Long Distance Network

[Crescent Mark]

IIRC, a Sanford upgrade is already being planning/taking place/something like that.

- Extended Sunset Limited or a new New Orleans to Jacksonville (or Miami) train- Chicago to Florida

- Desert Wind & Pioneer (Vegas NEEDS to be served)

- Phoenix needs fixing

- Extend Heartland Flyer to St Paul via KC and Des Moines. This will allow better circulation out west without having to go to Chicago.

- NYC to LA train, bypassing Chicago via Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indy, St Louis, and KC.

Those routes (in that order) would fix the biggest holes of the current system.

The NYC -> LA train is a great idea.

Somehow make the Heartland Flyer a pretty decent sized train. San Antonio to Fort Worth to Oklahoma City, then split. One goes to Kansas City, Omaha and St. Paul/Minneapolis...the other goes to Denver, Cheyenne, Boise, Portland, and Seattle. Not sure how much revenue this would make, though. Has Pierre ever had passenger service? Perhaps I should read up on the old routes a little more. I also did not know that they were confident on extending the HF anyway.

Maybe extend the Texas Eagle somehow to Albuquerque and? Some type of Albuquerque <-> Texas service is needed (to serve the northwestern part of Texas)...Phoenix needs to be on some schedule for some train. Chicago <-> Florida definitely. As long as it has a good connection with the Crescent (either it goes through Birmingham or Atlanta, either is fine), it will be pretty good. I personally would like some type of SC or GA train that goes from Greenville to Charleston or Atlanta to Savannah.

I can't really think of anything else unless somehow they could roughly do some sort of route that went Pittsburgh, Cincy, Memphis, Little Rock or something. Maybe the NYC -> LA train could go that way (just a little further south of what you suggested). Lastly, of course the Sunset Limited dilemma.

 

[chertling]

My priorities would be:

1. Heartland Flyer extension to KC and St. Paul, MN

2. Denver, KC, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh and DC (or Philly and NYC instead of DC)

3. The return of the Sunset Limited to Phoenix... and a Northeast/Southwest running route linking Phoenix to the SW Chief and California Zephyr (Phoenix - Denver?)

4. Service between the Midwest and Southeast (Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Atlanta, Florida?)

5. Restoration of the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans

 

[ALC Rail Writer]

IIRC, a Sanford upgrade is already being planning/taking place/something like that.

- Extended Sunset Limited or a new New Orleans to Jacksonville (or Miami) train- Chicago to Florida

- Desert Wind & Pioneer (Vegas NEEDS to be served)

- Phoenix needs fixing

- Extend Heartland Flyer to St Paul via KC and Des Moines. This will allow better circulation out west without having to go to Chicago.

- NYC to LA train, bypassing Chicago via Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indy, St Louis, and KC.

Those routes (in that order) would fix the biggest holes of the current system.

The NYC -> LA train is a great idea.

Somehow make the Heartland Flyer a pretty decent sized train. San Antonio to Fort Worth to Oklahoma City, then split. One goes to Kansas City, Omaha and St. Paul/Minneapolis...the other goes to Denver, Cheyenne, Boise, Portland, and Seattle. Not sure how much revenue this would make, though. Has Pierre ever had passenger service? Perhaps I should read up on the old routes a little more. I also did not know that they were confident on extending the HF anyway.

Maybe extend the Texas Eagle somehow to Albuquerque and? Some type of Albuquerque <-> Texas service is needed (to serve the northwestern part of Texas)...Phoenix needs to be on some schedule for some train. Chicago <-> Florida definitely. As long as it has a good connection with the Crescent (either it goes through Birmingham or Atlanta, either is fine), it will be pretty good. I personally would like some type of SC or GA train that goes from Greenville to Charleston or Atlanta to Savannah.

I can't really think of anything else unless somehow they could roughly do some sort of route that went Pittsburgh, Cincy, Memphis, Little Rock or something. Maybe the NYC -> LA train could go that way (just a little further south of what you suggested). Lastly, of course the Sunset Limited dilemma.

I don't think a NYP-LAX train for work. Firstly, the Superliners are FAR superior to Amfleet IIs and Viewliners the prior being unable to actually fit inside NYP. I would NEVER want to be in an Amfleet II for more than a day, and I don't see us making those tunnels any taller...

A WAS-LAX train would *hypothetically* work equip. wise... but the logistics of such a train are hard to imagine.

Think- Going from NYP to any of those cities will mean a minimum 2 hour layover in CHI- After two days on the EB I thank the lord for that two hours to walk around the city. Many people also enjoy that time. Having a two-hour hub in the middle of a route is a good thing for travelers going coast to coast.

IMHO the current system is pretty damn good- it just needs to fill in some service gaps and improve time.

 

[spacecadet]

The NYC -> LA train is a great idea.

Except that it can't really work. At least not in a way that would make any sense financially. Remember, lots of railroads wanted to do this. Nobody ever figured out a way, even in the railroads' heyday. The best they could come up with was through-cars.

For one, an NYC-LA train would need to be single-level. And that would mean cutting revenue and increasing costs in the west vs. what you could do with a Superliner. So already you're in a situation where it makes more sense for the railroad to have a connection in the midwest to a separate train.

Somebody in another thread suggested instead doing WAS-SF, which makes a little more sense because you can use Superliners all the way. But there are still issues with routing, and whether you're going to give up Chicago to be able to run through (I'm not going to repeat everything I said in the other thread here).

I just don't think it meets the original criteria of this thread, which was that it has to make "economic sense" to Amtrak.

 

[MrFSS]

The following is from a 1949 PRR table. They were doing coast to coast via Chicago and with one train having the cars switched from one station to another. Of course, they didn't have the lateness problems in those days, but look how much time there was to wait in Chicago, even when the transfer was at the same station.

 

[ALC Rail Writer]

The following is from a 1949 PRR table. They were doing coast to coast via Chicago and with one train having the cars switched from one station to another. Of course, they didn't have the lateness problems in those days, but look how much time there was to wait in Chicago, even when the transfer was at the same station.

And they also didn't have the double-deck Superliners....

 

[AlanB]

The point is Amtrak runs 39 out of its 50 Viewliners. And all 50 are roadworthy. Several years ago, they used to run IIRC 44 out of 48 then-roadworthy Viewliners, which was probably not the best policy given deferred maintenance etc., but I don't see why they couldn't run 41 out of 50 today and bring back the Broadway Limited.

It's simply not possible for Amtrak to have run 44 out of 48 Viewliners in service, unless the maintenance practices and requirements have changed dramatically since that time. With each car needing a new inspection every 92 days, which requires 3 days to complete, that means that 3 cars are always out of service for 200 of the 261 potential shop days. And that assumes that nothing unusual is found, in which case the car could be out of service for longer than three days. Then remember that the shops don't usually run 7 days a week, so that means that a car that goes in on a Thursday or Friday remains out of action for the entire weekend now.

So basically for all practical purposes one has to plan that on any given day of the year, 3 cars will be out of service because of 92 day inspections. Next we come to overhaul work and the annual inspections. That takes 2 cars out of service for 2 weeks every year. So now you've lost 5 cars each day of the year. That drops 48 down to 43, one less than 44 and we haven't even talked about having standby cars in the yard for pinch hitting when a car comes in with a problem that prevents it from going back out on the road.

Now if we go back to the 50 that are currently listed as active, and if we assume that all 50 are actually road worthy, we don't know that for a fact. Active does not mean that a car is road worthy. It just means that Amtrak considers the car to be on it's active roster and not stored dead or retired. We then subtract the aforementioned 5 cars bringing us down to 45 available. Now place one car each in Chicago, Sunnyside, and Hialeah and you're down to 42 available cars at any given time. And again that is assuming that all 50 active cars are indeed roadworthy and that no inspections run over the alloted amount of down time.

That leaves 3 Viewliners that could potentially be used for some service. But that's a razor thin margin for cars that need major overhaul work and are prone to freeze ups that require that they be sent to Florida for 2 or 3 days to thaw out and in many cases, have some part of the plumbing replaced.

Also, Amtrak has 81 inactive Amfleet cars that they would like to return to service. I'm not sure if they would really need these to get one LD train back in service or not.

While there may be a few Amfleet II cars in that 81 AMF cars mentioned by Mr. Crosbie, I don't believe that there are enough AMF II's to field even one complete long distance trainset, much less 3 which I believe would be the minimum needed to restore a Broadway Limited. And that's before we deal with the diner issue or the lack of baggage cars.

 

[profwebs]

I'd like to see Pittsburgh to Columbus, then on to Indy and KC maybe? This would be a decent medium haul route IF the Tri -C thing happens in OH.

 

[birdy]

Phoenix/Tempe Hello! 5th largest city in the US.

Yep. Phoenix is by far the biggest city unserved by Amtrak. Since the UP abandoned the route, it would be easy to do whatever you wanted on the route to San Diego. I'd bring back the overnight train that was so convenient.

The Phoenix/Tempe part would in practice be a commuter line---but really its an absolute no-brainer.

Overall, it seems obvious to me that now is the time to build Amtrak in a big way:

1. We need to improve infrastructure, particularly transportation infrastructure

2. We need fiscal stimulus

3. Construction costs of track and purchase costs of rolling stock should be down.

4. Trains help the environment.

5. Amtrak and Homeland Security should collaborate--extra rolling stock, say thirty or forty cars and the required locomotives stashed (or really in light use) near the gulf during hurricane season could help alleviate congestion during peak periods, but also provide a means of evacuating thousands of people when needed. During the winter, they could be kept along the Northern tier and used to move traffic displaced by airport closures during major snow storms.

6. Politically, I notice that people are happy when their government is pouring concrete.

7. Men like choo-choo trains. Dems have trouble attracting male voters.

Yes, I would order a disproportionate number of dome cars. Thats where the market is. The command and control mentality of public transportation planners disapproves of such frivolousness, but the reality is that that is a way to leverage one of the advantages of rail travel (comfort) as well as the scalability advantage of rail travel.