Revived Floridian

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Seaboard92

Engineer
Joined
Dec 31, 2014
Messages
4,698
Location
South Carolina
As we all know one of the largest gaps in the system is the Midwest-Florida gap. And one of the largest cities without service is Nashville, TN. And up until 1979 we had service between Chicago-Bloomington-Lousiville-Nashville-Birmingham-Montgomery-Cordele-Jacksonville-South Florida. Bad time keeping due to deteriorating track conditions and equipment failures are part of the reasons the route was cut during the Carter cuts. Now the track is being maintained better in the Midwest, and the equipment is standardized, even though we lack sufficient equipment.

Market

Currently there are 20 planes scheduled to fly from Chicago to Orlando today, 12 from Chicago-Miami, 21 Nashville-Chicago, 11 Nashville-Atlanta, 44 Atlanta-Chicago, 26 Atlanta-Orlando, and 55 Atlanta-Miami. Greyhound operates no buses direct from Chicago-Orlando or Miami. The rail market goes via the Capitol Limited and Silver Meteor two nights on the train. The strength of the airline market tells me that this is a strong market end to end for those who don't like to fly, or travel via Washington. And an even stronger market with the intermediate cities along the route.

Routes

1. Chicago-Danville-Terree Haute-Evansville-Hopkinsville-Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta-Cordele-Waycross-Jacksonville-South Florida

Would bring service to western Indiana which hasn't seen service since the train has been cut. Lets put our stops at Momence, IL (Kankakee), Danville, IL, Terree Haute, IN, Vincennes, IN, Evansville, IN, Madisonville, KY, Hopkinsville, KY, Nashville, TN, Murfreesboro, TN, Chattanooga, TN, Dalton, GA, Marietta, GA, Atlanta, GA, Manchester, GA, Cordelle, GA, Waycross, GA, Jacksonville, FL, then the Silver Meteor stations. This route would have a population of about 18,684,588 people in the metro area of each station for just the new stations (Including Chicago, and Atlanta for a new route). When added to Florida the number should push another seven million people alongside this route. That's a large amount of people. And cities such as Nashville, and Atlanta benefit from this. Two major cities that are very similar on one route. If we kept to a daylight schedule south of Atlanta so leaving at six am roughly. Lets budget six hours for the train to make it from JAX-ATL as the Dixie Flagler took six hours for it's run. I really hope it could make the run faster. It would leave JAX at noon and get to Miami around nine or ten at night, which isn't bad, and would be great for the intrastate Florida market. North of Atlanta lets budget six hours for the train to arrive in Nashville. So the southbound would leave around midnight, and the northbound around six am. Roughly arriving into Chicago northbound at around two PM which is a close connection. Departing Southbound around Two PM as well. If a person pushed the departure back to accommodate Western Trains one would put Nashville after midnight, and could lose a strong intermediate market. But one could gain a thru market that could offset that loss.

Or if one would rather service Atlanta-Nashville-Chicago intermediate markets. One could have the Northbound take the Silver Star's time slot north from Miami, and run thru GA in the middle of the night. To service all the cities during the day. And leave Chicago at Eight AM to put the Atlanta-Jacksonville segment in the night to focus on intermediate. Of course the lines would need to be upgraded for passenger service.

2. Chicago-Indy-Louisville-Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta-JAX-Silver Meteor

I will work on this when it's not 2 AM.

3. Chicago-either of the above options-Birmingham-Montgomery-JAX

I will work on that again when it's not 2 AM.

I'm thinking this train should have fairly strong intermediate ridership, as well as fairly strong End Point (Chicago-Florida) traffic. And for a consist I would recommend something similar to the Silver Meteor. Three sleepers, a diner, a lounge, and four to five coaches. With the Viewliner II's coming on line soon, and the Horizons getting freed from corridor service. I could see the equipment being available sometime in the near future.

What do you guys think about this. I'll finish the other routes sometime in the morning.
 
To help you with the Louisville route, here's the Kentucky Cardinal from 2000 (timetables.org). It's relatively more modern than any schedules from the 70's.

http://www.timetables.org/full.php?group=20001029n&item=0031

If you consider only CHI-IND-Louisville, I'd probably want the trains to arrive/leave in IND closer to the Cardinal times today but then the trains would arrive/leave Louisville in the middle of the night or if you want to arrive in Louisville before midnight then the train leaves CHI too early to receive passengers from the West Coast. If Iowa Pacific is successful in expanding Hoosier State train frequency then you can live with middle of the night in IND. Obviously someone is going to get stuck with the "graveyard shift".

CHI-IND (2015 Cardinal): 5 hr, 5 min (time zone changes included)

IND-Louisville (2000 Kentucky Cardinal): 5 hr, 40 min (southbound)

Louisville-Nashville: ? (Takes Greyhound 4 hrs so maybe 5-6?)

Nashville-ATL (Seaboard's estimate): 6 hrs

ATL-Jacksonville (Seaboard's estimate): 6 hrs

JAX-ORL (2015 Silver Meteor): 3 hr, 10 min

ORL-MIA (2015 Silver Meteor): 5 hr, 40 min

Not counting maintenance along the route, you're looking around 38 hrs so maybe 40 for the entire route. Considering the time zone, that would essentially be 41 heading southeast and 39 heading northwest. From CHI-ATL, you are looking at 23 hours (24 south, 22 north with the time zone change). This handicaps things because the train would have to leave CHI and arrive in ATL at the exact same time. So leaving ATL at either midnight or 6am requires the train to leave CHI at the same time. If you leave ATL at noon (Nashville at 6am), you don't get to MIA until after midnight.

Let's try:
CHI 10pm CT, IND 3am (sorry), Lousiville 10am ET, Nashville 3pm CT, ATL 10pm ET, JAX 4am (sorry), ORL 7am, MIA 1pm

MIA 6pm, ORL midnight, JAX 3am (sorry), ATL 9am ET, Nashville 2pm CT, Louisville 9pm ET, IND 3am (sorry), CHI 7am CT

IND and JAX get screwed both ways but both cities do have existing trains and I don't feel introducing trains in Louisville or Nashville at 3am is a good idea. ATL is protected because it would be on roughly the same schedule as CHI.
 
End point ridership isn't going to be strong at all, it will take longer and be more expensive than flying which means you're serving an incredibly niche market. The majority of your passengers will be traveling less than 400 miles based on other LD trains.

The direct marginal cost of this train will be approximately $52.5 million per year. This does not include the hundreds of millions needed for capital expansion on the routes, station construction, or equipment purchases. You will likely be running a $10+ million deficit on direct costs and $40 million fully allocated.
 
If (if if if if if) this ever proved to be doable (lots of equipment, lots of Amtrak funding for LD train operating losses), I think I would prefer the two-night schedule that Philly Amtrak Fan lays out. Leaving CHI in the morning and arriving CHI in the evening will basically eliminate any connecting traffic which I hardly think is advisable for the first/only train on most of this route. And it provides pretty good times at Atlanta, Louisville, and Nashville (and the stops in between) in both directions.
 
If (if if if if if) this ever proved to be doable (lots of equipment, lots of Amtrak funding for LD train operating losses), I think I would prefer the two-night schedule that Philly Amtrak Fan lays out. Leaving CHI in the morning and arriving CHI in the evening will basically eliminate any connecting traffic which I hardly think is advisable for the first/only train on most of this route. And it provides pretty good times at Atlanta, Louisville, and Nashville (and the stops in between) in both directions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've just witnessed history here. Someone actually thought one of my hair brained ideas wasn't hair brained! :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Haha, don't overlook the many ifs in that quote. But, yes, I think the two night/one day schedule is preferable to the two day/one night schedule.
 
I think that one option would be to operate the train through Cincinatti instead of Louisville, and then go through Alabama ( specifically Montgomery ) and then through to Tallahassee, then Jacksonville. I suggest this as the route Louisville -- Nashville -- Atlanta is busy with freight trains, and the section Nashville -- Atlanta has to go around the mountains of Chattanooga, not through them.
 
This has been mentioned in the past by George Harris who has personal experience ith operations on the Louisville - Nashville - Atlanta route. There is a blow by blow description somewhere in this forum about why he did not believe any passenger train will operate on that route again because of congestion and too many slow segments.
 
I think that one option would be to operate the train through Cincinatti instead of Louisville, and then go through Alabama ( specifically Montgomery ) and then through to Tallahassee, then Jacksonville. I suggest this as the route Louisville -- Nashville -- Atlanta is busy with freight trains, and the section Nashville -- Atlanta has to go around the mountains of Chattanooga, not through them.
All Aboard Ohio suggested Detroit-Florida instead of Chicago-Florida.

http://freepdfhosting.com/38886f65ec.pdf

Their schedules have daytime hours between MIA and ATL (8:00am-9:20pm north and 7:25am-9:00pm south).

If you go by the Cincinnati times (leave 8:20pm for Florida, arrive 8:30am from Florida) then (using Cardinal times) it would have to leave Chicago around 10:30am and arrive in Chicago after 5pm. That would prevent transfers to/from the west.

So the updated times would be CHI 10:30am to MIA 9:00pm and MIA 8:00am to CHI 5:00pm. It would be roughly a savings of 4 hours each but they are suggesting four hours from Orlando Airport (Orlando Airport?) to Miami. So if you assume 6 hours from ORL to MIA then you save 2 hrs each way.

Ironically I think this would be harder to schedule. If you "save two hours" between ORL and CHI then using my schedules you'd have to leave CHI at midnight for a 7am arrival in ORL (might be OK) and either you leave ORL after midnight going north or you arrive in CHI around 5am. Those two extra hours actually made the schedule work better!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This has been mentioned in the past by George Harris who has personal experience ith operations on the Louisville - Nashville - Atlanta route. There is a blow by blow description somewhere in this forum about why he did not believe any passenger train will operate on that route again because of congestion and too many slow segments.
Do you recall if the problems, as he saw them, were with the entire Louisville-Nashville-Atlanta route, or just the Nashville-Atlanta segment? I ask because I seem to recall that in the Kentucky Cardinal days that some thought (perhaps including test runs?) was given to extending that train from Louisville to Nashville.
 
I know from Chat-Atlanta. And Atlanta-JAX there are two methods of running south. One can do an all CSX, or an all NS routing. I believe the CSX Routing from Chat-Atlanta is pretty congested. As is the Nashville-Chat route. Unfortunately for Nashville that's the only route southeast.
 
I seem to recall that most of ths discussion about slow speed and congestion centered around Nashville to Atlanta,

Without giving my possibly distorted reading, let me list the three important threads on this subject in chronological order. They contain information that is hard to come by in both quantity and quality on this subject matter. Anyone discussing Chicago - Florida service would be well advised to read the three threads in its entirety IMHO, and much rehashing can then be avoided, so that we can concentrate on new ideas.

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/24943-travel-to-florida/

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/25585-chicago-to-florida/

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/61517-how-viable-would-an-amtrak-line-be-from-chicago-florida/

Pay special attention to the postings from George Harris and Bill Haithcoate - the all time greatest historical timetable specialist that AU has ever seen.
 
For the purposes of Florida, I think travel to other southern cities would be more useful than to CHI. If you bring back the SL from ORL to NOL it gives you many options. This gives you all the way to LAX directly, includes HOU, SAS, and Tucson, then any northern California city or SEA/PDX could use the Coast Starlight. It would seem like a waste to go all the way north to CHI and then south to LAX from Florida. If the ORL-NOL route is back, the CONO is another option to CHI as well.

I think CHI-Louisville-Nashville would be a great goal if the states chip in. The old Kentucky Cardinal had decent times from CHI to Louisville but IND is stuck in the middle of the night both ways so IND to Louisville would be undesirable. If you only do CHI-Nashville you might be able to go day train without sleeper if customers would be willing to go 17 hrs in the day. You could try to do Nashville to Atlanta with GA-TN support but you're adding traffic to Atlanta.
 
Nashville is tricky.

Atlanta has intercity passenger rail service now and it's not unrealistic to imagine it being improved and expanded in the coming years (maybe not soon, but within some planning horizon) - more service on the current Crescent route, especially toward NC and the NEC, some sort of largely-GA service like CA and IL sponsor, etc.

Louisville has no service but in a scenario where the Midwest regional rail projects start to fall in line, adding service between Indianapolis and Louisville makes a lot of sense - and perhaps Cincinnati-Louisville farther down the line as well.

But Nashville - other than fantasy LD expansion scenarios, it's hard to see how service is restored to it. None of the corridors to nearby major cities (Atlanta/Chattanooga, Birmingham, Louisville, Memphis, etc) seem likely to host regional/corridor service anytime soon. Maybe after the Midwest system reaches Louisville and after some sort of Atlanta-based system is begun, but even then?
 
End point ridership isn't going to be strong at all,
Sure, of course.
it will take longer and be more expensive than flying which means you're serving an incredibly niche market.
Does not follow.
The majority of your passengers will be traveling less than 400 miles based on other LD trains.
Sure, of course. That's the whole point of such a train, to serve the intermediate cities.
There are a lot of choices of possible intermediate cities. I presented a different one in the "fiscally constrained system plan" thread.

The direct marginal cost of this train will be approximately $52.5 million per year. This does not include the hundreds of millions needed for capital expansion on the routes, station construction, or equipment purchases.
Sure, of course.
You will likely be running a $10+ million deficit on direct costs
That's an ass-pull number on your part, of course, and it's wrong. Every single train east of the Mississippi has smaller direct-cost deficits than that, even the Crescent, so you're making that up.
Care to justify it based on a gravity model of ridership? Because I say if you pick the right cities and go fast enough, you can get breakeven. If you can actually manage on-time running, you are quite likely to have a profit on direct costs.

Capital costs large; direct operating costs covered by revenues.

and $40 million fully allocated.
Which we all know means nothing whatsoever. The overhead is just coming off of other trains and making their financials look better, so yay, great.
Now, to get back to realistic discussions here, the core city on this route is Atlanta. This is totally impossible until a much better Atlanta station with much more capacity is built.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think that one option would be to operate the train through Cincinatti instead of Louisville, and then go through Alabama ( specifically Montgomery ) and then through to Tallahassee, then Jacksonville. I suggest this as the route Louisville -- Nashville -- Atlanta is busy with freight trains, and the section Nashville -- Atlanta has to go around the mountains of Chattanooga, not through them.
All Aboard Ohio suggested Detroit-Florida instead of Chicago-Florida.

http://freepdfhosting.com/38886f65ec.pdf
This is a smart choice for the reasons I laid out in the other thread. The high expected operating subsidies raise questions about the ridership model which they used.
Big quote from George Harris which lays out the *major* problem on all of these routes: whatever you pick it needs major upgrades to speed.

There needs to be a strong reality check on run time. ALL of these routes are cross-grain to the southern end of the Appalachians. As a result they are curvey and slow.

The best practical pre-Amtrak run times for a few of these segments, given in no particular order, were:

(I say pre Amtrak because since that time superelevation and with it speed limits have been reduced on many curves and the push to do all practical to make schedule is no more. Current practical scehdule times will be longer by varying amounts from 15 minutes to over an hour.)

Chicago-Memphis: 10 hours

Memphis-Birmingham: 6 hours

Birmingham-Atlanta: 4hours

Atlanta-Macon: 2 hours

Macon-Jacksonville: 7 hours (much of this is dark)

I am not going to try to guess Chicago to Louisville or Cincinatti

Cincinatti-Atlanta:

via CSX (ex L&N): 14 hours

via NS (ex Southern): 14 hours - this may still be practical due to the major rebuilds on the "rathole" in the 1960's

Louisville-Nashville: 3.5 hours

Nashville-Birmingham: 4 hours

Nashville-Atlanta: 6 hours - be surprised if this could be done in much under 8 today

Atlanta-Jacksonville (via CSX): 8 hours - maybe 9.

Chcago-Nashville: 9 hours

In its best days the Georgian made Chicago to Atlanta in 15 hours. In it's last good days it was more like 16 to 17 hours.
Cincinatti-Atlanta via NS looks to have been massively rebuilt and I would love to know what the runtime would be *today* because it's not gonna be anywhere near 14 hours any more.

Cincinnati all the way south to Atlanta is in excellent shape. No issue with speeds on that line.
But on the other hand:

Politically, and that is the key, no route through Tennessee will be approved by "voters" support unless it goes through NASHVILLE. End of discussion.
So the thread ended with this:

Of course within Chicago to Florida might be Chicago to Atlanta. At one time a very fine train known as the Georgian ran in addition to Florida. George Harris has already mentioned itt.

Northbound it left Atlanta at 6 pm EST then Chicago next morning at 8.25 am CST Stops Chattanooga,Nashville Evansville,split to St Louis..

Southbound it left Chicago 4 pm CST arrive Atlanta 8,35 an EST.

It had three coaches, a diner, a tavern lounge and three sleepers from Chicago to Atlanta. It also had a through coach and sleeper from St Lous to Atlanta. And a diner from StLouis to Evansville and a sleeper which went northbound only from Nashville to Chicago

It was widely advertised as a business person's train because of it's overnight schedule. Today it would provide a much needed connection between the southeast and west coast trains.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm not going to get into the deep details above, but there is good reason to believe that a Floridian would have a larger deficit than other Eastern trains:
(1) Runtime. The longest schedules in the East are the Star (about 31 hours) and the Cardinal (about 27 hours). This train would have a runtime closer to the SW Chief or Coast Starlight than any of the major eastern trains.

(2) The train does not touch the NEC. This isn't the end of the world, but it does mean that the train is devoid of a massive traffic-generating market. I know the Midwest would be a decent generator as well, but I don't see it being on par with the NEC.

(3) I'm not sure what runtimes are even practical on the middle sections. Those estimates above might be right or might not, but you're adding a lot of once-a-day cities to the route.

Basically I'm thinking that incremental direct costs would end up being on par with the Coast Starlight. You'd trade out the PPC for a few more operational hours (and probably a few more stations only serving the one train) but that's about where you probably are. The Starlight posts a rather big direct loss in spite of impressive ridership; you'd probably need...400k or so riders to get the train to not post a massive deficit, and that's probably a lowball estimate if a lot of the traffic tends to be short-haul and you don't get a ton of intrastate traffic in FL or CHI-IND-Louisville traffic to work with (a la the Star).
 
I frequently traveled on the South Wind prior to Amtrak starting and on the South Wind and Floridian from 1971 to my last trip in November, 1978. The time keeping was a fairly good until 1969 when the former PRR/then Penn Central tracks between Indianapolis and Louisville started to deteriorate resulting in tardy trains. According to notes I made, the crowds were fairly good too until the fall of 1969 when Penn Central cut back their portion of the through train to a Chicago to Louisville Coaches only with a snack bar. L&N/SCL continued to run though Sleepers, Diner-Lounge and Coaches from Louisville to Miami on the every other day train. The City of Miami continued to run as an every other day train with a full compliment of equipment from Chicago to Florida until Amtrak started. Amtrak kept the South Wind as a daily train from Chicago to Florida but by that time the entire Penn Central line from Chicago to Louisville had deteriorated. At some points between Indianapolis to Louisville had slow orders of 10 MPH which was the same when the Kentucky Cardinal operated. In 1975 Amtrak was forced to try alternative routes including Chicago-Evansville-Nashville and they finally settled on the L&N's Monon line from Chicago to Louisville. The timekeeping was much more reliable, but very slow. I remember riding the train when it was still on the Penn Central where it arrived in Chicago 12 hours late post midnight and arriving passengers were saying "never again" thus passengers dwindled. As George Harris stated in a previous post, rail lines would need to be updated to compete with automobile travel time. The timekeeping would need to be reliable. A huge marketing effort would be needed. I don't see anyone investing that kind of money in a long distance route in the 21st century.
 
Basically my thoughts on this are that it would require multibillions in investment to get it up to a speed which is reasonable. Not worth doing unless it can be updated to a reasonable speed.

The way this happens is if Kentucky and Tennessee decide that they want service from the center of their states to the outside world -- they're going to want to go to Chicago and they're going to want to go to Atlanta and they're going to want to go to Ohio and they're going to want to go to Florida. Then they might make a big push to upgrade the tracks, at which point it would be sane to run a train (overnight through Ohio/Indiana, daytime through Kentucky/Tennessee, overnight thorough Georgia....)
 
I must make note of a couple of corrections on items above.

First, the Floridian, did not run through Cordele, Ga. It ran south of Birmingham to Montgomery, then on what is now known as the Bow Line, a train order line that went south through Dothan, Thomasville and on to Waycross.

Second, the Floridian was bad on time keeping, but after the move to the Monon, it was no longer track conditions that caused bad time keeping, it was the L&N itself. The Monon was a 70mph railroad and the L&N was a 79 mph railroad. But, the train was repeatedly held for freight movements, even over the objections of the L&N NRPC office, Bill Vaught.

The route that is rarely mentioned as a GREAT Chicago to Florida route is putting together the City of New Orleans, Crescent and Florida Service routes.

The train would use the CONO route to Memphis, the BN(ex Frisco) to Birmingham, then the Crescent route to Atlanta, then the NS line through Macon to Jacksonville.

Yes, this would bypass Louisville and Nashville (and they really need service), but would be a fast line the entire distance, without expensive trackwork.

Problems? Backup move in Birmingham, Atlanta and Jacksonville (until Amtrak moves back to Jacksonville Terminal Station. Probably, the biggest problem with this or any other route is the station in Atlanta. NS has already said NO to any service changes unless Amtrak has a new off the mainlne station.

There are a couple of different routes that can be taken but this would be the one which is most likely to get started with the lowest cash output.

Actually, this is as near to the City of Miami route as you can get now. As some of you may know, the City of Miami was a full 18 car train when Amtrak started, but the route didn't go through a major city other than Birmingham. The train was very popular and, other than deteriorating track on the IC south of Jackson, Tn and on the SCL from Albany, Ga to Waycross, was a very good and fast train. Much better than the South Wind route.

Bob
 
Wouldn't JAX Terminal Station involve a backup move anyway to get to the CSX line to Deland/Orlando? The only southbound line reachable without backing up from the JAX Terminal Station would be the FEC.

Admittedly the backup move necessary at the current Amtrak station is awkward. but the Sunset East managed to achieve that.
 
Yes, you are right. If Jax Terminal Station is used, there is a backout needed to use any line except the FEC. The Sunset, used the wye just south of the Amtrak Station thus avoiding more than a minimal backup. This is the same as in Birmingham, but the wye used by the Sunset was little used, thus no problem.
 
Back
Top