Volume 1, Number 15

William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona has issued a declaration of victory for the passenger rail world in North America. His compelling commentary:

Gentle Readers,

These past few weeks you have witnessed the beginnings of the new Golden Age of American passenger rail.

Fifty years of negativism on the subject of passenger trains, and the resulting spirit-crushing socialist bureaucracy, are finally crumbling. The codifying document of the disconsolate movement was the April 1959 special issue of TRAINS magazine entitled “Who Shot the Passenger Train?” which saw the symptom of shrinking schedule-books but utterly misunderstood the disease. It called not for making trains more competitive with the new super-highways and jetways, but saw only a world where over-regulation, over-taxation, and inflexible union rules were beyond the ability to change. Indeed, the magazine effectively calls for the demolition of allegedly useless edifices like New York’s Pennsylvania Station — realized only four years later in “a monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance.” (“Farewell to Penn Station,” The New York Times, October 30, 1963.)

You have seen in the past few weeks here in this space, some of the history of the Northeast Corridor. And you may wonder why — Why, on God’s green Earth, would the Pennsylvania road wish to build an absurdly expensive new station in New York City, which for many years already had the perfectly good Grand Central Station? (That facility became properly known as Grand Central Terminal upon completion of its 1913 rebuild.) And why would the Pennsylvania resort to nearly unproven new technology like underwater railway tunnels, two of them, and a station and connecting tracks requiring the purchase, leveling, and excavation of a huge swath of prime Manhattan real estate?

The answer lies in two seemingly forbidden words: Competition and Profit.

In 1898, the Pennsylvania Railroad derived $14,576,724 in income from its passenger operations, $17,530,769 including mail and express — 26.67% of the total, with $47,122,172 or 71.67% being from freight. Meanwhile the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad had $16,189,359 or 35.33% of its income — well over a third — from passengers, mail, and express. (Source: “Eleventh Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States for the Year Ending June 30, 1898″, Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington DC 1899, page 348.)

The Pennsylvania road was after the passenger business, particularly the high-dollar through passenger; and, in competition with New York Central, the direct and through traffic of mail, express, and freight between the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. Not to mention the free advertising that the imposing grandeur of Pennsylvania Station would inspire.

New York City’s grand railway edifices did not descend upon the metropolis as gifts from unseen gods. No, Gentle Reader, one hundred years ago — as today — it’s all about money. And those evil words, Competition and Profit. The Grand Central and Pennsylvania stations were, to be blunt, temples of commerce. If you wish to read the details, please pick up a copy of “Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels” by Jill Jonnes.

Now, separated from those years by two World Wars, the advent of super-highways, the Jet Age, and the Space Age, and their passing fancies of tail-finned rockets and Cadillacs, we find ourselves fifty further years removed from those technologies’ heyday. The glamour of the 707, the Saturn V and the Bel-Air convertible has become the reality of “your papers please,” invasive pat-downs, the retirement of the bloated Space Shuttle, and collapsing highway bridges in Minneapolis. All of these have set the stage for America to catch up to what Europe rediscovered two decades ago: Trains make economic, social, and ecological sense.

More passengers are riding trains in Great Britain than ever before, a decade and a half after the railways were privatised. It has not been a perfect process, but the numbers speak for themselves. In France, Veolia – a French company operating buses and passenger trains around the world – has a license to operate passenger trains in competition with SNCF. Germany’s DB has undergone privatization starting in 2008. The list goes on.

Here at home, in the past months we have seen Ed Ellis’s Saratoga and North Creek Railway, part of the Iowa Pacific Holdings group, begin operation of its privately run passenger train. We have seen Caltrain move to recommend that TransitAmerica Services, not Amtrak, operate that San Francisco peninsula railway. We have seen Florida move to work with Florida East Coast on a new passenger train arrangement. Meanwhile in Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company, not Amtrak, operates MBTA trains. Keolis runs the Virginia commuter trains. New state-sponsored trains in Virginia and Illinois have attracted far more riders than expected. Norfolk Southern has spoken positively about passenger trains from Washington DC to Roanoke and beyond. Even Union Pacific has a good relationship with the Front Runner commuter trains in Utah.

This week I have seen trucks of DB Schenker – Deutsche Bahn’s freight subsidiary of the German railroad – all around Phoenix, a city whose buses are operated by Veolia and the American branch of First Group PLC (a British company who operates buses and passenger trains around the world). And speaking of British passenger train operators, the Palm Beach Post today reported that Virgin Trains was also consulted on the Miami passenger train service. Also please consult the website of the Association of Independent Passenger Rail Operators: There is money to be made, and the eyes and ears of business are open.

Yes, it is at last clear that the new golden age of American passenger trains is upon us; a new age of competition and profit… for the despondent era of “we-can’t-do-it” has been broken.

- William Lindley, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Gil Carmichael, former FRA Administrator during the Bush I years, and former Chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council, as well as the Founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver has started a new series of reports, entitled the Gil Carmichael Report, Investing in Interstate 2.0. The reports are free, informative, and a must read for anyone serious about the future of railroads in the United States. Contact the report distributor at geoff@jdmandassociates.com for your very own copy.

J. Craig Thorpe, noted Amtrak and railroad illustrator is available for all railroads, railroad-related companies, and organizations for his dramatic illustrations on a custom basis. Mr. Thorpe’s impressive gallery of work and contacts for engagement may be viewed on his web site, which is listed below.

What were those allegedly crazy guys at the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida doing in 1970 running all of those long, passenger-filled trains every day of the week?

Didn’t they know passenger trains were doomed money losers, and objects of scorn and ridicule throughout the railroad world?

Didn’t they know allegedly infallible David P. Morgan, famed scribe of Trains Magazine had already published in April 1959 his article, Who shot the passenger train? and had officially pronounced the passenger rail business dead and gone for all of the wrong reasons?

Didn’t they know the junk science created by the late Robert R. Young during his days at the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and the New York Central Railroad had proclaimed passenger were only good for short, daylight runs?

What were these guys thinking? (And, all guys it was; after all, this was 1970.)

What else was going on at this point?

In 1956, just 14 years prior, Congress created the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, and by 1970, the system was nearing full service.

December 20, 1957 marked the introduction of the Boeing 707 jet airliner; Pan American World Airways had the first Boeing 707 passenger flight the next year in October 1958, inaugurating the then glamourous world of jet travel.

In 1966, the Post Office Department (the postal system did not become a separate operating company instead of a cabinet department until during the Nixon administration, which would not take office until January 20, 1969) started moving the mails also by truck and airplane, beginning a phasing out of moving mail primarily by trains.

Penn Central Transportation Company, successor to the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad, began merged operations on February 1, 1968.

On December 31, 1968, the Pullman Company ceased all sleeping car operations, and sleeping cars were then operated by the individual railroads which chose to continue the premium service.

On January 1, 1969, the heavy and oppressive hand of the Interstate Commerce Commission forced the PennCentral to absorb the former New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, commonly known as the New Haven, into its system, creating a giant crippled railroad in the Northeast which served a constantly dwindling industrial base and set it up for failure and bankruptcy sooner than later.

In 1969, thanks to NASA, man landed on the moon, fulfilling a destiny promise of the late President John F. Kennedy.

In 1970, Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed into law, the Rail Passenger Services Act, creating the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which for a short time was known as Railpax, but ultimately became known as Amtrak.

Amtrak would not commence operations until May 1, 1971.

The railroad industry-saving Staggers Act would not appear until 1980.

So, here we are in 1970, and SCL is running all sorts of trains to and from Florida, and appears to be doing so willingly.

Seaboard Coast Line changed its passenger timetables twice a year, to accommodate at the time the still high winter season for snowbird tourists and what at that time was still the slower summer season in Florida, which was not fully air conditioned in what now seems those primitive times. Walt Disney World Resort’s Magic Kingdom near Orlando, Florida would not open for visitors until October 1, 1971, four months after Amtrak commenced operations.

In 1970, Miami/Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale in South Florida on the Gold Coast were the principal tourist destinations, and the Tampa Bay area on the west coast of Florida was primarily an industrial center and a retirement area. Silver Springs in Ocala in the central part of Florida was also still a popular tourist destination.

All of these areas were served by the Seaboard Coast Line. To Miami from New York City, the Seaboard ran the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Florida Special, City of Miami, and the South Wind, both of those last two trains handed off by the Illinois Central and PennCentral, which originated them in Chicago.

For Florida’s west coast, the Champion provided service from New York City to Tampa, Clearwater, and St. Petersburg, with separate sections operating down to Naples and Venice. A west coast section of the Silver Star also found its way to Tampa and St. Petersburg, as did west coast sections of both the City of Miami and South Wind.

These were not end-of-private-passenger-train-era consists, but, full, long consists with usually more sleeping cars than coaches, full diners, full lounge cars (full lounges for coach passengers, and half sleeping car/half lounges for sleeping car passengers), plus baggage and crew dormitory cars.

Some of these trains were as long as 14 to 18 cars, some as short as 10 to 11 cars, which were long trains by today’s standards.

A typical consist of the Silver Meteor was five sleeping cars, an economy sleeper, a diner, three coaches, and an observation lounge car, plus a baggage/dormitory car.

On the seasonal, exclusive Florida Special, passengers could choose from six sleepers, a diner for sleeping car passengers only, three coaches, a diner for coach passengers, and what SCL called a recreation car. A baggage/dormitory car was on the front end. An ad for the Florida Special in SCL’s December 1970 timetable proclaimed “The Champagne Train Rides Again!” and extolled the virtues of the train such as “… you’ll enjoy a candlelight dinner with free champagne [one can only presume domestic champagne; this was for coach passengers]. The menu includes such delicacies as roast beef au jus, and charbroiled steaks. En route, you’ll see a Florida fashion show featuring our attractive hostesses. Watch a good movie, or your favorite TV shows. Play bingo. Join in an old-fashioned sing-along. Or even call home. Yes – there’s a telephone aboard.”

Seaboard Coast Line was still operating four other passenger trains, too, a truncated coach and baggage cars Palmland from New York City to Columbia, South Carolina, and the by then misnamed Gulf Coast Special from New York City to Jacksonville, Florida and the Everglades also from New York to Jacksonville. The Gulf Wind, ancient predecessor to the missing Amtrak Sunset Limited between Jacksonville and New Orleans was still operating every day with sleepers, coaches, and a diner.

By 1970, the passenger service on the Florida East Coast Railway was principally gone, after the company’s crippling union strike in 1963 that lasted until 1977. The FEC had a large fleet of stainless steel, streamlined passenger cars it provided as part of the equipment pools for the former Miami-bound trains of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. After the strike began in 1963, ACL would reroute its Florida trains over the rival tracks of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad south of Auburndale, Florida until the 1967 merger of the SAL and ACL, when the tracks became SCL tracks.

Once the FEC stopped operating passenger trains, it sold almost all of its passenger equipment to other railroads, with some of it ending up in Canada, too. Both the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line bought former FEC equipment and integrated it easily into existing rolling stock rosters.

So, in 1970, a decade before the Staggers Acts of 1980, a year before the commencement of Amtrak, SCL was not only running passenger trains, it was running them with gusto.

SCL was (and still is, with its successor company, CSX Transportation) a for-profit company, with its stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It had two legal obligations: make the highest lawful return on investment for its stockholders, and it must run passenger trains over its system until the Interstate Commerce Commission determined through its byzantine regulatory system those trains no longer served the public good or a public purpose, and could be discontinued.

The ICC never dictated those trains had to be up to 18 cars long and use white linen tablecloths in the dining cars. The ICC never dictated those trains had to carry more sleeping cars than coaches. The ICC only said SCL had to run trains. It left the details up to the free market and the financial stewards of the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad.

So, why all of those long, long, full service trains between New York City and Florida and Chicago and Florida?

Maybe, because there was a passenger demand for those trains and they made a profit?

Maybe, because the folks who were denizens of the 15^th floor of the SCL headquarters building in Jacksonville who had the large suite of offices in the southwest side of the building with “President’s Office” on the door to the suite thought it was a good idea to make money by fully utilizing existing assets?

Keep in mind in 1970, while things may have seemed cheap compared to today, they weren’t by any stretch of the imagination.

Onboard services union crews were at full complement – one car attendant for every car, which translated to a single coach attendant for 44 passengers. Dining cars were at full staff, and Seaboard’s best trains carried passenger service agents as well as nurses, too in addition to the train and engine crews.

The T&E union crews were still operating under arcane steam era rules; a work day for T&E crews was only 100 miles, so there were numerous T&E crew changes through the route. The E-unit and F-unit diesel locomotives were much less powerful than those of today; and it took a string of three to five locomotives, each with a boiler to generate mechanical steam heat for the passenger cars, to pull the trains at speed over jointed rail. There was no head-end power for the train; each car produced its own by generators powered by turning wheels feeding batteries.

Technology of the day wasn’t much advanced beyond World War II era technology. There were computers in use at SCL, but only in a special department using huge tape drives and punch cards which took up entire sections of the headquarters building. There were no desktop computers.

Communications for the trains was by radio, but the radios resembled huge bricks hung on a belt compared to today’s pint-sized communicators.

The most common piece of technology at the railroad was a manual typewriter (some electric typewriters were spread around, but mostly used by secretaries to senior executives), and there was the “company telephone system,” which was separate from the Bell System. The company system in some places was barely a step up from the crudest of telephonic devices seen in old black and white movies.

Passenger train reservations were made by company telephone and manual teletype, as well as received by commercial teletypes such as Western Union. Only the earliest facsimile transmission machines were very narrowly in use, but not in the railroad passenger departments. FedEx wasn’t yet invented. Train manifests were typed by hand. Photocopiers were in abundance in 1970, but a lot of carbon paper was still in use and sold by the case at office supply stores (all of which were local independents; this was decades before of Office Depot). There were no computer printed tickets for passengers.

Every aspect of Seaboard Coast Line passenger train operations required lots of expensive employees.

On Amtrak Day – May 1, 1971, America’s passenger rail system, nine years before the Staggers Act of 1980 which ended most of the oppressive, heavy-handed federal regulation of the nation’s railroads, was mostly reduced to trunk line services, primarily long distance trains.

The mail and express locals such as the Palmland, Everglades, and Gulf Coast Special went away, along with the vast majority of the feeder lines. The milk runs which helped so much in the 19^th Century became history two thirds of the way through the 20^th Century.

Just the trunk lines were left; just the lines with the greatest potential to make money.

The Southern Railway, one of the predecessors to today’s Norfolk Southern Railway created in 1982, chose not to join Amtrak, and continued running four routes including the Southern Crescent between New York City and New Orleans until joining Amtrak in 1979.

The Denver and Rio Grande Western stayed out of Amtrak, too, and kept running what was then called the Rio Grande Zephyr, and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad kept two trains running for five years. Three other railroads continued to operate relatively short distance trains well below former service levels.

Why is it important to know this history? If you’re an exec with the member companies of the Association of Independent Passenger Rail Operators [www.passengerrail.org] you already know this history, plus a lot more.

There are people this very day plotting the return of the glory of the passenger train, and not just commuter trains. These people and companies, such as train operators, railroads, and equipment suppliers know there is money to be made in passenger rail.

People know the glamour era of passenger travel by jet airplane is over and gone. Flying is now more of a chore than joy, especially if you don’t fit in a 17-inch wide coach seat. While the private passenger vehicle – be it automobile, sports utility vehicle or pickup truck – is still the most convenient way to travel, that doesn’t suit every traveler and every taste. People know choice matters, and passenger trains are a logical choice at a competitive cost to build and run.

In the world of 1970 when Seaboard Coast Line was running passenger trains, those operations were archaic and expensive. Railroading of any type is still a hazardous business and requires big investments, but is much more efficient and technologically advanced.

We are beyond the era when there is a belief only government can operate passenger rail and a red headed step child feeding from the public treasury.

Two important groups have changed: those owning and operating trunk line railroads, and new generations of Americans who have never ridden on a train, much less thought about a train as a viable alternative. They have no preconceived notion of aging equipment, steam heat in passenger cars, and quaint, ramshackle passenger stations in small towns across America.

Railroad executives have a mandate to maximize return on investment, and many are quietly looking at hosting passenger trains – mostly, non-Amtrak passenger trains because they want them to be successful – as a way of fully utilizing assets. Republicans in the United States House of Representatives are helping, and, if the Republicans take the United States Senate in 2012, things will move along more quickly.

Just because the current Amtrak authorization only allows certain changes to be made doesn’t mean a new Congress can’t amend and change the Amtrak law regarding every type of passenger rail. Nothing is written in stone, no matter how much the New Jersey cabal in Congress thinks it may be.

Knowing the past always helps predicting the future. By 2050, historians will look back at the 40+ years of the Amtrak era which began in 1971 as the aberration in passenger rail in the United States. They will note Amtrak was a placeholder with chronic problems – mostly brought on by itself – and then note the new golden age of passenger railroading which took its rightful place as a full player in America’s domestic transportation network, thanks to the free market system and private enterprise.

Gil Carmichael, former FRA Administrator during the Bush I years, and former Chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council, as well as the Founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver has started a new series of reports, entitled the Gil Carmichael Report, Investing in Interstate 2.0. The reports are free, informative, and a must read for anyone serious about the future of railroads in the United States. Contact the report distributor at geoff@jdmandassociates.com for your very own copy.

As Amtrak continues to say the right things, and to do a few as well, the logic of incrementalism is making inroads… but the “old-think” that stunted our passenger rail network for half a century hasn’t gone away yet.

Amtrak’s Fleet Plan (pdf), released at the end of February, is one of the most positive of their publications issued. Parts of it read almost as a reply to the calls to action reprinted in this column a few short months ago:

The modeling that has been undertaken to underpin this plan is based on anticipated growth in all major lines of Amtrak business, the Northeast Corridor (NEC), long distance services and state corridors (both existing and new). This approach is consistent with the goals that have been set within Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA), which reauthorizes Amtrak and establishes new programs for the development of the intercity passenger railroad system within the United States, and the experience of recent years with the increase in demand for the current services.

It cannot be emphasized enough that new equipment is a vital pre-requisite to the process of delivering enhanced passenger rail as envisioned by PRIIA. Moreover, a sustainable passenger service requires regular investment in equipment. Rebuilding existing equipment is always a temporary solution and does not save money in the long term. If passenger rail service is to be sustained and grown, equipment investment has to be accepted as part of the process…

Based upon demand analysis and the defined [lifespan] policies, Amtrak needs to buy the following equipment over the next 14 years:

• 780 single level cars
• 420 bi-level cars
• 70 electric locomotives
• 264 diesel locomotives
• 25 high speed trainsets…

That certainly counts as “saying the right thing.” According to Business Week on March 23rd, Amtrak is proceeding apace with the plan:

Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, asked Congress for $446 million to begin replacing locomotives and passenger cars…

Joseph Boardman, chief executive officer of Washington- based Amtrak, told a House Appropriations Committee panel today the railroad needs to raise its budget from the requested $2.1 billion for the next fiscal year…

“Between 2002 and 2008, Amtrak increased its ridership by 32 percent without buying a single piece of new rolling stock,” Boardman testified at the transportation subcommittee hearing. “That’s a remarkable accomplishment, but one that cannot be sustained indefinitely.”

In this space previously, we have opined that Amtrak has rarely gone to Congress with a request for specific growth targets. For the first time in recent memory, they have.

(Speaking of adding service, North Carolina announced yesterday a third daily train between Raleigh and Charlotte, creating basically a train leaving each endpoint of the corridor roughly every five hours between 7am and 5pm. Service begins June 5th.)

As Amtrak makes the first moves toward expanding capacity, the high speed rail advocates have begun speaking a little about the importance of the “conventional” train as part of a matrix.  Chicago’s WBBM reported this week:

Advocates for high-speed rail passenger service, meeting in Chicago, said Saturday that this is the year to seek what they want from Washington and laid out an ambitious agenda that calls for higher-speed passenger trains nationwide…

While Harnish’s immediate goal is a true high-speed, 220 mile-an-hour, rail link between Chicago and St. Louis by 2020, he wants to see a series of other steps funded that will make Chicago the nation’s high-speed rail hub.

“Four bullet train routes, upgrading the rest of the system to at least 100 miles an hour, filling in some very key gaps and at least doubling frequency on all routes. That’s what I’d like to see,” Harnish said.

Harnish’s last point is the strongest. Certainly it would be nice to have something like the ICE, TGV, or Thalys whizzing across the Midwest, in California or Florida, or one day between Georgia and Maine (though the concept of an Augusta-Augusta train is too much alliteration for this author to contemplate); but it is the raising of average speeds, the expansion of the route matrix, and the increase from daily to multiple frequencies that will create the need for the few high-speed trains.  As we have discussed here before, running trains between two cities (oh, say, Tampa and Orlando) without connecting to downtowns, local transit, the network regional or “conventional” train service, and all the airports on the route is a recipe for failure. Projects like Wisconsin’s, connecting Madison with the Chicago hub, are the sensible ones and should be the “immediate goals” because they start serving people in a relatively few months, not ten years from now.

As to the critics, Joseph Vranich, in his 1997 book “Derailed: What went wrong and what to do about America’s passenger trains”, writes:

Amtrak’s goal of operating at 100 mph outside the Northeast Corridor was a throwback to past railroading practices. Steam engines pulling passenger trains on the Milwaukee Road and Chicago & North Western Railroads more than fifty years ago [in the 1940s] were hitting that speed, and trains elsewhere were close to it. If 100-mph trains were unable to keep their customers when airports and highways were underdeveloped, then they sure won’t build traffic in today’s competitive environment.

Let us momentarily set aside modern railroad safety requirements that have limited top speeds.

Now, a dozen years after Vranich’s remarks, you can no longer re-enact Dinah Shore seeing the U.S.A. in your 1957 Bel-Air Chevrolet because your pothole-plagued Interstate is plugged from 5am to 9pm; and if you care to endure the traffic to the airport, the demand to see your papers please and the strip-search followed by sitting in a seat that feels nine inches wide for two hours with no peanuts let alone bathroom breaks while waiting for a takeoff slot, then you can fly. Seriously — No market for convenient train service between our towns and cities?

Ronald Sheck, in his 1982 report “Amtrak 90: A Route to Success” writes,

Amtrak trains outside of the Northeast Corridor are slow not only in comparison with passenger trains operated on main-line railroads in other parts of the world, but they are frequently slower than trains two decades ago on the same routes. While more than $2 billion has been spent in upgrading the 456-mile spine of the Boston-New York-Washington Northeast Corridor for 125-mile-per-hour operation, there is no need to make an investment of that magnitude in order to bring overall passenger train speeds up to competitive levels. Figure 12 shows target end-to-end travel speeds, and some sample journey times for 1990 illustrate goals for the planning period. Speeds in these suggested ranges are considerably above automobile trip times and for journeys of up to 300 miles may equal or better aircraft times if airport-to-downtown travel is included.

Note that, almost three decades later and even after the Acela project and its further billions, there are still few miles in the Northeast Corridor that see speeds higher than 125 mph.

From his Figure 12 let us excerpt these sample goals and examples:

Long Distance   50-55 mph   Chicago-Los Angeles  40 hours
Medium Distance 60-65 mph   Los Angeles-Tucson   8 1/2 hours
Short Distance  70-75 mph   Tampa-Miami          3 3/4 hours

In 1937, Santa Fe advertised its Super Chief as making the run from Chicago to Los Angeles in “39 3/4 hours.”  In 1956, with equipment not unlike today’s trains, performance was nearly the same, leaving Chicago at 7pm and arriving L.A. the following morning at 8:30. Today’s Southwest Chief departs Chicago at 3:15pm and arrives the following morning at 8:15 — three and a half hours slower than in 1956. Yes, there route differences (especially in greater Los Angeles) and station stops have changed somewhat, but we are talking endpoints here. Sheck’s 40-hour goal should be easy, if not inexpensive, equalling the 1937 schedule one with modern technology.  Building Harnish’s Midwest network of 100-mph corridors would be a start.

Similarly, the Sunset Limited, America’s oldest name train, likewise in July 1956 left Los Angeles at 07:30pm, arriving New Orleans on the third day at 4pm. Today, Amtrak’s version leaves Los Angeles at 2:30pm — five hours earlier than 1956 — and arrives on the same third day at 2:55pm — about one hour earlier. Today’s train is four hours slower than in 1956.

Here are comments submitted by Anthony Haswell — widely known as the “Father of Amtrak” — circa 1998 to the Surface Transportation Board (“under 49 USC §24308(a), Finance Docket 33469.”) The subject at that time was the addition of Express to Amtrak’s trains, but the facts remain:

Amtrak passenger trains over many of its route-miles outside the Northeast Corridor are anything but “modern”. Amtrak trains between many city-pairs are slower than the trains operated between the same points 45 to 60 years ago.

                   Railroads' Time/MPH  Amtrak Time/MPH
City-pair            December 1941        October 1997 

New York-Chicago         16:00 / 60        18:26 / 52
New York-Pittsburgh       8:25 / 52         9:20 / 48
New York-Miami           24:00 / 58        26:25 / 53
New York-New Orleans     28:30 / 49        30:10 / 46
Washington-Chicago       15:45 / 49        18:00 / 43
Washington-Pittsburgh     6:40 / 44         7:28 / 40
Chicago-Detroit           4:45 / 60         6:00 / 47
Chicago-Cleveland         6:00 / 57         6:46 / 51
Chicago-Cincinnati        5:15 / 58         8:45 / 37
Chicago-Carbondale        4:26 / 70*        5:30 / 56
Chicago-New Orleans      15:30 / 59*       19:25 / 48
Chicago-St. Louis         4:55 / 58         5:30 / 51
Chicago-Kansas City       7:00 / 64         7:55 / 53
Chicago-Omaha             8:00 / 62         9:00 / 56
Chicago-Milwaukee         1:15 / 68         1:32 / 57
Chicago-Minneapolis       6:45 / 62         7:59 / 52
St. Louis-Fort Worth     14:55 / 50**      16:17 / 46
St. Louis-Kansas City     5:00 / 56         5:30 / 51
New Orleans-Memphis       6:30 / 61*        8:35 / 47
New Orleans-Houston       7:30 / 48**       9:13 / 39
Fort Worth-San Antonio    6:23 / 50** %     7:22 / 39
Oakland-Los Angeles       9:47 / 47        10:45 / 43
Oakland-Bakersfield       5:40 / 56         6:05 / 52
Oakland-Portland         15:00 / 47**      18:50 / 39     

* June 1948   ** June 1953  % Dallas-San Antonio
Source: Amtrak October 26, 1997 timetable
Official Guide of the Railways, 12/41, 6/48, 6/53

In some instances, there are small differences in mileage between Amtrak routes and the earlier routes. These differences were taken into account in computing the average speeds.

Some of the Amtrak trains make more stops than the fast trains of earlier years. I submit that this is not of major significance. For people travelling between endpoints or larger intermediate cities, the fact is that their train is slower today than what would have been available to them two generations ago, while air and highway transportation has improved exponentially. Furthermore, it is not unreasonable to expect that a half-century later, intercity passenger trains should be able to make more stops while at least equalling the earlier end-to-end schedule time. In at least two instances — Chicago-New Orleans and St. Louis-Kansas City — the impressive historical performance included more stops than Amtrak makes today.

Many of Amtrak’s trains have a poor on-time performance even on their slow schedules…

The timekeeping of trains like the Sunset Limited has happily improved from the dark first days of the Union Pacific – Southern Pacific merger. Amtrak can continue to improve performance by making sure their trains are always ready to leave on time; but it will be the incremental upgrades of a siding here, a straightened curve there, and a new automatic-switched station throat track to eliminate a five-minute delay, that will move the average speed upward, and whittle away the minutes between endpoints.

Stepping back to a broader picture — Passenger rail facing stiff competition from publicly subsidized highways and airlines; the need to repair and modernize the passenger fleet; a push to do more with existing trains and stations; and a productive relation with labor.  When are these headlines from? 2010? No — let us look back to 1947 and Robert R. Young, the “Populist of Wall Street” who, at that moment, controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and was poised to take chairmanship of the New York Central:

“Competition on land, sea, and in the air, the steady decentralization of industry, and the carriers’ inability [primarily through regulation] to increase the price of their product as much as other prices have increased, are again working to reduce their [the railroads'] share of the national income… They have got to make money the hard way. They have got to try to expand their passenger business, the only part of their business inherently expansible…”

“…Young himself is absolutely sure the unions will come his way [on reforms] ‘Labor is with me,’ he explains airily. ‘I told them it was a choice between an efficient low-cost operation and a high-cost dying operation. They said they understood it the same way, but could never get the management to go along.’” Fortune describes how Young’s team implemented suggestion boxes, long resisted by management, and how “employees identify themselves with Young… morale of the rank and file seems remarkably high.”

Another of Young’s controlled railroads, the Pere Marquette, inaugurated its “Detroit-Grand Rapids streamliner… in August 1946; the train reversed the national trend of declining passenger revenues, hauling 76 per cent more people between Grand Rapids and Detroit than its predecessor did in the same period of 1945…”

“[Young] wants to replace practically all the Central’s fleet of 2,100 cars, of which only some 700… are of the so-called lightweight type. This would cost no less than $100 million… The Central’s present management is, to put it mildly, distinctly cool to the whole notion. ‘If Governor Dewey puts through his $200-million superhighway from New York City to Buffalo,’ President Metzman says flatly, ‘we’re bound to lose still more people to the highways.’”

As to Young’s “almost endless inventory of ideas, some pneumatic and some substantive, about passenger service… most of [them] are a bit dusty; anyone who reads Railway Age, the industry’s excellent trade paper, will recognize them readily… Yet the fact remains that whereas others only talk about their wonderful ideas and then put them on ice, Young is doing something about them, and right on the C.&O.”

– Fortune magazine, May 1947, page 96, “Mr. Young and his C.&O.”

Hold the line, please! What was that quote again?

“They have got to make money the hard way. They have got to try to expand their passenger business, the only part of their business inherently expansible…”

There you have it — Fortune at the late date of 1947 suggesting that passenger trains, run properly, could make money for the railroads. With, indeed, the caveat about publicly funded superhighways.

The operative parallel between 1947 and now is that Amtrak is asking itself the question, How can we raise revenues faster than expenses? This we could call at least “cutting their deficit” while the more optimistic among us might postulate such an idea, sufficiently nurtured, eventually resulting in phrases like “small operating profit.”

If we can stop trying to build superfast toy trains that don’t connect to anything, and keep doing what Amtrak and states like North Carolina and Wisconsin have started these past few months, then we might finally be getting something done.

1. Just when we thought things were slowing down for the Christmas season … word has come the Amtrak Board of Directors has authorized taking the current tri-weekly Sunset Limited and turning it into a daily operation.

   The new version of the Sunset Limited – and, most likely, the Sunset Limited name will regrettably be retired, in a death before its time – will make the daily Texas Eagle a daily train all the way from its present daily endpoint in San Antonio, Texas to Los Angeles. For the first time in decades, the fabled Sunset Route of the former Southern Pacific Railroad and now Union Pacific Railroad will have daily service. The Texas Eagle will now be a Chicago-Los Angeles daily train. There is hopeful speculation the less than spectacular Texas Eagle name will be retired, too, and perhaps replaced with something more appropriate such as restoring the former Southern Pacific/Rock Island famed name, the Golden State. Other names, such as the lackluster California Eagle, have also been suggested.

   Cities and towns with current tri-weekly service now having daily service from a full service train include

   • Del Rio, Texas
   • Sanderson, Texas
   • Alpine, Texas
   • El Paso, Texas
   • Deming, New Mexico
   • Lordsburg, New Mexico
   • Benson, Arizona
   • Tucson, Arizona
   • Maricopa, Arizona (Phoenix)
   • Yuma, Arizona
   • Palm Springs, California
   • Ontario, California
   • Pomona, California
   • and, into Los Angeles Union Station.

   For the segment of the current Sunset Limited route between San Antonio and New Orleans, a new daily stub train will be established, with coach and a first class coach service, along with a food service car. The schedules of this yet-to-be-named train will coordinate with the new version of the Sunset at San Antonio.

   When this plan first surfaced earlier this year at the Railroad Passenger Association of California meeting in Los Angeles, many had hoped through car service from Los Angeles to at least New Orleans would remain. Alas, in this version, that is not to be; passengers traveling from points west of San Antonio will have to change trains for cities, towns, and hamlets east of San Antonio.

   Many are hoping that will change; there are other points in the Amtrak system where that type of operation takes place, notably on the Lake Shore Limited and Empire Builder.

   As an interesting note, Alpine, Texas, most known for its wide open spaces and almost total lack of denizens, will now have daily train service with sleeping cars, and a full service diner, but Houston, Texas, one of the largest cities in America, will have daily service with only coaches, a first class coach service, and some sort of diner/lounge food service. Somewhere, somebody at Amtrak thinks that’s a peachy idea.

   Stations east of San Antonio which will now have daily coach service on the new stub train include

   • Houston, Texas
   • Beaumont, Texas
   • Lake Charles, Louisiana
   • Lafayette, Louisiana
   • New Iberia, Louisiana
   • Schriever, Louisiana
   • and, New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal.

   There is no information as to when this service will commence, and on what schedules the two trains will operate.

2. What of service on the Sunset Limited route east of New Orleans?

   Don’t hold your breath. Amtrak’s Gulf Coast report which it published late this summer made pretty plain hash of what the company wants before it will consider restoring this much-missed and much-needed service.

   We will give the Amtrak Board of Directors some credit for embracing Brian Rosenwald’s plans for the Sunset Limited west of New Orleans, but the board will receive a collective lump of coal in its Christmas stocking for doing nothing to restore the immorally-stopped service east of New Orleans.

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1. Finally, at last, after waiting oh, so very long (Too long, in fact.), SunRail, the 61 mile long commuter rail system in Central Florida serving the Metropolitan Orlando area is about to be a reality.

   Just hours ago, the Florida Senate, meeting in a special session, passed HR 1, a bill to create SunRail and to also permanently fund South Florida’s Tri-Rail system.

   Life is good.

   SunRail had failed twice before in the Florida Senate, two years in a row in the legislature’s regular annual sessions. The Florida House each time overwhelmingly passed the proposal, but a spiteful state Senator from the small city of Lakeland, Senator Paula Dockery, did her best to kill SunRail because she was mad her husband’s original, too-expensive, ill-advised bullet train scheme was made to go away by former Governor Jeb Bush almost a decade ago.

   In a rare change of places in politics, the Republicans were pushing for SunRail, and the Democrats were mostly against it. Senator Dockery, who is now running for governor in next year’s state elections, is also a Republican.

   Overall, SunRail had bipartisan support on many fronts, but the trial lawyers were originally against it because the original bill protected CSX, which is selling the track and infrastructure to the State of Florida for hundreds of millions of dollars wanted reasonable risk protection for any freight trains it would continue to run in off-hours when SunRail wasn’t running between Deland, a far northern suburb of Orlando in Volusia County (near Daytona Beach), through the heart of downtown Orlando via Sanford (home of Auto Train’s southern terminus), Casselberry, Longwood, and Winter Park all the way down to Poinciana, to the southwest of Orlando, near the theme park area of Orlando (Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Studios).

   There was a fuss by the unions, who claimed the Republican-ruled State of Florida government was union-busting. At the last moment, they came to an agreement through some sort of backroom deal, and the unions relented and allowed the Democrats to vote for SunRail.

   But, mostly, for the first two years, SunRail failed because of one Senator, Paula Dockery. She used every piece of disinformation and distortion she could find to kill SunRail out of spite, and she cut deals with as many other senators as she could on unrelated topics to buy their votes in her favor. It took the untimely death of a longtime Senator from here in Jacksonville, who supported the concept of SunRail, but voted against it due to a deal cut with Senator Dockery, for the bill to finally pass. The dearly departed Senator’s elected replacement was one of the chief paid lobbyists for SunRail the previous year, so his vote was an automatic “yes.”

   In the end, it all came down to politics and perception. SunRail was touted as a job creator (no doubt about that), and it was touted as a budget buster, taking money out of the mouths of babes and education opportunities away from school children, not to mention all of the alleged hospitals and clinics which wouldn’t be built because of the cost of SunRail.

   It was only when the Republican majority in the Florida Senate realized it wouldn’t be prudent to go against the Republican President of the Senate and the Republican Governor that some sense came into focus.

   In the mean time, United States Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood came to Florida earlier this year and made it very, very clear if SunRail was not approved, and a funding source found for Tri-Rail, then Florida would be completely out of the running for any federal stimulus funds to build the proposed high speed rail routes in Florida. Added to Secretary LaHood’s admonishment were similar dire warnings from Republican Senator George LeMieux and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson (of NASA and space travel fame), as well as a varied assortment of Members of Congress.

   So, no matter how good the plan, how good the plan is for the citizens of Florida and Central Florida’s tens of millions of annual visitors from around the world, it all came down to a few votes and a lot of political pressure.

   Is that any way to run a railroad?

2. Here is who will benefit from the SunRail/Tri-Rail bill:
   • The majority of SunRail will run fairly parallel to Interstate 4, the main highway through the very middle of downtown Orlando. Interstate 4 is best described as a slow moving parking lot any time between 7:00 A.M. and about 8:00 P.M., and if there is a wreck, well, don’t plan on being home for dinner on time.

     As with all commuter rail systems, the sudden appearance of commuter trains will do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion; you couldn’t run enough trains with a two minute headway on a triple track mainline to take care of Central Florida’s driving problems. The benefit of SunRail is it will provide a reasonably priced, reasonable time alternative to driving on Interstate and surface roads, so almost every commuter in and out of downtown Orlando or commuters traveling from one side of Metropolitan Orlando to another will have the opportunity to take the train and possibly benefit.

   • The Orange Blossom Expressway, a second proposed commuter rail system in Central Florida will also benefit. This much smaller system will connect in downtown Orlando with SunRail, coming from far suburban counties to the north of Orlando. This system will travel over rails currently owned by a short line railroad. The start of SunRail could prompt this feeder system to get off the ground faster.
   • Everyone in the engineering and related fields, plus many in the construction industry will benefit, almost immediately.

     SunRail is probably one of the projects which is actually “shovel ready” and will have a relatively short construction window before beginning service. The current CSX infrastructure is excellent, and it won’t take much to upgrade what is already there to make it commuter-system ready. There will be some double tracking required, and the construction of local stations will take place, but none of those are years-long projects, especially with the year-round, construction friendly warm climate of Central Florida.

   • CSX will hugely benefit; it’s selling 61 miles worth of infrastructure it currently pays taxes on to the State of Florida for over $400 million, and it still gets to run as many freight trains as it wants over the tracks in off hours for – are you ready for this? – $1.00 a year. (Yes, one dollar.)

     Additionally, CSX gets more tens of millions of dollars to upgrade the former Seaboard Air Line Railroad main line through Ocala to divert trains from the former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad main line through Orlando it is selling to the State of Florida for SunRail. The money for diverting the traffic will go to more infrastructure improvements on the old SAL line such as grade crossings, more sidings, better signaling, and the construction of several highway and road overpasses in congested areas.

     CSX will also build a brand new Intermodal facility southwest of Orlando in Polk County, abandoning its older, smaller, more expensive to operate facility in Orlando that is currently on the SunRail route. The upgraded CSX/SAL line via Ocala will handle the diverted traffic from Orlando and the old Intermodal facility and take it all to the new facility.

   • Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties, the host counties of Tri-Rail, will all benefit from this legislation. In lieu of the desired $2.00 per day surcharge (A nice synonym for “tax”) on rental cars in each of the three counties, excess state transportation funds will be used for Tri-Rail. Each of the three counties will still contribute to Tri-Rail finances on an annual basis, but the three counties will not be solely responsible for funding the commuter rail system.

     This will also most likely clear the way for a huge expansion of Tri-Rail into a “Y” shaped system. The former inland SAL main line Tri-Rail now calls home parallels – in some cases just by a matter of city blocks – the current main line of the Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC), a private subsidiary of RailAmerica, based here in Jacksovnille. The FEC for years has been hoping for a similar deal CSX received over two decades ago to sell its track and infrastructure to an expanded Tri-Rail system, while retaining similar rights as CSX has to run over Tri-Rail in off hours.

     As with CSX, the FEC would be relieved of the tax burden of ownership and the costs of maintenance and insurance on about 75 or so miles of very expensive, urban track and infrastructure if Tri-Rail buys its line from the north of West Palm Beach (Around Jupiter, Florida.), south all the way into downtown Miami.

     Since Henry Flagler and the FEC in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries were the original builders of all of the East Coast of Florida south of St. Augustine for all practical purposes, the FEC line has a superior route through the middle of downtowns and urban areas than the old SAL line which was not completed into South Florida until the Florida Land Boom in the 1920s. The FEC had all of the downtowns and track which hugged the South Florida beaches, and the Seaboard was forced to build further to the west in the suburbs and swamplands on the edge of the Florida Everglades south of West Palm Beach where the line swung east from its route through Winter Haven, Sebring, and skirting Lake Okeechobee.

     Tri-Rail plans to keep its current system, and add trackage to the north and south of West Palm Beach on the FEC. This is the same trackage which is part of Amtrak’s high speed rail proposal for Florida, vying for part of the $8 billion in stimulus money to be awarded later this Winter.

   • Every other proposed commuter rail system in the country will benefit from the passage of the SunRail bill because from the beginning, the bill has been a model of rational, reasonable planning, with no pie-in-the-sky ridership figures, too-conservative costs, or too-extravagant revenue figures. SunRail was conceived and planned using real world numbers and real world expectations. Like the Northstar system in Minneapolis, and the Trinity system in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, SunRail most likely will exceed expectations on opening day.

     The deal struck with CSX, similar to the deal the Commonwealth of Massachusetts struck with CSX to expand its state commuter system outside of Boston, most likely will become a model for all future deals with CSX, which is good. CSX will receive huge benefits from the deal, which is to be expected as CSX acts on behalf of its shareholders. While CSX will benefit, the public will also benefit in any number of ways, not the least of which is access to private railroad infrastructure CSX has no duty to share with anyone else it doesn’t choose to do business with on any particular day. But, both the SunRail and Massachusetts projects demonstrate how everyone can win, and life goes on with everyone benefitting.

   • Amtrak will greatly benefit from SunRail; it will have the benefit of the upgraded infrastructure necessary for SunRail, plus the upgraded shared station facilities, and more friendly dispatching since there will be very little freight train activity south of Jacksonville (Where ALL freight trains came into Florida to be funneled south into Florida’s peninsula) on the former ACL line/now SunRail line for 61 miles in Central Florida. For about 210 miles from Jacksonville to the Auburndale cutoff where Amtrak trains turn from the former ACL line onto the former SAL line for the run into Miami, Amtrak trains should have a mostly clear shot of clean dispatching with very little freight train interference. This could lead to a shortening of Florida schedules since the northbound Silver Meteor and Silver usually arrive into Jacksonville ahead of schedule.

     Another benefit to Amtrak will be a heightened awareness of passenger rail travel by the commuters on SunRail; passenger-train-aware people are more likely to be receptive to long distance train travel. Hopefully, Amtrak will make the most of this by heavily promoting Amtrak trains at commuter stations.

   • U.S. Railcar, which is now the proud owner of the former Colorado Railcar designs for both single and bi-level commuter trains should benefit greatly from today’s vote. The original plan, when Colorado Railcar was still a viable company, called for that company’s DMUs to provide all of the motive power and consists for SunRail, and it’s highly likely any expansion of Tri-Rail in South Florida will also use these same DMUs which have undergone field tests on Tri-Rail in the past few years. Perhaps this will help U.S. Railcar with its request for a federal grant to construct a factory in Ohio to build these self-propelled railcars.
   • Transportation planners in Jacksonville to the northeast of Central Florida, and in the Tampa Bay area to the southwest of Central Florida have won a major victory. In addition to the creation of SunRail and the funding of Tri-Rail, the enabling legislation also creates two new state programs to deal with all present and future commuter rail systems in Florida. As far as state government is concerned, commuter rail in Florida “has arrived.”
   • Real estate developers and entrepreneurs will benefit greatly. Even though Central Florida is very densely built-out and populated, look to new mixed use housing and retail and office developments to spring up within walking distance (Even in the Florida heat and rain in the Summer.) of the new SunRail stations.
3. Here is who will not benefit from the SunRail/Tri-Rail bill:
   • Anyone who intentionally buys or builds a home near an existing railroad track which has been in place since the late 19^th Century. The NIMBYs lost; the train tracks which were built to handle traffic will continue to do so, and those opposed to trains will have to find a life elsewhere.
   • The anti-rail talking heads who make careers out of making arguments which are usually a couple of French fries short of a Happy Meal against commuter rail and any other type of rail. Often, what’s old is new, and commuter rail is making a comeback in this country and will have a happy life alongside the automobile and sport utility vehicles of the world. While the return on investment in SunRail and Tri-Rail may not happen in exactly the same way or following the same formula which works for building more and more roads and highways, the ROI on commuter rail has a proven record of success beyond the tired “green” and “sustainability” arguments which are – by themselves – no complete arguments at all for huge projects such as commuter rail.
   • Asphalt and concrete manufacturers. Instead of laying literally miles and miles of asphalt and concrete on new roads, these folks will have to settle for acres of new asphalt and concrete on new commuter rail station parking lots and access roads.
4. As a final note, we should examine Amtrak’s role in all of this. Some had suggested in order to go around various liability questions with CSX and other issues before this bill was passed Amtrak should simply be the operator or SunRail, and many of those issues would go away.

   Amtrak is consistently the most expensive commuter system operator in the country, with a less than stellar record (See the immediate previous issue of TWA to this issue and the discussion of Amtrak’s failures in California operating the Pacific Surfliner service on behalf of California.).

   Here is something to think about: If Amtrak were no longer America’s best kept secret, and the company promoted itself like any other American company, more Americans would know of and understand passenger rail.

   Reading the online news articles about SunRail and the accompanying idiotic, knee-jerk reactions to SunRail by uninformed readers was a tragic exercise. It appears a certain element of our society absolutely hates anything to do with passenger rail, and think it should be consigned to museums and Third World countries. These people have no idea, nor rational concept of the many economic and social benefits of passenger rail. Many of these people would rather give up their firstborn child than their automobiles.

   There is nothing wrong with choice, just as there is nothing wrong with someone choosing to only travel in their personal vehicle. That’s the kind of choice we take for granted in this country, and we cherish to right to make that choice.

   But, while keeping that same right to choose, we should not be taking away the rights of others who choose to travel by a means other than a personal vehicle.

   Amtrak carries two tenths of one percent of America’s travelers, which is hardly a blip on anyone’s screen. Amtrak is – and remains – statistically irrelevant to American transportation.

   If Amtrak chose to be a healthy, relevant passenger carrier, then many of the arguments made against SunRail out of ignorance simply would not have added anything beyond puffs of hot air to the discussion. That was not the case, however; SunRail failed twice because no one knew how to make a rational argument for passenger rail against a determined foe, because no one knows about passenger rail.

   That is something Amtrak can do something about; it can stop being statistically irrelevant, and create a vision for the future which includes conventional passenger rail as part of our domestic transportation network. Until that happens, more prospective commuter rail systems are going to be delayed or shot down in flames because no one can talk intelligently about the sins and virtues of passenger rail in America.

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see also: (Wikipedia)SunRail, Orange Blossom Expressway