railgeekteen
Service Attendant
on or before A-day.
on or before A-day.
Actually, you are wrong on two counts when you say "never":Key word is before Amtrak. These are trains that never had equivalent Amtrak service
Cincinnati Limited (Cincinnati-Columbus-Pittsburgh-Harrisburg-Philadelphia-New York)
Ohio State Limited (New York-Syracuse-Buffalo-Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati)
Dixie Flagler (Chicago-Nashville-Atlanta-Jacksonville-Miami) and/or
South Wind (Chicago-Indianapolis-Louisville-Nashville-Jacksonville-Orlando-Tampa-Miami) (Merge these to serve all the big cities)
Lark (San Francisco-San Jose-Santa Barbara-Los Angeles overnight)
Anything from Detroit to the East Coast
Not really arguing that the CZ routing could be better, it manages to miss population centers, but I want to note that this route over the former Burlington is the California Zephyr's historical routing, having been a Burlington train.Outside my local bailiwick, some more obvious ones are:
-- the Cincinnati-Columbus-Cleveland routes
-- train service to Madison Wisconsin
-- the entire Rock Island route Chicago-Moline/Rock Island-Iowa City-Des Moines-Omaha. If the Rock Island passenger service cuts had been postponed until after Amtrak, and Rock Island's bankruptcy had been wrapped into the Penn Central/New Haven/Erie Lackawanna/Lehigh Valley bankruptcies, I'm quite sure the California Zephyr would have followed this route (which would have been part of Conrail) instead of the silly route it follows through Iowa today. At least the track still exists, though it needs massive upgrades for passenger service.
-- the entire Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension from the Pacific Northwest through Spokane and Montana. The Miwaukee Road was one of the better routes from the Pacific Northwest to Chicago, and large portions were electrified, and it was profitable. This was killed by the idiot Milwaukee Road management looking at phony accounting (much like Amtrak's management is today) -- they were double-booking expenses on the Pacific Extension and accordingly underbooking them on the midwestern "granger" lines. Management thought the granger lines were profitable and the Pacific Extension was unprofitable, but they had it backwards. They dismantled the Pacific Extension, the only profitable part of the railroad, and promptly went bankrupt; the accounting disaster was discovered by the judge during the dissection of the bankruptcy. This was unfortunately ripped out entirely and the ROW would have to be re-acquired. They discontinued passenger service in 1961, and they really shouldn't have.
The North Coast Hiawatha route is arguably better for service east of Montana, though.
I pretty much agree there, had it been available on A-Day that would have been a decision much like that to route the Empire Builder via Milwaukee on the Milwaukee Road rather than stay on historic route on the Burlington. Otherwise Milwaukee would have lost service.Yeah, it's just a coincidence of history that BN hadn't discontinued passenger service and Rock Island had in 1971. Otherwise Amtrak would have picked the better route. :-( Similar with the Milwaukee.
The ICC was doing a bad job in the 1950s-1960s with discontinuance orders. I suppose they were supposed to do it on some sort of financial basis which didn't really meet the needs of the US public. The unfortunate result is that the network before A-Day had lost some of the best passenger lines due to stupid accidents of history, while retaining some awful passenger lines.
Actually, you are wrong on two counts when you say "never":
The South Wind was part of the original Amtrak network, it was later renamed the Floridian and died in the 1979 Carter Cuts.
The equivalent to the Lark was the Spirit of California overnight train between Los Angeles and Sacramento via the Coast Line and Oakland (AKA the "Medflyer") with the standard Amtrak cross-bay bus connection to San Francisco. It was a 403(b) train subsidized by the State of California and ran from 1981 to 1983 when California cut its subsidy for it . Unless you want to nitpick that the Bay Area service was provided into Oakland rather than San Francisco. By that standard, there was never an equivalent to SP's Coast Daylight, which the Coast Starlight clearly has always been.
The ICC certainly blew it, when they dragged out the Union Pacific's application process to acquire the Rock Island for so long, that The Rock degraded to the point where the UP finally lost interest (and later acquired the North Western). As a result, the Rock Island went bankrupt, and was subsequently liquidated, a few years later.Yeah, it's just a coincidence of history that BN hadn't discontinued passenger service and Rock Island had in 1971. Otherwise Amtrak would have picked the better route. :-( Similar with the Milwaukee.
The ICC was doing a bad job in the 1950s-1960s with discontinuance orders. I suppose they were supposed to do it on some sort of financial basis which didn't really meet the needs of the US public. The unfortunate result is that the network before A-Day had lost some of the best passenger lines due to stupid accidents of history, while retaining some awful passenger lines.
Yeah, it's just a coincidence of history that BN hadn't discontinued passenger service and Rock Island had in 1971. Otherwise Amtrak would have picked the better route. :-( Similar with the Milwaukee.
The ICC was doing a bad job in the 1950s-1960s with discontinuance orders. I suppose they were supposed to do it on some sort of financial basis which didn't really meet the needs of the US public. The unfortunate result is that the network before A-Day had lost some of the best passenger lines due to stupid accidents of history, while retaining some awful passenger lines.
What I would really like to see is the return of the Broadway Ltd. I believe that its possible as the Northern line to Chicago that the CL and LSL take has heavy freight traffic and I can't see another train added there. In contrast the old Pennsylvania mainline through OH, and IN was put back in service by NS a few years back and probably has the space to accommodate a passenger train. This is still very unlikely as there is no political will to build the system. Its sadly just kept on perpetual life support.
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