Revived Floridian

[Seaboard92]

And now that I'm thinking about it there is a NS like from Macon to Brunswick via Jessup. Could run it that way as well. Then you get four major cities in the route Macon, Atlanta, Memphis, and Birmingham.

 

[dlagrua]

If you examine the original Floridian route it went like this:

The train originated in Chicago, then went on to Lafayette and Bloomington, IN, Louisville KY , then went due South to Bowling Green, KY; Nashville, TN; Decatur, Birmingham, Montgomery, Dothan, AL, and then diverted South East through Thomasville, Valdosta and Waycross, GA. to Jacksonville, FL where, the train split to different routes to St. Petersburg, and Miami. FL.

The train used a number short lines, connecting lines and main lines some of which had slow speed requirements. Some parts are now abandoned. IIRC part of the line south of Lousiville is abandoned as well as the line on the FL Eastern shore into St Petersbug.

The short lived Mid West Autotrain also used this route and joined the train at a freight yard SW of Louisville, KY.

One can theorize that there is a huge snowbird audience in the midwest that lies untappped and IMO a new midwest Autotrain route is needed. For it to succeed it must originate within a two to three hour drive of Chicago. While the market may or may not be viable, there will never be another midwest route to Florida without state involvement. I'd love to see it and ride it but Washington will just never fund it

 

[Seaboard92]

I think a Midwest version of the auto train would work. But the current one has great timing which a Midwest one wouldn't have. The route is just too long. But if we're going to have a terminal in Chicago for the Auto Train. Might as well have one that could run to Lorton as well.

 

[hastybob]

The Floridian route, at least at the end, still exists just like it did in 1979 except for the Monon portion south of Crawfordsville. The route south of Louisville is the L&N mainline and is a very busy line. At the time of the Floridian's discontinuance, max speed was 70 mph Chicago to Louisville, 79 mph Louisville to Montgomery, 59 mph Montgomery to Waycross and 79 mph beyond. (The Tampa to St. Pete section, I believe was 59mph) Now, with that said, of course there were many sections with slow orders and speed restrictions. The Chicago to Louisville section was particularly long, leaving Chicago at 930p(ct) and arriving in Louisville at 749am(et) - 331miles - a pitiful 35.6 mph average. (of course, the Hoosier State / Cardinal now does the same in 3 1/2 hrs)

 

[jphjaxfl]

I rode the Floridian Chicago to Louisville numerous times from 1975 until 1978 and Monon's Thoroughbred until it was discontinued in September, 1967 while I was attending Indiana University in Bloomington. I don't think either train ever hit the stated top speed of 70 mph. In 1967 the Thoroughbred took 8 hours and 5 minutes to travel the 324 miles from Chicago to Louisville compared to Pennsylvania's South Wind which took 6 hours and 25 minutes to travel the 313 miles from Chicago to Louisville. Both trains had back-up moves to get into Louisville Union Station. Monon was always known as the slow way to go and most of the passengers were traveling to the smaller cities along the route.

 

[Anderson]

I'm not sure you could get a Midwest Auto Train to work, if for the simple fact that the Midwest-to-Florida interstates are generally not as congested as I-95 (even from Lorton, you've often got another 20-40 miles of bad traffic north of Richmond...mostly down to Fredericksburg, but there's also Outer Banks/Virginia Beach traffic at issue; the rule of thumb is to travel at night IIRC, which will often avoid the worst of it). It's not necessarily that the highway gets gridlocked further south...but at least during the day there's a pretty heavy flow, and you've got a lot of intermittent leisure traffic driving to the numerous beach destinations (e.g. Myrtle Beach). Other than the utter snarl that Atlanta can be, I can't really think of an obvious parallel on the other expressways which eventually get you to Florida.

 

[frequentflyer]

2 days from CHI to MIA? Might as well reinstitute the CapitalLtd/ Silver Star thru car, or extend the Cap Ltd to Florida which was in the plans at one time. I believe it was going to replace one if the Silver trains.

Using the CONO route to Memphis and jog over to Birmingham and ATL and head south would work too.

The more I think about it I like the idea of running the Cap Ltd south to take Star place and expand the Meteor to 18 cars to handle the Philly and north traffic.

 

[Anderson]

2 days from CHI to MIA? Might as well reinstitute the CapitalLtd/ Silver Star thru car, or extend the Cap Ltd to Florida which was in the plans at one time. I believe it was going to replace one if the Silver trains.

Using the CONO route to Memphis and jog over to Birmingham and ATL and head south would work too.

The more I think about it I like the idea of running the Cap Ltd south to take Star place and expand the Meteor to 18 cars to handle the Philly and north traffic.

Well, for one thing we don't exactly have the spare Superliners. The other thing is that IIRC the plan was to extend the Cap to Orlando/Tampa and then reinstate the Palmetto (to provide 2x daily service NYP-MIA), albeit via ORL instead of Ocala. Of course, that would mess up RGH-MIA and TPA-South Florida (the latter is a major pairing).

 

[Seaboard92]

I am not in favor of extending the Capitol Limited. The train would mess the Silver Star's major markets up majorly. Now the route via Memphis and Birmingham to Atlanta would be good

 

[jis]

For reasons mentioned by Anderson I think extending the Capitol is an unworkable idea at least in its simplest form.

 

[neroden]

Of course, that would mess up RGH-MIA and TPA-South Florida (the latter is a major pairing).

If only Governor Rick Scott hadn't cancelled Tampa-Orlando HSR, the "Tampa Shuffle" could be eliminated in favor of connections at Orlando, and open up a lot of options. Maybe it'll get built by AAF eventually anyway.

 

[Seaboard92]

I honestly never understood the Tampa to Orlando High Speed Line. 84 miles is kinda short for high speed rail. Now as an extension of Brightline I can see it. As 84 miles at 168 the proposed speed is thirty minutes. That's a really short run.

 

[Anderson]

I honestly never understood the Tampa to Orlando High Speed Line. 84 miles is kinda short for high speed rail. Now as an extension of Brightline I can see it. As 84 miles at 168 the proposed speed is thirty minutes. That's a really short run.

The whole proposal was a mess for a host of reasons. Basically, Orlando-Tampa was considered a workable segment (as far as I can tell) because there was a hope of being able to shuffle a lot of passengers between Orlando Airport, I-Drive, and Disney. IIRC Disney was just short of demanding a specific routing due to the fact that if they dropped Disney's Magical Express buses and directed folks onto the trains, that would likely be millions of dollars in revenue towards the train one way or another.

Even presuming 168 MPH top speeds, I don't think the times ever got down that low. If nothing else, there was the simple fact that the trains would not be going full speed the whole way...per Wikipedia, the OIA-TPA time was going to be 1:04 (for an average speed somewhere around 78 MPH). That's good-but-not-great, among the multiple criticisms of the project (I seem to recall pulling my hair out about this element at the time...I talked with someone from Amtrak at dinner one evening on the Star and he said that you could probably have gotten reasonably close to that runtime (I think he said 15 min. more in runtime, so about 1:20) on the existing CSX routing for about 1/10th the price).

The problem, ultimately, is that Phase 2 (OIA-Miami) was likely viable as a stand-alone project but Phase 1 (OIA-Tampa) was questionable as such (if you wanted to not have operating losses).

FWIW, I suspect that AAF/Brightline will go to JAX next, then to Disney (it might be cheaper for Disney to include a round-trip OIA-WDW ticket in the price of a hotel and drop most of their bus operations at the airport, and Disney might be able to merge their buses to Canaveral in with AAF as well given some time and a Cocoa-area station)...and then maybe Tampa, depending on where the costs and whatnot come in. Tampa is likely going to be more expensive than Miami-Orlando was (it's all new track), among other things.

 

[jis]

It was the mindless pursuit of 150mph+ in a context where there were non-existent reasonable 125mph service even that is the cause of much of the pain with HSR in the US.

If you look at UK, they did not pursue HSR-2 until they had a very good quality 125mph network in place from London to Midlands, that started running out of capacity. What they are doing with HSR-2 is building a high speed infrastructure to the Midlands that then connects to both the ECML and WCML, thus considerably shortening run times to the North and Scotland along either the east or west coast, and through Crewe to Wales. The French built their first LGV when the classic line from Paris to Lyon ran out of capacity. HSRs have generally been an overlay on an existing robust rail service.

Notice that AAF is not pursuing the 150+ thing. They are mostly after providing great connectivity and service in the 125mph space, service that is useful for multiple constituencies.

As for OIA to Disney connection, that will be primarily provided by local higher speed Monorail/Maglev service way before anyone will ever build anything to Tampa, or even AAF gets around to considering building anything to Disney. I suspect any HSR access to Disney will come with the Tampa extension if and when that happens, whether it be AAF or someone else.

One thing that seems to be a problem in the US is people's eyes glazing over when they see numbers like $50 billion. The economic activity that is produced as a consequence and the value of it never enters the discussion. London is able to justify Crossrail and Crossrail 2 which together are projected to cost about the same as the projected cost of California HSR, and the basis for that is that the lost opportunity without them and the net economic activity enabled by them far outstrips the projected cost. I seldom see similar discussion regarding costly infrastructure projects in the US. We are unable to build 6 miles of Second Avenue subway in New York while London manages to put together the entire Crossrail project together with electrifying an entire group of main lines to the west. Sort of like building the entire Second Avenue subway and electrifying the Empire Corridor to Albany at the same time. And here we are struggling with converting 16 miles of catenary to constant tension on the NEC.

OK now I will stop my random ramble....

 

[Seaboard92]

The OIA to Disney train could easily be a commuter train by Sunrail. I would love to see some form of connection between the airport, disney, and the amtrak station.

 

[Tennessee Traveler]

As a Nashville resident, any consideration of new passenger rail service in Tennessee not including Nashville is a "route" killer. CSX has purposely been anti passenger to the extent that CSX openly opposes any commuter rail on its lines in the metro Nashville area. Commuter rail would be successful in Nashville as evidence by the success of the Music City Star that runs Nashville to Lebanon, TN. That line was only possible because the commuter rail line is the Tennessee Central owned line on which no or very little freight traiffic exists. Heaven forbid a passenger train run on CSX tracks.

 

[Palmetto]

It's not out of the question, though, as in the case of the MBTA' Worcester Line. Before the CSX sold it to MassDot, they allowed--although grudgingly--the T to run its trains on their mainline. I think they price for insurance they exacted was high, too. So: hope springs eternal??

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

It seems to be quite out there compared to our proposals going southeast through Tennessee and/or Georgia, but here's a report to the Southern Commission :

http://www.newsherald.com/assets/pdf/DA2111216.PDF

Thank you DSS&A for the link (http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/64510-news-on-the-daily-sunset-and-possible-sl-east/?p=638401)

Current CL/SM leaves CHI at 6:40pm and arrives ORL 12:49pm two days later.

Proposed CONO leaves CHI at 8:05pm and arrives ORL 11:30am two days later.

So you leave 1 hr 25 min later and arrive 1 hr 19 min earlier so 2 hr 44 min better and you avoid the transfer which I always appreciate.

Current SM/CL leaves ORL at 1:35pm and arrives in CHI at 8:45am two days later (SM/LSL would arrive 9:45am).

Proposed CONO leaves ORL at 4:15pm and arrives in CHI at 9:00am two days later.

So you leave 2 hr 40 min later and arrive 15 min later so 2 hr 25 min better and again without the transfer.

It's not an earth shattering difference but it does save a transfer and it also re-introduces SL East. If you went from ORL to Texas or California, you'd have to transfer in NOL and it requires an overnight stay but at least it's an option without having to go all the way north to CHI and back south again as is the case now.

In an ideal world, the SL would leave NOL late at night to LAX and arrive from LAX early in the morning with enough time to transfer to the northbound Crescent and northbound CONO (would allow HOU-CHI) but the train would have to arrive in NOL around 5am for a two hr. transfer to the 7am Crescent and I'm not sure a train arriving at 5am (or earlier) is ideal.

 

[neroden]

It seems to be quite out there compared to our proposals going southeast through Tennessee and/or Georgia, but here's a report to the Southern Commission :

http://www.newsherald.com/assets/pdf/DA2111216.PDF

Hmmm. *headscratch*. What's their ridership model?
It looks like they're expecting *massive* added demand from running through from the City of New Orleans. I have to dig into the scenarios further; perhaps the "standalone" trains didn't have schedules with good connecting service to the CONO? Or are they putting *way* too high a value premium on the one-seat ride? (I've found people don't mind changing trains the way they mind changing buses.)

Anyway, they seem to put a lot of value on the Chicago-Florida connection in terms of passenger counts.

The proposed schedule for the "CONO extension" is actually quite clever. They propose spending 7.5 hours to go 200 miles between Pensacola and Talahassee -- but overnight. This is the ultra-slow portion of the trackage, and it makes sense to make it overnight, because that's probably the only way it could be competitive. Frankly the proposed schedule is pretty darn slow on the rest of the route too, but that might partly be due to the frequent station stops and curves.

Those are some killer layovers at New Orleans, though. I really wonder if it would make more sense as a separate connecting train. People are not that upset by changing trains if the circumstances are nice, and New Orleans station is nice enough.

The difference seems to be that Amtrak thinks they would need 3 extra trainsets for a standalone train versus 2 for a CONO extension. This really doesn't seem right; there seems to be enough time to service the trains at both New Orleans and Sanford, so I wonder what drives the perceived need for an extra trainset... lack of servicing at New Orleans perhaps?

 

[dlagrua]

It is nice to discuss the revival of the Floridian as there is no route that can take passengers on a direct trip from CHI to MIA. I'd love to see it but do not see this happening Rather I see Amtrak continuing to retract service. Lets take the dining service. First the flowers were gone, then the newpapers, the chocolates, the ice, the sleeper car coffee to 1X /day and now the dining cars are in jeopardy. The Cardinal is still a short three day train with a cafe car diner and the CONO follows in the same pattern. The Capitol Limited also uses a CCC car for everything so the service is going backwards and not forward. Lets all thank Joe Boardman for his go away gift of promising congress to make the dining service profitable. You would have to have a magic wand to make this happen.

 

[jis]

Lets all thank Joe Boardman for his go away gift of promising congress to make the dining service profitable. You would have to have a magic wand to make this happen.

I wouldn't worry too much about that promise. Indeed a new boss provides an opportunity to disown it and say that Boardman was off his rocker to make such, just like the promise to become profitable made by Warrington was swiftly disowned and buried by Gunn.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

I was doing some Wikipedia surfing and found some discussed routes through Atlanta. Eventually I found this report from the Georgia DOT. In it includes studies of routes between Atlanta and both Jacksonville via Macon and Savannah and Louisville via Chattanooga and Nashville. Put these together and you have a route between Louisville and Jacksonville which might lead to service from Chicago and Florida.

http://www.dot.ga.gov/InvestSmart/Rail/Documents/StateRailPlan/2015GeorgiaStateRailPlan-10-21-2015.pdf

 

[Seaboard92]

I've always thought Atlanta to Savannah via Macon would be a good run. And worthy of a topic of it's own

 

[frequentflyer]

Is it true, before Amtrak the City of NOL was a day train? A day train from CHI to NOL and overnight in FL would work, but stink for connections.

 

[CCC1007]

That is true, but in that era there was also the panama limited, on an overnight schedule on the same route. The closest we have now to these schedules is the palmetto and the silver meteor