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charles borden

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The sunset limited used to go all the way to orlando. Now it stops in new orleans. I beleive that the reason they stopped was due to the katrina damage. Does any body know if this has been fixed and when will the SL resume path the Orlando?
 
Yes, the damage has been fixed and CSX is running trains up and down that line.

No, Amtrak is not likely to resume this service anytime soon. It's been well discussed and quite frankly if the states don't pony up the money (which they most likely won't), Amtrak isn't going to run the trains.
 
I personally don't think that the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans to Orlando will ever be resumed! There in fact may be a train operating between the two cities in the next 100 years or so, but it will not be the Sunset Limited at all!
 
CSX had the line fixed within a few weeks of the hurricane, and that fix included a replacement of a goodly part of the bridge across Bay St. Louis. Amtrak could have restored the train within not more than 3 months of the passage of the storm if they had so chosen. They chose not to. Many and varied have been the excuses, but they can be summed up by, we don't want to.
 
To be more precise, Amtrak's view has been "if someone else pays for it, we will do it, but we're not adding that cost back to our balance sheet".

Obviously the "we don't believe in spending money on anything useful" states and localities in that area have not been willing to pay for the Sunset Limited restoration, nor have their representatives in Congress been willing to allocate federal money to it. Furthermore, the federal representatives from those areas have not exactly been reliable pro-Amtrak voters *before* the line was severed.

When you read the analysis of the route, you realize why it's so unattractive. There's no way to make the route faster than driving without spending a lot of money on signalling at least, and new track at worst; the Mobile-to-Flomaton-Pensacola routing is very undesirable, and between Flomaton and Talahassee is "dark territory". The train never ran on time from the time it was started to the time it was discontinued. Mobile station was demolished. None of the stations are ADA-compliant. Three-day-a-week trains are a bad deal anyway; Amtrak would really like to make the rest of the Sunset Limited, and the Cardinal, into daily trains if it could get UP and CSX (respectively) to agree to it. Worse, the area between Jacksonville and New Orleans area gets punched by storms regularly. The Sanford non-Auto-Train station was closed by hurricanes from before Katrina. Hurricane Isaac is about to hit the coast east of New Orleans again. If Amtrak spent its own money to rebuild stations, it might be doing so every few years. So you can see where Amtrak is coming from.

Most of Amtrak's long-distance routes have a lot of potential for improvement, and the states and localities involved are actively putting their own money in for improvements. There are track improvements particularly where they overlap "corridor" trains or commuter trains., and most of them do overlap "corridor" trains or commuter trains. In fact, almost all of them overlap corridor or commuter service for some distance at each end; the exceptions are the trains terminating in New Orleans. The Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, Crescent, and Silver Star additionally have corridor overlaps in the "middle", and the Silver Service will have more soon with SunRail. Meanwhile, there are station improvements where-ever the localities pay for them, which is most places, including some pretty obscure rural locations.

None of this, none of these encouraging improvements, are happening east of New Orleans and west of Jacksonville; no locally-funded station construction, no corridor service, no commuter service, no money. (Well, there is SunRail coming.) There's no visible likelihood of improvement. Arguably there are similar problems with the rest of the Sunset Limited and with the Cardinal, but they haven't been destroyed by storms, so the status quo rules.
 
Nathanael said:
To be more precise, Amtrak's view has been "if someone else pays for it, we will do it, but we're not adding that cost back to our balance sheet".

Obviously the "we don't believe in spending money on anything useful" states and localities in that area have not been willing to pay for the Sunset Limited restoration, nor have their representatives in Congress been willing to allocate federal money to it. Furthermore, the federal representatives from those areas have not exactly been reliable pro-Amtrak voters *before* the line was severed.

When you read the analysis of the route, you realize why it's so unattractive. There's no way to make the route faster than driving without spending a lot of money on signalling at least, and new track at worst; the Mobile-to-Flomaton-Pensacola routing is very undesirable, and between Flomaton and Talahassee is "dark territory". The train never ran on time from the time it was started to the time it was discontinued. Mobile station was demolished. None of the stations are ADA-compliant. Three-day-a-week trains are a bad deal anyway; Amtrak would really like to make the rest of the Sunset Limited, and the Cardinal, into daily trains if it could get UP and CSX (respectively) to agree to it. Worse, the area between Jacksonville and New Orleans area gets punched by storms regularly. The Sanford non-Auto-Train station was closed by hurricanes from before Katrina. Hurricane Isaac is about to hit the coast east of New Orleans again. If Amtrak spent its own money to rebuild stations, it might be doing so every few years. So you can see where Amtrak is coming from.

Most of Amtrak's long-distance routes have a lot of potential for improvement, and the states and localities involved are actively putting their own money in for improvements. There are track improvements particularly where they overlap "corridor" trains or commuter trains., and most of them do overlap "corridor" trains or commuter trains. In fact, almost all of them overlap corridor or commuter service for some distance at each end; the exceptions are the trains terminating in New Orleans. The Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, Crescent, and Silver Star additionally have corridor overlaps in the "middle", and the Silver Service will have more soon with SunRail. Meanwhile, there are station improvements where-ever the localities pay for them, which is most places, including some pretty obscure rural locations.

None of this, none of these encouraging improvements, are happening east of New Orleans and west of Jacksonville; no locally-funded station construction, no corridor service, no commuter service, no money. (Well, there is SunRail coming.) There's no visible likelihood of improvement. Arguably there are similar problems with the rest of the Sunset Limited and with the Cardinal, but they haven't been destroyed by storms, so the status quo rules.
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Good post, it all makes sense. The only point I wonder about is about the need to make the train faster than driving. If you look at the whole route, LA to FL, I don't know many people who could drive that by themselves faster than the trains runs. Not to mention, unbelievable as it seems, not every one of us owns a car.

I don't take trains for the speed, I take them because I enjoy looking at the scenery and not having to work at driving.

Oh, and cost. I calculated the cost of fuel to drive my car from Maine to my daughter's place in CA, and it was more than the cost of the train INCLUDING a sleeper (low bucket). Not taking into account wear and tear on my car, and insurance. (That was two years ago). And I didn't have to do anything except sit there and ride. To me, that is way better than driving on interstate highways where the view NEVER changes.

Best to you.
 
Maine Rider said:
Good post, it all makes sense. The only point I wonder about is about the need to make the train faster than driving. If you look at the whole route, LA to FL, I don't know many people who could drive that by themselves faster than the trains runs. Not to mention, unbelievable as it seems, not every one of us owns a car.
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Where the slower-than-driving hurts is the intermediate stops; at some point it's quicker to drive from Pensacola to New Orleans and catch the train there. And you can be pretty sure most people in those barely-any-public-transit wastelands do own cars, at least if they can afford train tickets.

For the local traffic, Amtrak does seem much more positive towards a restored "Gulf Coast Limited" from Mobile to New Orleans (which is direct and has modern signalling)... if the states are interested in paying for it.

For accomodating the through traffic to LA from most of Florida (sorry Talahassee), it would make more sense to pick a route which has solid potential for good service on the intermediate stops. Perhaps Jacksonville-Macon-Atlanta? Of course, the problem (again) is that the state governments have no interest in ponying up any money.

I don't take trains for the speed, I take them because I enjoy looking at the scenery and not having to work at driving.
Oh, and cost. I calculated the cost of fuel to drive my car from Maine to my daughter's place in CA, and it was more than the cost of the train INCLUDING a sleeper (low bucket). Not taking into account wear and tear on my car, and insurance. (That was two years ago). And I didn't have to do anything except sit there and ride. To me, that is way better than driving on interstate highways where the view NEVER changes.
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Oh, I agree entirely. I cannot and will not do drives longer than 2 hours unless forced, due to the unpleasantness. And of course it's expensive to do so as well.

It does get back to money. If the federal government were willing to fund Amtrak like it funds highways, we'd have at least a daily train between New Orleans and Jacksonville, and on upgraded tracks with upgraded signals. If the state or local governments were interested, we'd have a daily train of some sort. But they aren't. Georgia's been *talking* about a downtown Atlanta station for Amtrak for decades now, and there's still no money, no construction, nothing. This is the same reason Phoenix's station is in Maricopa; neither the federal government, nor the state government, nor the city government, was willing to maintain the Phoenix line.

I do think a lot of the "long-distance" trains have much more state and local money and support going into them than most people realize; when you start adding up all the little projects which benefit them, it's very substantial. But this isn't true in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, or Panhandle Florida.

Recently a South Carolina town "didn't notice" (!) that its road construction project, as planned, would shut down the Amtrak station: http://www.independentmail.com/news/2012/aug/18/passenger-train-puts-breaks-on-clemson-project/ . Can you believe this? This is not something which would ever happen in Pennsylvania, or North Dakota.

Along with the lower ridership south of Atlanta, this sort of *attitude problem* is probably a reason why Amtrak will cancel the Atlanta-New Orleans portion of the Crescent at the drop of a hat, but makes great efforts to keep the portion north of that (through the very supportive state of North Carolina) running.
 
Nathanael said:
Along with the lower ridership south of Atlanta, this sort of *attitude problem* is probably a reason why Amtrak will cancel the Atlanta-New Orleans portion of the Crescent at the drop of a hat, but makes great efforts to keep the portion north of that (through the very supportive state of North Carolina) running.
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There is definately this problem. When I lived down south I told people about Amtrak and they were either like "You can take the train? Isn't that so slow and gonna take forever?" or they make openly negative comments, even expletives from respectable people which surprised me.
 
Nathanael said:
To be more precise, Amtrak's view has been "if someone else pays for it, we will do it, but we're not adding that cost back to our balance sheet".

Obviously the "we don't believe in spending money on anything useful" states and localities in that area have not been willing to pay for the Sunset Limited restoration, nor have their representatives in Congress been willing to allocate federal money to it. Furthermore, the federal representatives from those areas have not exactly been reliable pro-Amtrak voters *before* the line was severed.

When you read the analysis of the route, you realize why it's so unattractive. There's no way to make the route faster than driving without spending a lot of money on signalling at least, and new track at worst; the Mobile-to-Flomaton-Pensacola routing is very undesirable, and between Flomaton and Talahassee is "dark territory". The train never ran on time from the time it was started to the time it was discontinued. Mobile station was demolished. None of the stations are ADA-compliant. Three-day-a-week trains are a bad deal anyway; Amtrak would really like to make the rest of the Sunset Limited, and the Cardinal, into daily trains if it could get UP and CSX (respectively) to agree to it. Worse, the area between Jacksonville and New Orleans area gets punched by storms regularly. The Sanford non-Auto-Train station was closed by hurricanes from before Katrina. Hurricane Isaac is about to hit the coast east of New Orleans again. If Amtrak spent its own money to rebuild stations, it might be doing so every few years. So you can see where Amtrak is coming from.

Most of Amtrak's long-distance routes have a lot of potential for improvement, and the states and localities involved are actively putting their own money in for improvements. There are track improvements particularly where they overlap "corridor" trains or commuter trains., and most of them do overlap "corridor" trains or commuter trains. In fact, almost all of them overlap corridor or commuter service for some distance at each end; the exceptions are the trains terminating in New Orleans. The Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, Crescent, and Silver Star additionally have corridor overlaps in the "middle", and the Silver Service will have more soon with SunRail. Meanwhile, there are station improvements where-ever the localities pay for them, which is most places, including some pretty obscure rural locations.

None of this, none of these encouraging improvements, are happening east of New Orleans and west of Jacksonville; no locally-funded station construction, no corridor service, no commuter service, no money. (Well, there is SunRail coming.) There's no visible likelihood of improvement. Arguably there are similar problems with the rest of the Sunset Limited and with the Cardinal, but they haven't been destroyed by storms, so the status quo rules.
Click to expand...
For the record, you're right that the routing is Mobile - Flomaton - Pensacola, but the station is in Atmore vs Flomaton, just in case anyone like me wants to be persnikity. I thought that the CSX upgrades to the line post Katrina would have made much of this line top notch and fast flying now.
 
VentureForth said:
For the record, you're right that the routing is Mobile - Flomaton - Pensacola, but the station is in Atmore vs Flomaton, just in case anyone like me wants to be persnikity. I thought that the CSX upgrades to the line post Katrina would have made much of this line top notch and fast flying now.
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I believe the line is still unsignaled for a considerable portion (George correct me if I am wrong), which would make it neither top notch nor fast flying.
 
VentureForth said:
I guess I can't imagine a major CSX artery unsignalled. They need to have it right for their own freight ops and the volumes they move.
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Pardon my ignorance, but is it really a major artery? I can't imagine that much freight moving between Floirda and Louisianna or Texas as much of the freight in the latter places (as far as I can see) is coming into or going out of the major ports, and Florida has ports of its own so doesn't need to train stuff to or from other Gulf ports.
 
should not discuss the prospects of service from New Orleans to Jacksonville FL without noting that there was a recent Gulf Coast Passenger Rail Summit held in Mobile, AL with representatives from multiple cities and communities along the coast, Amtrak, FRA. According to the NARP Hotline, over 100 people attended the one day conference. Local newspaper article on the conference.

What I got from the reports following the conference is that the local town and city leaders along the Gulf Coast recognize the need for better transportation options for their citizens and attracting visitors to the coast. The obstacles they face is a CSX line that needs considerable upgrades to get to acceptable trip times and state legislatures & a large percentage of the local population that would not readily support spending significant state funds to support passenger rail.

If the local communities get the funding to restore passenger service along the route, they are not going to accept a middle of the night service between Jacksonsville and New Orleans. They would want a daytime corridor train service. Which might extend to Orlando over the FEC. Which might provide connections to FEC and Amtrak LD train service at Jacksonville. Which might also connect to corridor service between Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile.

If a daytime corridor service were started after 10s, if not, 100s of millions in track upgrades between New Orleans and Jacksonville, then Amtrak could restore a Sunset Limited service over the route with much better trip times and lower operating costs.

Restoration of passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast is not going to happen any time soon, but I would not say never. High air fares with reduction of or total shutdown of commercial air service to the smaller cities along the route due to high oil prices would change the political situation for passenger rail considerably throughout much of the south - once the reality of the loss of commercial air service sinks in.
 
All I know, is that if there was a train that ran from New Orleans to Orlando, I would travel it a couple of times a year. While that is not enough of a reason for them to start the service up again, I can always dream.
 
My two cents: I am certainly a proponent of Amtrak and will be doing a one way trip with a friend in late October from Tucson-Chicago-Washington. But I take issue with statements ( with respect to the poster ) who can barely tolerate an auto trip of over two hours. This does not have to be a tedious experience. I will agree that heavy traffic and boring interstate highways can be a negative, but frankly, I like to drive. The trip that I recently completed is not for everybody, but I chalk it up as one of my better travel experiences. I left on May 28 from Pine, Arizona and arrived in Flagstaff on August 12. Itinerary was as follows: Arizona-Texas-Louisiana-Mississippi( Natchez Trace ) North Carolina - New Jersey -New York - Massachusetts ( visiting cousin on Martha's Vineyard ) Maine - New Brunswick - Nova Scotia - Newfoundland ( the reason for the trip, where I spent 10 days ) back to New York State where I attended two fabulous concerts at the Chautauqua Institution in western NY ) to Springfield, IL, Nauvoo IL across Iowa and Nebraska to Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, to a spiritual retreat in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. There were several ferry trips, but no trains. I did visit all three trolley museumsinMaine and Connecticut, and observed the eastbound VIA " Ocean " near Moncton, New Brunswick, and also the " Zephyr " when it made its station stop at Fort Morgan, Colorado, where I was staying in a motel that night. I was driving a great car, a Toyota 4Runner, and camped out in my tent 30 nights, the remainder in hotels or as a houseguest. Being in a retired status sooner than I expected, I had the time and incination to pull this off as a solo traveler. Obviously, such an itinerary by train would be impossible. Do I get lonely with all that driving? No, I am usually quite content, with CD's, National Public Radio, and Sirius Satellite radio.

By the way, having strayed way off topic, greatcats has now purchased a new home on the east end of Flagstaff. I am within earshot ( about a half mile ) from the BNSF mainline and Interstate 40. I like stopping by the Amtrak station to visit with Carol, the congenial afternoon agent. Somebody else on this forum lives in FLG - give me a holler or anyone else passing through. Eric
 
Yes, the stop between Mobile and Pensacola is at Atmore, but the junction where the train turns from the CSX (ex L&N)main from Montgomery to Mobile to New Orleans is at Flomaton which is a few miles to the east.

The speed limit post Katrina is no higer than it was pre Katrina as the ceiling is defined by signals and local speed constraints. In other words, it was already eitehr 79 or 59. As the CSX freight speed on many lines is 50 mph and it is permissible to run 49 mph on unsignaled track signalas give no speed advantage to freight. Signals do permit a hgiher train frequency.

Flomaton to Tallahassee is unsignaled and likely to remain that way. It does have a few CTC "islands" for sidings with power operated turnouts, but that is not sufficient to change the speed limit. So far as I know, the traffic is not that heavy on that line and never has been. After the "Family Lines" traffic did seem to increase somewhat. As part of this setup the bridge over Escambia Bay was replaced with a high level concrete structure and the jointed rail replaced with welded rail. However, the rail was relay, not new material. The bridge replacement was necessary regardless of traffic if it was intended to keep the line in service. I think this was the last to be replaced of the numerous wood bridges over various salt water inlests, river deltas and swamps along teh Gulf Coast east of New Orleans. Thsi was not a fast paced program. The first replacement was in the mid 1960's at Bay St. Louis Mississippi. However, thanks to hurricanes some of these bridges have been redone more than once.
 
WiCruiseDreamer said:
All I know, is that if there was a train that ran from New Orleans to Orlando, I would travel it a couple of times a year. While that is not enough of a reason for them to start the service up again, I can always dream.
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Agree with this 100%. Would love to revisit the MS Gulf Coast from either Palatka or Lake City, but I won't drive.
 
afigg said:
...

If a daytime corridor service were started after 10s, if not, 100s of millions in track upgrades between New Orleans and Jacksonville, then Amtrak could restore a Sunset Limited service over the route with much better trip times and lower operating costs.

Restoration of passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast is not going to happen any time soon, but I would not say never. High air fares with reduction of or total shutdown of commercial air service to the smaller cities along the route due to high oil prices would change the political situation for passenger rail considerably throughout much of the south - once the reality of the loss of commercial air service sinks in.
Click to expand...
I agree, and if not a corridor the whole way then both ends are pretty obvious corridor opportunities. Both Tallahassee-Jacksonville (-Orlando) and NOLA-Mobile should be pretty feasible. The part between Mobile and Pensacola maybe not so much, but a couple of corridor trains a day on each end should be enough to also bring a long distance train over the route back, and would also make an overnight train make sense.
 
Having discovered Amtrak only in 2004, and having missed out on many interesting routes that are no longer in use, I am at least pleased to have taken the Sunset Limited all the way from Los Angeles to Orlando, even though the train was almost 24 hours late into Orlando.

As a matter of interest, if Amtrak can just decide not to reinstate this train, can they abandon any route they choose?

Ed :cool:
 
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In practice, or legally?

To legally drop a route, Amtrak must give notice, have public hearings, etc, etc...

In practice, as we can see with the Sunset East, Katrina gave them excuse to "temporarily" suspend service, and have gotten away with "temporary" being 7 years and counting...
 
slimchipley said:
From a simple logistical standpoint, how many Floridians are willing to go to Washington DC and Chicago in order to get to the west coast?
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How many Floridians would be willing to take the train to the West Coast even f they got the best and most direct possible routing?

I don't think it is about people going to the west coast. It is more about serving relatively local journeys.
 
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