floridia service over the CHI-IND-LVL-NVL-CHT-ATL-MCN-JAX-ORL-TPA or MIA would have a huge ridership base and would serve a market demographic that it would appeal to (Elderly folks who can't drive long distances and/or anyone who isn't willing to deal with the hassles of flying.
Another CHI-Florida route could be CHI-IND-LVL-Lexington-Knoxville-Chattanooga-ATL-Savannah-Florida. That Knoxville-Chattanooga-ATL corridor has potential for two or more daily trains each way.
I'd need to check, but IIRC back in the 50s there were three routes which went Chicago-Miami. The times were basically identical between the trains in Florida and at CHI (and at one or two intermediate points)...basically three railroads each ran a train every third day so as not to cannibalize the market, but coordinated so customers had a basically stable schedule at key cities where possible.
Edit: Ok, you had the
Dixie Flagler, the
City of Miami, and the
South Wind. Identical timecards in CHI and between JAX-MIA but different intermediate routings. That's part of the punch-up here: There's not enough definable business for three routes (and heck, I don't even know what tracks might be missing) but there are different route options which serve intermediate markets and all of those routings have a clear case for being chosen.
Edit 2: Some more thoughts:
-Martin County wanted the Amtrak service but not the FEC service, probably because the Amtrak service had stops around Martin County (IIRC Jupiter was one stop on both proposed trains) while the FEC service doesn't have any to start with.
-If I'm AAF/FEC, I'd want some compensation but I'd want the Amtrak trains in the following order:
--(1) Palmetto/Silver Palm. Can operate at night and be dispatched as if it were a fast freight instead of a high-speed passenger train. Arguably almost totally non-competitive with FEC services.
--(2) Silver Meteor. Only has two host RRs total (north of JAX, that is) and one of those is Amtrak. CSX treats the train pretty well and uses it to hook their cars onto. I'd force an agreement on equipment (must be high-floor compatible, etc.) as well so the train would be able to be dispatched the same as the planned FEC trains...and honestly, I might well demand to have the operating crew drawn from "my" people as well as a say in any tickets being sold "internally" (e.g. within the JAX-MIA stretch).
--(3) Silver Star. At present I would NOT want this train. Ignoring the Tampa backup, that little ten-mile stretch of NS would give me a fit in FEC's shoes since that sets up buck-passing and dispatch problems. I frankly would demand either a hell of a pad at JAX to make up for possible issues
or a re-route onto the planned S-line south of Richmond if that came to pass so as to avoid those issues.
Given the issues with Amtrak equipment at times, I might well just say "Guess what? If you're sending a passenger train down our tracks, it gets a Brightline locomotive, a Brightline operating crew, and we get some cut of the revenue to/from Brightline stations. We're not going to have you send a train down our line with a 'different' locomotive which proceeds to break down and foul our main line."
