164 replies to this topic

[afigg]

Something else that could be done: Have the Palmetto stop in Jacksonville, then have it run west on the Florida Panhandle. Have the end of the route be Pensacola. It would connect with the FEC train in Jacksonville. Of course, Amtrak would insist that FL come up with some money for the Panhandle operations.

That would extend the Palmetto even further which is not really possible without sleeper cars. The better solution, although not in the Florida near or medium term plans at all from what I see, would be for Florida to fund a corridor train service from Pensacola to Jacksonville. If the FEC corridor service is seen as very successful, that could lead to people and politicians in Tallahassee and the Panhandle ask, hey, why don't we have passenger train service?

[trainviews]

Something else that could be done: Have the Palmetto stop in Jacksonville, then have it run west on the Florida Panhandle. Have the end of the route be Pensacola. It would connect with the FEC train in Jacksonville. Of course, Amtrak would insist that FL come up with some money for the Panhandle operations.

That would extend the Palmetto even further which is not really possible without sleeper cars. The better solution, although not in the Florida near or medium term plans at all from what I see, would be for Florida to fund a corridor train service from Pensacola to Jacksonville. If the FEC corridor service is seen as very successful, that could lead to people and politicians in Tallahassee and the Panhandle ask, hey, why don't we have passenger train service?

At least JAX -Tallahasse should be very feasible and could be done as an extension of an FEC corridor train. But I think it will be hard to get the Florida politicians to pay for a train on a LD corridor that Amtrak has kept "suspended" for what looks like indenfinately...

[jphjaxfl]

There is no plan and no need for 2 passenger stations in Jacksonville. The current station was built because Amtrak couldn't afford to operate the large Union Terminal. I came through JAX on one of the first trains to use the new station on the Floridian around New Years 1973& which still split in JAX. Now almost 40 yrs later, everyone agrees that the location was a mistake. There is plenty of room to build an Amtrak passenger Station along side the Convention Center which is nicely restored compared to when Amtrak last used it. Operating two stations in Jacksonville would be very expensive and serve no purpose. Most people new to Jacksonville and younger people have no idea that JAX even has Amtrak passenger service because the station os so remote. Service on the FEC will be a lot more visible because it will travel through a more populated area. Everyone knows where the Convention Center is. Visitors often ask why trains are not stopping there.

[Anderson]

You really don't need any train to link at JAX with a Palmetto that terminates in Jacksonville, as it has done in the past. Palmetto could just as well run to the Convention Center station and terminate there and originate from there. As a matter of fact that is what it should do. The only issue is with trains that continue onto either the CSX/SunRail line to Orlando or the CSX line towards New Orleans.

The problem is that the Palmetto is a ~15 hour train from NYP to Savannah. The Silver Star and Meteor trip times from Savannah to Jacksonville is 2 and 1/2 hours (which is rather slow for a 107 mile segment). Extending the Palmetto to Jacksonville would make it a ~17.5 hour day train.

At that point, it might be better to add a couple of sleepers and a diner on it and run it down the FEC overnight to Miami for a direct and quicker NYP-Miami train. Which is not that bad an idea, IMO. Silver Star would still split at Jacksonville and there would be multiple daytime corridor trains. Keep the Palmetto daytime schedule framework from NYP to Savannah, although slipping the departure from NYP to an hour or 2 later - if a departure slot from NYP at rush hour can be found - would probably help with the overall timing. Would provide a late night or overnight train service on the FEC.

I actually do like this idea...but more because the FEC (at least to me) feels like it is long enough that, especially if you already had a couple of departures on it, an overnight train in the vein of the Twilight Shoreliner would make sense if you could get enough business in general. Honestly, if you extended the Palmetto to JAX (and transferred as much padding from further up the route to JAX to try and ensure that the departure there was on time), had a set-out sleeper available for JAX-MIA, and tinkered with the timetable so the MIA arrival was late enough/allowed later occupancy (i.e. the train leaves JAX sometime around midnight, arrives in MIA at about 7 AM, and occupancy is allowed until 7:30 AM regardless of arrival time), it could work...but this may just be my thinking that the "overnight trip" market is really under-served by Amtrak creeping in. Mind you, I also think there's a definite market for a later Miami departure getting to JAX than the Star allows (though 3:15 isn't bad, to be fair), but that's just me.

[jphjaxfl]

The overnight JAX-MIA trains on both the FEC and SAL disappeared quite a while before Amtrak. They both carried an RPO cars and other mail hauling cars and when the RPOs were discontinued, the entire train was discontinued with months. I don't think you'll see a JAX -MIA overnight train. You will see the Star split and combine at JAX and you will see a round trip coach (maybe business class ) snack bar train leaving MIA in the early am and leaving JAX late afternoon.

[Anderson]

The overnight JAX-MIA trains on both the FEC and SAL disappeared quite a while before Amtrak. They both carried an RPO cars and other mail hauling cars and when the RPOs were discontinued, the entire train was discontinued with months. I don't think you'll see a JAX -MIA overnight train. You will see the Star split and combine at JAX and you will see a round trip coach (maybe business class ) snack bar train leaving MIA in the early am and leaving JAX late afternoon.

Was this during the mid-60s? I ask mainly because of the...interesting situation at the FEC during that time.

[afigg]

At least JAX -Tallahasse should be very feasible and could be done as an extension of an FEC corridor train. But I think it will be hard to get the Florida politicians to pay for a train on a LD corridor that Amtrak has kept "suspended" for what looks like indenfinately...

I don't see why that Amtrak has "suspended" service would be a major consideration except that it means those cities don't currently have passenger train service which in turn means there is likely to be greater resistance to the idea of paying for a passenger train. CSX is likely to demand 100s of millions for track and signal upgrades to allow a multiple daily frequency corridor service to run over their tracks. They would likely do that even if the Sunset Limited were still running over those tracks.

If Florida were to pay for those track and signal upgrades for a class IV 79 mph route and start a Jacksonville to Pensacola corridor service, that would enhance the chances of restoring the Sunset Limited to run east to Jacksonville and then Orlando. The state and local communities would pick up the tab for station maintenance and staffing and the state for trip time improvements. The corridor service would provide a larger customer base to draw on for the SL. In short, the SL might get to a sustainable cost recovery number for the route east of New Orleans.

[afigg]

I actually do like this idea...but more because the FEC (at least to me) feels like it is long enough that, especially if you already had a couple of departures on it, an overnight train in the vein of the Twilight Shoreliner would make sense if you could get enough business in general. Honestly, if you extended the Palmetto to JAX (and transferred as much padding from further up the route to JAX to try and ensure that the departure there was on time), had a set-out sleeper available for JAX-MIA, and tinkered with the timetable so the MIA arrival was late enough/allowed later occupancy (i.e. the train leaves JAX sometime around midnight, arrives in MIA at about 7 AM, and occupancy is allowed until 7:30 AM regardless of arrival time), it could work...but this may just be my thinking that the "overnight trip" market is really under-served by Amtrak creeping in. Mind you, I also think there's a definite market for a later Miami departure getting to JAX than the Star allows (though 3:15 isn't bad, to be fair), but that's just me.

One of the facts that jumped out at me when I read the recent PIP report for the Silvers, was that the top city pairs for the Palmetto were: Charleston-NYP 7%, Fayetteville-NYP 4%, Florence-NYP 4%. This is impressive with the Palmetto departing NYP at 6:15 AM and arrives at 11:47 PM. The 6:15 AM time means that the passengers getting on at NYP is likely mostly limited to those living in or very close to NYC. Anyone starting from SE CT or further north of NYC has to get leave in the wee AM hours to get to NYP in time to take the Palmetto southbound. If the Palmetto could trim some time off of the NYP to Savannah journey and somehow get a 8 AM departure slot (to not follow the Carolinian too closely), it could draw on a larger passenger base for those taking day trips to NC and SC destinations.

What does that have to with the FEC? Well, if the Palmetto were to become the Silver Palm with sleeper service to Miami over the FEC, there would be 3 daily LD trains departing NYP spread over the day: Silver Palm in the early-mid morning, Silver Star at midday (11 AM close enough) and Silver Meteor mid to late afternoon (slide departure out to 4 PM, still gets to FL and Orlando at reasonable times of the day). The three trains would cover the same route from NYP to Rocky Mount, NC on the northern end and West Palm Beach to Miami on the southern end with different routes in between for people not going end to end to pick from. The northbound Silver Palm would depart Miami early evening, offering a spread of 3 departure times over the day from southern FL. The spread of departure times should allow for same day turn-around and more efficient equipment utilization between the 3 trains.

Running overnight over the FEC would not offer a big passenger load in FL for the Silver Palm, but the population base may be big enough to support it. May be some in FL on the southbound leg who want to get to Miami by early morning for business trips, day trips to Miami. The FEC opens up a range of LD train options that one hopes Amtrak will look at.

[afigg]

The overnight JAX-MIA trains on both the FEC and SAL disappeared quite a while before Amtrak. They both carried an RPO cars and other mail hauling cars and when the RPOs were discontinued, the entire train was discontinued with months. I don't think you'll see a JAX -MIA overnight train. You will see the Star split and combine at JAX and you will see a round trip coach (maybe business class ) snack bar train leaving MIA in the early am and leaving JAX late afternoon.

Florida's plan is/was for more than 1 daily corridor train. Phase 2 of their FY10 HSIPR application called for 3 additional daily Cocoa to Miami trains. Which I find a little odd, as Cocoa does not have a large population in of itself. May be in part a placeholder to see how much business they get with a end to end Jacksonville-Miami train. Jacksonville is the largest FL city population wise at 821 thousand within the city boundaries, so the 2 biggest cities in FL do make for logical endpoints for a corridor service.

Before looking at how the trains did 40 or 50 years ago, one must take into account the enormous population growth in Florida since the 1960s and A-day. Census numbers according to Wikipedia (before they go into global protest blackout) for Florida:
1970: 6.79 million
1980: 9.75 million
1990: 12.94 million
2000: 15.98 million
2010: 18.80 million

That is a lot of people and I would venture a lot of really bad traffic jams.

[George Harris]

The overnight JAX-MIA trains on both the FEC and SAL disappeared quite a while before Amtrak. They both carried an RPO cars and other mail hauling cars and when the RPOs were discontinued, the entire train was discontinued with months. I don't think you'll see a JAX -MIA overnight train. You will see the Star split and combine at JAX and you will see a round trip coach (maybe business class ) snack bar train leaving MIA in the early am and leaving JAX late afternoon.

There pre-Amtrak Jax-Mia overnights were secondary runs with multiple stops and low overall average speeds. Thye had late night departures, early mornign arrivals at New York City, so, out of New York, these were two nights one day services.

If you had a train that left Miami early eveninig arrived New York City not too late the next evening (yes it would be very early AM in Jacksonville) northbound and was scheduled to have a reasonably early morning arrival southbound at West Palm Beach and mid morning at Miami, which would give it a reasoable mornign departure in New York and a past midnight time at Jacksonville, you would have a much more desirable product than these pre-Amtrak trains. The much larger Florida population would not hurt the ridership numbers, either.

[Anderson]

Florida's situation is a headache and then some. Mind you, an ideal situation would see most trains focused on Orlampa plus the East Coast (with coverage down to Naples or on the old Silver Palm line in northern Florida optional), but the lack of a decent Orlando-FEC link makes that pretty hard. For all that Florida's population has clustered nicely in a lot of cases, it's clustered in too many corridors for a number of city pairs to work well. To top this off, the I-4 corridor veers off of the A-line, complicating a /lot/ of efforts on that front (witness the long-term Sunrail plans, which simply cannot connect directly to the Daytona area, instead terminating in Deland).

As to the point about the runs in/to Florida: As noted above, Florida-NEC service has a lot going for it that didn't exist back in the 1970s. Assuming a population of about 7 million at A-Day, Florida will have roughly tripled in size since then with the passage of a few more years. Moreover, when you look back at 1970/71, Orlando wasn't yet the destination it is now. While Disney World was present, it was smaller than it is now; likewise, Universal was still nearly 20 years off; Busch Gardens was much less of a major park at the time, SeaWorld didn't exist...central Florida then simply wasn't what it is now. Of course, there was more focus on the coast...but even those resorts have grown as time has gone by.

One thing that I don't think has been considered is that if Amtrak wanted to, overnight trains with morning arrivals in Miami and Orlando/Kissimmee/Tampa could be pitched as "getting you to Florida before the parks open". Right now, I can not get into Kissimmee before about 11 AM, which means that there's no way I can get to Disney before about noon if I'm being honest about picking up a rental car and/or dropping my bags off at a hotel. Likewise, I can't hope to hit Tampa before 12:30, which means I'm not going to be on the beach before mid-afternoon. Moving those times up by about 3-4 hours for the Orlando branch of things would be /really/ nice. Likewise, being able to go from somewhere to Miami and get there before dinner time would be a good selling point (an 8 AM arrival into Miami would probably sell some tickets). In that same vein, evening departures from these places could be pitched as giving you the "whole last day" in Florida.

Of course, another point to consider is that while NEC-Florida service is a big thing, Virginia and North Carolina are two other markets to seriously look at. NYP-MIA is always going to be a rather long run, but something that could somehow focus on serving the area between Washington and Charlotte (such as the idea of rerouting the Star to serve CLT)? Again, you start gaining business from those other intermediate markets...and I'm not even considering Atlanta here for reasons discussed elsewhere involving a certain airline.

But anyhow...looking at Florida proper, the biggest hangup I can see going forward is how to link Tampa, Orlando, and associated areas with the FEC. Orlando proper is a /big/ problem (witness how the HSR plan completely skipped it), but the whole region is disengaged from the coast as far as rail goes. Also, the geography presents a problem in the vein of an essay I saw on linking the San Francisco Airport to the rail system...no matter what, unless you were running a lot of trains and willing to set up some interesting switching options, you had to run some sort of transfer to the airport line (either by running trains through to the airport and forcing a transfer to continue on southwards or by forcing the transfer to go to the airport). In most cases, a train coming up the coast from Miami can go to Orlando or Jacksonville, but not both.

Ideally, looking at the 2006 plan, some sort of rail line along FL528 would allow you to run corridor trains from Tampa to Cocoa. A question: Is there some way that a corridor train could be sent into the Orlando station with a push-pull configuration, stopped there for a 5 minute hold for the engineer to get to the other end of the train, and then run back south and out to Cocoa via 528 "backwards" via the use of a cab car? Is there some other way to "cover" Orlando with a decent link into downtown that doesn't involve switching to surface buses (i.e. something that will NOT sell with business travelers)? Looking at this was something that always killed the bullet train in my mind...if you don't somehow hit Orlando proper, you might get tourist traffic but you miss out on business traffic, and that will be a component on corridor services. I'm expecting that you'll have a forced transfer at Cocoa a fair portion of the time (though if Florida got its act together...they're already buying one chunk of the A-line as it is, and they could probably acquire more if they so desired...they could probably run much closer connections at Cocoa than they allow most of the time), but even this could be limited (if they're running 4-5 trains per day Miami-Cocoa, you could "pair" one or two that stop at Cocoa with ones that are going from Cocoa to Tampa and simply run sets through rather than forcing transfers).

[MattW]

In terms of linking Florida's major peninsular cities, what I'd go for is a link from Cocoa to perhaps Winter Park where it rejoins existing trackage down into Orlando proper and beyond. The reason I choose Cocoa over the more direct routing of going to Titusville is Cocoa makes a good junction point as a major junction in a three-way rail system, but mostly for its value as a terminus for trips. What I mean is Cocoa makes a better destination itself, in my opinion, than Titusville due to its proximity to Cocoa Beach, Port Canaveral (lots of cruise ship traffic) and the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. And what I mean in a three-way rail system is having three routes, JAX-MIA, JAX-TPA via ORL, and MIA-TPA via ORL. Excluding the destination desirability of Cocoa itself, it admittedly doesn't matter too much where the turn to and from ORL-TPA is made of course.
If any of this seems a bit discombobulated, I do apologize, but it's late and it's been one of those days

[Anderson]

Matt,
It makes perfect sense...and something like that does seem to be in the cards in the long run, from what I can tell in the '06 plan plus the more recent stuff.

By the way, as a random aside, I just stumbled across the FEC in my '56 Official Guide. The FEC's "Daylight Express" 29/30 is a fun example of a non-express...366 miles in 12 hours (30.5 MPH) with 75 timetabled stops JAX-MIA (mind you, 43 list as flag stops, but you've got another 5 or 10 un-timed flag stops as well). Talk about "stops everywhere" (as well as "don't want to replicate"!).

[jphjaxfl]

Matt,
It makes perfect sense...and something like that does seem to be in the cards in the long run, from what I can tell in the '06 plan plus the more recent stuff.

By the way, as a random aside, I just stumbled across the FEC in my '56 Official Guide. The FEC's "Daylight Express" 29/30 is a fun example of a non-express...366 miles in 12 hours (30.5 MPH) with 75 timetabled stops JAX-MIA (mind you, 43 list as flag stops, but you've got another 5 or 10 un-timed flag stops as well). Talk about "stops everywhere" (as well as "don't want to replicate"!).

It was primarily a mail and express train meaning Railway Express to serve all the much smaller towns that have grown between Jacksonville and Miami and that was before I-95,

[trainviews]

At least JAX -Tallahasse should be very feasible and could be done as an extension of an FEC corridor train. But I think it will be hard to get the Florida politicians to pay for a train on a LD corridor that Amtrak has kept "suspended" for what looks like indenfinately...

I don't see why that Amtrak has "suspended" service would be a major consideration except that it means those cities don't currently have passenger train service which in turn means there is likely to be greater resistance to the idea of paying for a passenger train. CSX is likely to demand 100s of millions for track and signal upgrades to allow a multiple daily frequency corridor service to run over their tracks. They would likely do that even if the Sunset Limited were still running over those tracks.

If Florida were to pay for those track and signal upgrades for a class IV 79 mph route and start a Jacksonville to Pensacola corridor service, that would enhance the chances of restoring the Sunset Limited to run east to Jacksonville and then Orlando. The state and local communities would pick up the tab for station maintenance and staffing and the state for trip time improvements. The corridor service would provide a larger customer base to draw on for the SL. In short, the SL might get to a sustainable cost recovery number for the route east of New Orleans.

I fully agree - in terms of railroading. I just think it will be a hard sell to get the Florida politicians to cough up with an operating subsidy for Amtrak, while Amtrak is not running the LD train on the route that is scheduled and supposed to be paid on Amtrak's dime.

Edited by trainviews, 18 January 2012 - 05:26 AM.

[jis]

In terms of linking Florida's major peninsular cities, what I'd go for is a link from Cocoa to perhaps Winter Park where it rejoins existing trackage down into Orlando proper and beyond. The reason I choose Cocoa over the more direct routing of going to Titusville is Cocoa makes a good junction point as a major junction in a three-way rail system, but mostly for its value as a terminus for trips. What I mean is Cocoa makes a better destination itself, in my opinion, than Titusville due to its proximity to Cocoa Beach, Port Canaveral (lots of cruise ship traffic) and the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. And what I mean in a three-way rail system is having three routes, JAX-MIA, JAX-TPA via ORL, and MIA-TPA via ORL. Excluding the destination desirability of Cocoa itself, it admittedly doesn't matter too much where the turn to and from ORL-TPA is made of course.
If any of this seems a bit discombobulated, I do apologize, but it's late and it's been one of those days

It is also easier to find an ROW to Cocoa from the west via the 528 alignment than it is to find an ROW to Titusville.

The only hope of getting through to the CBD of Orlando from the north from such a line would be to run it from 528 along the 417 and 408 alignment just north of the CBD to join the SunRail line there. Getting through the Winter Park area with a RoW from the east is going to be not easy or cheap. Very rich and influential NIMBYs abound.

[George Harris]

If Florida were to pay for those track and signal upgrades for a class IV 79 mph route and start a Jacksonville to Pensacola corridor service, that would enhance the chances of restoring the Sunset Limited to run east to Jacksonville and then Orlando. The state and local communities would pick up the tab for station maintenance and staffing and the state for trip time improvements. The corridor service would provide a larger customer base to draw on for the SL. In short, the SL might get to a sustainable cost recovery number for the route east of New Orleans.

The line already has signals between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. The segment Tallahassee to Pensacola (and on to Flomaton AL) does need signals. Since the freight speed limit is already 49 mph west of Tallahassee and 50 mph east of Tallahassee, track quality will permit 79 mph as is. There are, however, quite a few areas with lower speeds due to curves and other factors.

[VentureForth]

Last night, I had the opportunity to sit on the 15th floor of the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront hotel, overlooking FEC's Strauss Trunnion Bascule Bridge.

Couldn't help but wonder outloud to my kids how soon we could be seeing Amtrak cross that bridge on a daily basis.

One thing I noticed, though... As the southbound trains crossed the bridge, they then seemed to blow their horns endlessly. Lots of grade crossings to deal with!

[jis]

Take a look at this map, and you will see why. The railroad down the middle is the FEC.

[afigg]

Take a look at this map, and you will see why. The railroad down the middle is the FEC.

Separating all those grade crossings would cost more than a few bucks if they wanted to do that for higher speed upgrades. Would not be a easy project either with the tracks going under I-95, but at street level for the crossings.