Your Experiences on Pre-Amtrak Trains?

I wasn't born yet on A-Day. I remember reading on this newsgroup some people discuss experiences on trains pre-Amtrak. Please feel free to share your experiences on this thread.

Warning: By posting here, you are revealing you're old enough to experience pre-Amtrak trains.

Growing up here, in New York, my first rail experience was my mother taking me on shopping trips from our home in Brooklyn, into Manhattan aboard the BMT subway, as far back as I can remember. I quickly learned the pleasure of the "railfan's window", looking out the front of the train. On weekends, when my father was off, we used the family car for all travel, so I never got exposure to 'real railroads'. The only exception was us putting my grandfather on the train to Florida a couple of winters, and getting my first glimpse of the original Pennsylvania Station. I recall the sights and sounds almost like it was yesterday....the stainless steel cars (must have been a SAL train?), the steam wafting up between the cars and the platform edge, the luxurious inside of his Pullman roomette,the sounds from the magnificent GG-1's blowers, and bell as it glided out....

That was in around 1955...

More subway riding thru the years, and occasional views of Long Island Rail Road trains passing when motoring on Long Island.

Then my first glimpse of Grand Central Terminal in the late '50's to meet my visiting cousin coming down from Worcester, Ma. What a magnificent terminal that was, When we saw him off, got a look inside his New Haven "American Flyer" coach, and was intrigued by it having a restroom and a water fountain ("bubbler", in New England parlance)... My cousin rode to Springfield, and connected with a NYC train to Worcester. When it was my turn to visit him, my family decided to send me (I was a few years younger) on a no-change Trailways of New England bus, from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, (where I now work),to avoid the transfer enroute. That was my first experience riding a long distance coach, and I became a bus fan...

Fast forward to 1966....I was going thru Tech School, at Chanute AFB, Rantoul, Il,..and my first weekend pass to Chicago was spent getting there on a Greyhound Scenicruiser, on a four and a half hour local schedule up US-45. I enjoyed it very much.

The next pass I got, my buddy insisted we take the train...So we board the Illinois Central 'Louisiane'....

The first thing I noticed as the train approached was the beautiful sound of its chime air horn....then the figure '8' pattern cast by its Mars headlight...then when climbing aboard, the long ago fragrance of the steam heating, I recalled from seeing my grandfather off....

I was sitting at the window seat, but facing my buddy sitting next to me, engrossed in our conversation....after a while he casually asked me to look out the window...

I was stunned to see we were rolling along already. Being used to riding subways, I never felt the throttle artist's imperceptible start of the train....

Soon we were rolling along parallel US-45 at 100 mph....the vehicles we were passing appeared to be going backwards. We arrived Central Station in Chicago in less than half the time the bus took...

After coming home from the service, I reverted to being a bus fan, and for a while, I had a girlfriend living in Philadelphia, whom I visited every weekend by bus.

I also had a friend who was a bus, rail, and airliner fan, who introduced me to the fascinating aspects of those modes...

We took several fan trips together...

I still expressed my preference for bus, and he said, he would have to show me what I was missing...

So he took me on "The Convincer"....

We flew to Chicago on a Northwest Orient B707, stopping in Detroit.

We then went to Union Station and boarded the combined Burlington Vista-Dome Afternoon Twin Cities Zephyr/Northern Pacific Vista-Dome North Coast Limited/Great Northern Great-Dome Empire Builder stretching out the length of Track 28. There must have been at least 7 domes on that fantastic consist.

We rode it to Minneapolis. Had dinner in the NP diner, and saw the various lounges and other cars on the train (the crew was kind to let a couple of fans view the Pullman areas as well).

We then rode a Jefferson bus down to Osceola, and caught the CZ back to Chicago, and flew home on a United Super DC-8-61....

Yes....I was convinced, and have been a railfan ever since...

When A-Day was approaching, I went on a marathon effort to ride some of the routes that would be losing service, some major, some obscure...

Like the Washington Buffalo Express via York, Williamsport

The Butte Special from Salt Lake City to Butte

The Wabash Cannonball from St. Louis to Detroit

The Lake Cities from Hoboken to Chicago

The CZ over the Western Pacific

I think I've rambled enough for now.....

I've been riding Passenger trains in the US since 1944 when I was born in Alpine, Tx on the SP "Sunset Route."

Since I've been on so many long gone and sadly missed trains, Ill just mention a few that stand out in my memory! ( which is fading fast!)

Steam still ruled the rails during my early days, and with troop trains and many Mail and Milk trains running, the rails were busy 24/7.

We took several "day trips" on locals ( SP ran 8 Passenger trains a day during that time)to El Paso.

My first LD Train ride ( which I barely remdmber) was in Jan of 1945 with my mom to visit my dad who was stationed in McCook,Neb training on B-29s before heading to the Pacific.

We caught the Sunset Ltd.in Alpine (Coach)to El Paso, changed,to a Santa Fe unnamed local to Albuqurque, changed to another local to Denver, spent the night at the Brown Hotel and the next day rode in Day Coach to McCook arriving at 400am with the temperature being -20!!

Later on the "crack trains" I rode include the Super Chief,El Capitan,the Broadway Ltd., the Southern Crescent( mostly in Slumber Coaches),the Texas Eagle,the Texas Special,the Texas Chief and the City of San Francisco.

Only a few for me: a short trip on the DLW "Lake Cities" [i think] from Tobyhanna, PA down the mountain to Scranton. Then a Penn Central trip from South Bend to New York. Multiple trips between Grand Central and Boston on the New Haven Railroad, usually in a parlor car. I grew up in Boston and Maine territory, but never once had the chance to ride one of their longer distance trains.

When I was 11, in 1967, my family moved from GA to DE. Mom, 2 sisters, 1 cat, 1 dog and I took the train from Augusta to Wilmington. I only have vague memories, but they have stuck with me and when I was in my 30's or 40's I must have heard about the CZ because I remember suggesting to my husband we take the train out to visit a friend of his near SLC. Unfortunately, we never had the time or money. (My first Amtrak LD trip, in 2011, included the CZ to Provo and I met up with this friend of my late husband while visiting my daughter).

My first ride in US trains was in the Sept 1965 first on NH Boston to NY Penn on the Senator and then on PRR from NY to Washington on the Congressional. The return to Boston was on a through run on the Senator.

Things were really broken on both trains with A/C barely working and the toilets were a mess. The recline did not work on some of the seats. We were dismayed and surprised that the A/C Express trains back in India, which were supposedly modeled after American trains worked so much better!

Palmetto said:

Only a few for me: a short trip on the DLW "Lake Cities" [i think] from Tobyhanna, PA down the mountain to Scranton.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cities_(train)

I grew up in Wilkes Barre, really close to Scranton. I didn't really get into Amtrak until I went to the University of Illinois because Wilkes Barre/Scranton had no Amtrak presence for me growing up.

I was 22 in 1971 when Amtrak started. My Dad worked for the Peoria and Eastern division of the Big Four Railroad which was part of the New York Central System. We lived in Joliet and Peoria, Il until 1961 and traveled by train frequrently. There was no question about the mode of travel - it was always by train. The choice was which railroad and which train. My first trip was on Rock Island's Rocky Mountain Rocket from Joliet to Council Bluffs, IA when I was less than a month old. My maternal Grandmother lived in Council Bluffs so we were back and forth between Peoria and Council Bluffs quite often either on the Burlington through Galesburg or Rock Island through Bureau Jct. In the 1960s in anticipation of train offs and start of Amtrak, I rode lots of trains. After Amtrak started, I rode lots of trains. Its really the best way to travel.

jis said:

My first ride in US trains was in the Sept 1965 first on NH Boston to NY Penn on the Senator and then on PRR from NY to Washington on the Congressional. The return to Boston was on a through run on the Senator.

Things were really broken on both trains with A/C barely working and the toilets were a mess. The recline did not work on some of the seats. We were dismayed and surprised that the A/C Express trains back in India, which were supposedly modeled after American trains worked so much better!

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The last 5 or 6 years of the Penn Central and pre Central passenger trains of the Pennsylvania, New York Central and New Haven were really bad. I rode that Penn Texas west out of Pittsburgh one night in late March or early April. The coach car was so cold that ice formed on the inside of the window and you could see you breath. There was still a full Dining Car and that coffee in the morning sure tasted good. They were definitely trying to chase off passengers.

As a follow up to jphjaxfl's post about running off passengers so they could axe passenger trains, I rode on many a Espee train through West Texas that had cars so old that Pancho Villa had used them during the Mexican Revolution ( just a slight exaggaration), bathrooms that were locked/"out of order",while others were so filthy you thought you were in a fourth world country!

Of course there was No heat when it cold and open windows were the AC and in addition the seat backs all seemed to be broken.

The final straw was what they did to the once proud Sunset Ltd.with the infamous Vending Machine Car and taking the Sleepers off till the Government forced them to return them.

As for Reservations, lots of trains that ran empty were marked "Sold Out" and agents actually told potential customers to try Greyhound or even to Fly!!!And the OTPs were atrocious with the Sunset often running up to 24 Hours late!

Unhappy days indeed on the Railroads, except for the few good ones that actually tried to run good passenger trains like Santa Fe and Southern!

Slight correction about the return of the sleeping cars. The ICC couldn't force them to return dining and sleeping car service to the Sunset, but SP wanted to reduce the train frequency to 3 days a week. The ICC and SP cut a deal that the ICC allowed the frequency reduction in return for returning sleeping and dining cars to the train. That was in 1970.

Another one of those "quality of service" deals the ICC made, was with the Norfolk and Western....in exchange for permission to cut a lot of service, the Railway. seriously upgraded the remaining train on their Norfolk-Cincinnati mainline, the Pocahontas. The ran a classy operation, with sleeper's, diner, lounge, and for the first time, a dome coach (acquired from their recently merged Wabash). They presented each passenger with a very nice amenities kit, with Welcome letter, timetable, route guide, luggage tags, stationery, and other goodies...

I wonder if this counts:

I was born about 14 months after A-day, but in the early 1980s a restored Pocahontas consist with a J locomotive made a promotional run and my 5th grade class went for a joy ride between Wakefield (boarded at the grade crossing at W. Main St. and Railroad Ave) and Petersburg (disembarked at the old Walnut Mall on S. Crater Rd, not the PTB station).

railiner said:

They presented each passenger with a very nice amenities kit, with Welcome letter, timetable, route guide, luggage tags, stationery, and other goodies...

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Once upon a time Amtrak used to do that. I have one or two of those folders of yore sitting in my Amtrak memorabilia collection. Picked them up on Broadway Limited and Empire Builder.

jis said:

My first ride in US trains was in the Sept 1965 first on NH Boston to NY Penn on the Senator and then on PRR from NY to Washington on the Congressional. The return to Boston was on a through run on the Senator.

Things were really broken on both trains with A/C barely working and the toilets were a mess. The recline did not work on some of the seats. We were dismayed and surprised that the A/C Express trains back in India, which were supposedly modeled after American trains worked so much better!

Click to expand...

I rode mainly from 66-68. The parlor cars were in pretty good shape, and I can't relate to your experience. However, one Christmas eve, I took the Federal up to Boston in coach in a major snow storm. They disconnected the GG1 at New Haven, the car got cold. After about an hour and a half, they attached an FL-9, and we got the heat back. Arrived Boston three hours late.

While the Penn Central was pretty much "guilty as charged", in generally poor service, and deteriorated equipment, poor track, etc....

There was a notable exception when it came to The Broadway Limited....that train still showed some semblance of proprietary pride, and received the best of what equipment was available, and good service from its crews. The meals served in its twin-unit diner, were still excellent. And it was "given the railroad" by the train dispatcher's....

A bit later, the Metroliner's became the prime focus of attention, until A-Day.

Bob Dylan said:

Unhappy days indeed on the Railroads, except for the few good ones that actually tried to run good passenger trains like Santa Fe and Southern!

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.

Another railroad that wrestled with keeping their own service, or throwing in the towel and joining Amtrak, was the Seaboard Coast Line....

Its "Silver" and "Champion" trains were very nice to the end, and especially its "Champaign Train", the seasonal Florida Special, with its fabulous Recreation Car, and dome sleeper (Richmond-Miami)..

And the Illinois Central. led by VP-Passenger Traffic, Paul Reistrup, (later Amtrak's second president), made a valiant effort to upgrade its remaining trains.

Honorable mention should also be extended to the UP, BN, D&RGW, MILW, KCS, .C&O/B&O, D&H, and GTW.......They all were pretty much "pro-passenger" until the end...

Palmetto said:

jis said:

My first ride in US trains was in the Sept 1965 first on NH Boston to NY Penn on the Senator and then on PRR from NY to Washington on the Congressional. The return to Boston was on a through run on the Senator.

Things were really broken on both trains with A/C barely working and the toilets were a mess. The recline did not work on some of the seats. We were dismayed and surprised that the A/C Express trains back in India, which were supposedly modeled after American trains worked so much better!

Click to expand...

I rode mainly from 66-68. The parlor cars were in pretty good shape, and I can't relate to your experience. However, one Christmas eve, I took the Federal up to Boston in coach in a major snow storm. They disconnected the GG1 at New Haven, the car got cold. After about an hour and a half, they attached an FL-9, and we got the heat back. Arrived Boston three hours late.

Click to expand...

I can't relate to any Parlor Car experience since we were at that time not in a financial position to travel by one. We were on a very tight budget trying to cover as much of the US northeast as we could in the limited time we had. For our trip to Niagara Falls from Boston rail came out to be too expensive and inconvenient, timetable-wise. So we took Greyhound instead. And the trip on the Super Scenicruisers was actually quite pleasant.

Loved those parlor cars back then...some operated by The Pullman Company, others by individual railroads. The nice thing about them was the single seat on each side of the aisle, with a drop down, wall mounted table. The seats themselves were usually Heywood-Wakefield "Sleepy Hollow", reclining, rotating seats that were supremely comfortable...some had adjustable wings on the headrest, as well.

The service provided by the attendant was great....if you wanted a drink, or anything, all you had to do was push a little button ....

And on the New Haven, your shoes were shined as you neared either end of the trip, if you wanted such. My favorite was the Merchants Limited, and it carried 3 parlor cars and a dining car. Day roomettes and drawing rooms [ good for 3] were also available. Every seat was a surcharge of $2.67 over the coach fare. The train left both Boston and Grand Central at 5:00 PM, and arrived at both at 9:15 PM. Great service.

Wow, a lot of posts here! I'm wondering if the average age of an Amtrak Unlimited poster is well over 50. Maybe it's because trains are nowhere near as popular in the 80's/90's as it was back then (with some exceptions like Acela and California trains among others) and with planes being more popular not many people these days would even think about going from Philly to Chicago or Philly to Florida on a train.

The Merchants Limited, was the top train on the New Haven...IIRC, at one time it carried nothing but parlors....it ran between Grand Central Terminal and Boston.

My favorite train on the PRR side of the corridor,, were the all-new in 1952, Congressional Limited's. Their stainless steel Budd equipment contrasted with the usual Tuscan colored PRR trains.

The Afternoon Congressional made the New York to Washington trip in 3:35, pulled by a GG-1.

It carried unique day coaches, with smoking lounges at one end, it carried twin-unit dining cars, multiple parlor cars, each with a drawing room, tavern lounge cars, observation lounge cars, 7 room conference cars, and public telephone booths.

Philly Amtrak Fan said:

Wow, a lot of posts here! I'm wondering if the average age of an Amtrak Unlimited poster is well over 50. Maybe it's because trains are nowhere near as popular in the 80's/90's as it was back then (with some exceptions like Acela and California trains among others) and with planes being more popular not many people these days would even think about going from Philly to Chicago or Philly to Florida on a train.

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To answer your question....have you taken any fantrips lately? Say, the Amtrak Autumn Express, for example?

Just look at the demographics....

I have been a member of many types of transportation historical societies, and I'm sorry to say, the membership in most of these, despite attempts to attract new blood into the organization has been dwindling....

With some exceptions, of course....most younger people today just are not interested in old trains, old planes, old cars,old ships....

they are much more into video and computer activities....

Back in January 1970, my family moved from Whitefish MT to northern Illinois. Since they thought passenger rail wouldn't be around for much longer, my parents decided to take the Empire Builder. Since there was eight of us (plus one cat), we had several adjoining rooms. I was six at the time, so many of the details have faded. I do remember sitting in the dome car at night and watching the lights of the towns go by.

Growing up in Philly, (and in the western suburbs), nearly all of my pre-Amtrak rail experiences involved the PRR or Penn Central. When I was in High School and had friends in the northern suburbs, I would ride the Reading occasionally.

Starting at about age 8 (circa 1961), I would ride the Paoli Local from Bryn Mawr to Merion to go to Hebrew School. When I was 9 or 10, my parents once dropped me off at 30th St. and I rode a local train to visit my grandparents on Baltimore. I think it stopped in Wilmington, Newark, Elkton, Perryville, Havre De Grace and Aberdeen. My grandparents picked me up at the station. On another trip, my parents dropped me off at Baltimore and I remember buying breakfast in the dining car, getting off at 30th St. going upstairs and taking the Paoli Local home, where I hung out with a friend of my mother's until my parents arrived later in the day the fetch me. After about age 11, I was allowed to take the Paoli Local all the way downtown to go go shopping. I would also ride the "P&W and subway," aka the Norristown High Speed Line and Market-Frankford elevated-subway. The summers I was 8, 9 and 10, I went to a camp in western Massachusetts and rode on the "camp train" from Grand Central to Great Barrington. This was a New Haven charter that all the camps used, and it made a whole bunch of stops north of Danbury to let kids out for various camps. This trip also involved a PRR trip with the family up to New York, and I may have actually passed through the old Pennsylvania Station, but I have no memories of that. I do have memories of the old PRR red passenger cars with non-reclining seats upholstered in some kind of fake velvet, no A/C and ceiling fans overhead. The last time I rode one of those old cars was on an Amtrak train in the summer of 1972, going from New York to Philly. It was painted Penn Central green, we were going pretty fast, and that was a bit of a thrill ride, as I don't think the car was built to go that fast. It was pretty noisy, too.

In 1968, I went to Philmont with the Scouts, and though the organizers avoided using the PRR train from Philly to Chicago, based on bitter experience, we rode the Denver Zephyr from Chicago to Denver, and were then bussed down to New Mexico. Even though they put our charter group in older cars, and fed us lower-quality food in a special dining car, I could tell that the CB&Q ran nicer trains than the PRR. On the way home, I got tired of the dining car chow, so I went to the "Chuckwagon" grill car under one of the domes and ordered a $5 personal pizza. I'll leave it to the reader to find an inflation calculator and see what $5 in 1968 is worth today. Then I sat up in the dark dome and watched signals ahead go from gree to red as we rolled through Nebraska at night.

During the years 1968-1971, I did a lot of joyriding along the NEC. Never made it to DC, but I would go to NY on spring break with friends or down to Baltimore to visit family. Sometimes I just rode to Trenton or Wilmington after school. You could ride the regional trains with a SEPTA commuter ticket, so it was pretty cheap, and I got to see a lot of different kinds of equipment. My favorite were the New Haven cars run on the through trains to Boston. They seemed like they were in better shape than the PRR stuff, though sometimes the regional NY-Washington trains were equipped with long distance equipment (the equivalent of Amfleet II's). I also rode the Keystone "tubular trains" as well as some streamlined stainless steel equipment with 1949 dates on the builder's plate that seemed to have been refurbished in the 60s in the style of the SEPTA Silverliners. I guess back then the PRR/Penn Central had a lot of surplus rolling stock as they were abandoning long distance trains on a regular basis. Naturally, when they introduced the Metroliner, I rode one of them as soon as I could find some free time. On one of my joyrides to Wilmington, the engineer let me come into the cab and look over his shoulder and see the speedometer hit 110. In all, I found the service on the NEC to be OK, at least as far as reliability was concerned. It certainly wasn't as fast or frequent as it is now. My mother would ride down to see her parents and come back complaining about how the train stopped in the middle of nowhere in Maryland for a half hour or so. One thing I regret not having done was fork over the extra $$ for the parlor car. I think for a NY-Philly trip it was a $1.50 upcharge on a $4.50 ticket. Now we meekley pay a $100 upcharge on a $150 Acela ticket to ride first class, but from what I've heard, the old-time parlor car service was better. I guess $1.50 was a lot of money in 1968, except when I was hungry on the Denver Zephyr, hungry enough to spend $5 for a pizza.