Short Overnight Routes?

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NY Penn

OBS Chief
Joined
Jun 21, 2011
Messages
515
Location
New York City
Currently, basically none of the Amtrak LD routes are suitable for a quick overnight run between endpoints. The westbound CL comes close, leaving WAS around 4pm and arriving at CHI before 9am, but aside from that the present LD network doesn't fit this travel market. Some routes have convenient schedules for overnights between intermediate cities, but the cities are usually smaller and the OTP poor.

It seems that this market is too significant to be neglecting. There are plenty of business people who'd prefer to go to the train station after work, get on the train, and wake up at their destination instead of dealing with the hassles of flying. Even leaving aside the business market, many current Amtrak riders would prefer to not spend an entire day traveling if they could do so at night.

With a decent cafe car menu (like on the Acela?) the train wouldn't even need the dining car whose costs often kill the finances of the current LD trains. A sleeper or two, a few coaches, and a cafe are all the train would really need. There are plenty of large city pairs 8-14 hours apart that would be perfect for such quick overnight trains. (San Fran - LA, NY - Toronto/Montreal, CHI - Toronto, San Antonio - Dallas, CHI - Twin Cities, etc etc etc)

Has there been a study, running the numbers on this type of service? It seems like it would be fairly profitable.
 
I like your line of thinking NYPenn. I'd imagine the reason not to do it is you get almost no intermediate point traffic. If there are other options for those passengers outside the graveyard shift it would work well. I think San Fran-LA would be a perfect starting point. PHL-PGH is just a bit under 8 hrs but would also work (All Aboard Ohio has proposed overnight between the two cities but extended to CHI-NYP). Maybe Florida to NOL along the SL East route (not sure how long that is).

Of course with the hours involved chances are they would be under 750 miles which would require state funding (not sure how Canada would fit into the equation). Plus, Amtrak is a bit short on sleepers at the moment.
 
I can't speak for out west, but there was an overnight proposal between PHL-CHI and daily overnight service existed between NYP-MTR. TWO-NYP featured overnight service on Sunday. They were both cut due to costs. There is talk of resurrecting the Montreal route, but track improvements are still needed.

However, as Phill Fan mentioned, the vast majority of these types of service would likely fall under the corridor markets.
 
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Some one had to remind us and will pass this along. The US constitution says the federal government is responsible for interstate commerce. That IMO includes all transportation, communications, etc. That includes roads, ighways, rails, telephone. As well includes manufacturing except local, agriculture.
 
Once the routes become longer with the ideal overnight becoming just a portion of the run, costs dramatically increase because a dining car will likely be justified. OTP will obviously decrease, hurting ridership. Businesspeople especially care about punctuality.

That leaves the majority of these routes as sub-750 mile runs. San Fran to LA would obviously have to be funded by California, and that stands a reasonable chance of happening because the state would benefit. San Antonio to Dallas would be similar, but there's virtually no chance of having the Texas legislature fund a new Amtrak route as I understand it. Perhaps most of the routes, if they are predicted to be profitable above-the-rail, could have a Lynchburger-esque financial agreement with the states (they agree to fund deficits, but there shouldn't be any). Canada would probably not be a part of the funding, just like it doesn't fund the present Amtrak routes north of the border.

Obviously, rolling stock might be an issue. Since each train would only need two sets there shouldn't be much of a problem finding one sleeper for each train, at least to start.

Can someone link the reports that were done on the subject?
 
San Francisco to LAX actually had a overnight train running up until 1968. It ran down the current SP surf line. Then there was a second train the Owl along the inland route via Bakersfield both owned by the same railroad. I'll check the other routes to see what they used to have. I could see that route being a good route but run to the Caltrain station not emeryville
 
Some one had to remind us and will pass this along. The US constitution says the federal government is responsible for interstate commerce. That IMO includes all transportation, communications, etc. That includes roads, ighways, rails, telephone. As well includes manufacturing except local, agriculture.
Quick! Nationalize all industry other than agriculture! :p

But seriously, the Commerce Clause says nothing like what is being implied. It simply says: [Article 1 Section 8 Clause 3] "[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"

It is only about regulation, not execution. And it is about having the power to do so, not that they will necessarily do what someone's specific agenda may be.

And what does all this have to do with overnight routes anyway?
 
NY-MTR had the Montrealer till 1995. That service had a lot of issues due to track repair. But now it should be fine. That saying this was a segment of the New York Nightmare on the other thread. I see this being a popular route especially with the ski traffic, and business traffic if we could get the timings right.

NYC-TWO I can't find record anywhere of an overnight train. But I can see that the market might be there. The business travel market is there I suppose. And it would make a good section of the New York Nightmare. Honestly another option for this seeing equipment with Amtrak is always an issue is to have VIA provide the cars. And Amtrak provide the staffing.
 
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San Francisco to LAX actually had a overnight train running up until 1968. It ran down the current SP surf line. Then there was a second train the Owl along the inland route via Bakersfield both owned by the same railroad. I'll check the other routes to see what they used to have. I could see that route being a good route but run to the Caltrain station not emeryville
Weren't there a bunch of lines? Of course there was The Starlight. However, it wasn't at the current 4th and King Caltrain station, but the 3rd and Townsend station.

http://www.american-rails.com/starlight.html

There was The Lark (9 PM - 8:30 AM):

http://www.american-rails.com/lark.html

The Owl required a ferry ride from San Francisco.

http://www.american-rails.com/owl.html
 
The Starlight and the Lark were combined in the 1950s so it is one train in my books. The ATSF might have had something but with a bus connection from Bakersfield.
 
The Starlight and the Lark were combined in the 1950s so it is one train in my books. The ATSF might have had something but with a bus connection from Bakersfield.
What I found was the Golden Gate. If you went end to end it would include three buses and two trains. It also wasn't overnight. I'm guessing waking up passengers in the middle of the night to transfer to/from a bus wouldn't have worked very well.

http://www.american-rails.com/gld-gte.html
 
NYC-TWO I can't find record anywhere of an overnight train. But I can see that the market might be there. The business travel market is there I suppose. And it would make a good section of the New York Nightmare. Honestly another option for this seeing equipment with Amtrak is always an issue is to have VIA provide the cars. And Amtrak provide the staffing.
In 1994 there was the once-weekly Niagara Rainbow, Friday nights leaving NYP and Sunday nights leaving Toronto. It didn't appear to last long.

http://www.timetables.org/full.php?group=19941030n&item=0010
 
The Starlight and the Lark were combined in the 1950s so it is one train in my books. The ATSF might have had something but with a bus connection from Bakersfield.
What I found was the Golden Gate. If you went end to end it would include three buses and two trains. It also wasn't overnight. I'm guessing waking up passengers in the middle of the night to transfer to/from a bus wouldn't have worked very well.

http://www.american-rails.com/gld-gte.html
I'm trying to find out more about ATSF's The Saint and The Angel. The endpoints were San Diego and San Francisco, even though The Angel was obviously referring to Los Angeles.
 
San Francisco to LAX actually had a overnight train running up until 1968. It ran down the current SP surf line. Then there was a second train the Owl along the inland route via Bakersfield both owned by the same railroad. I'll check the other routes to see what they used to have. I could see that route being a good route but run to the Caltrain station not emeryville
Weren't there a bunch of lines? Of course there was The Starlight. However, it wasn't at the current 4th and King Caltrain station, but the 3rd and Townsend station.

http://www.american-rails.com/starlight.html

There was The Lark (9 PM - 8:30 AM):

http://www.american-rails.com/lark.html

The Owl required a ferry ride from San Francisco.

http://www.american-rails.com/owl.html
Spirit of California 1982 (timetables.org): http://www.timetables.org/full.php?group=19820425&item=0049

In 2015, I used a Thruway Bus from San Jose to Santa Barbara to the LA area. I believe the bus got into Santa Barbara early so we had to wait about an hour in the station for the train.
 
Spirit of California 1982 (timetables.org): http://www.timetables.org/full.php?group=19820425&item=0049

In 2015, I used a Thruway Bus from San Jose to Santa Barbara to the LA area. I believe the bus got into Santa Barbara early so we had to wait about an hour in the station for the train.
I booked the reverse for friends of the family in 2014, although that wasn't overnight. They took the Surfliner from Irvine and transferred at Santa Barbara to a bus. It was a half hour late into Emeryville and the station was already closed.
 
Just for background, but (lacking hard data due to the passage of time and going on anecdotes as a result) the Spirit of California fell victim to three issues. One was purely political (Brown decided he wanted to be Senator and so the Dems lost the Governor's mansion and the Republican who was elected decided to do some "legacy slashing"), but the other two were more complex. The second was a bad over-estimate on ridership (IIRC the estimate was 180k/yr and the train never got over about 85k/yr); this was at least partly, I suspect, a side-effect of the other issue, which was that the train consistently had more coach space and less sleeper space than the routing would seem to have merited. The result was empty coaches north of SBA and regularly sold-out sleepers.
 
VIA tried this as recently as 10 years ago: The Enterprise between Montreal and Toronto and this is one market where you'd think it would work. It was extensively promoted and discounts offered: sleeper one-way and return the next afternoon in business (first) class but it just didn't catch on. Sleeping in a moving train is just not in the mind-set today when a quick flight will have you home in your own bed. I rode several times.....you'd have a few passengers in sleepers connecting to the Canadian on days it ran.....and there were always a good crowd in the coaches on Friday and Sunday nights.
 
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I've been on a similar train in Australia - the Sydney/Melbourne Express as someone noted. It was a pretty nice ride, although I've noted the one difficulty we had with the equipment (and one particular railroad employee).
 
VIA tried this as recently as 10 years ago: The Enterprise between Montreal and Toronto and this is one market where you'd think it would work. It was extensively promoted and discounts offered: sleeper one-way and return the next afternoon in business (first) class but it just didn't catch on. Sleeping in a moving train is just not in the mind-set today when a quick flight will have you home in your own bed. I rode several times.....you'd have a few passengers in sleepers connecting to the Canadian on days it ran.....and there were always a good crowd in the coaches on Friday and Sunday nights.
The Enterprise had a problem in the form of being an 8-10 hour trip on a 5-hour run. It's one thing to stuff an extra hour in somewhere to facilitate smooth connections or favorable times (e.g. 66/67 on the NEC); it is entirely another to pad a schedule out horridly. No small part of the problem, I suspect, was the fact that you can make a comfortable evening trip TWO-MTR (trains 668/669 do this quite admirably, departing at about 1800 and arriving around 2300) and it might be feasible (equipment and whatnot permitting) to run a super-early train on the route as well. Likewise, I think there's a case for doing a set-out (e.g. if you were willing to allow occupation at a given hour but the train didn't leave until it "needed to") which probably would have worked a bit better...but TWO-MTR is just too short to make this sort of trip work.
 
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Just for background, but (lacking hard data due to the passage of time and going on anecdotes as a result) the Spirit of California fell victim to three issues. One was purely political (Brown decided he wanted to be Senator and so the Dems lost the Governor's mansion and the Republican who was elected decided to do some "legacy slashing"), but the other two were more complex. The second was a bad over-estimate on ridership (IIRC the estimate was 180k/yr and the train never got over about 85k/yr); this was at least partly, I suspect, a side-effect of the other issue, which was that the train consistently had more coach space and less sleeper space than the routing would seem to have merited. The result was empty coaches north of SBA and regularly sold-out sleepers.
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The Enterprise was to have originally run via Ottawa (as several trains do now) and that would have accounted for the longer schedule. But CN wouldn’t allow it.....something to do with crossing over at Coteau to the Alexendria Sub which I could never understand as daytime Ottawa trains do this.

It was also timed to provide a Kingston > Toronto and Brockville > Montreal morning commuter schedule.
 
I had instinctively wondered why it didn't run via Ottawa...and presumed it was something like that. Doing so would at least reduce the amount of stuffing (I don't think we can really call it padding) in the schedule. It does, btw, look like they ran it on the same schedule as the surviving commuter-oriented train on that route.
 
I too ride the Enterprise several times and also wondered about the layover during the night instead of running it via Ottawa!

Thanks for the info!

I really enjoyed this train, what happened to the equipment, is it used on the corridor or any other VIA train,?
 
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I too ride the Enterprise several times and also wondered about the layover during the night instead of running it via Ottawa!

Thanks for the info!

I really enjoyed this train, what happened to the equipment, is it used on the corridor or any other VIA train,?
Well, 6x weekly there's a morning train covering the western end of the route; the Rens probably went to the Ocean.
 
Short overnight trains? Well, my first thought is the Montrealer; there's already very little intermediate traffic Montreal-NYP on the Adirondack.

My second thought is to make some of the East Coast-Chicago trains faster.

My third thought is #66/67.
 
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