Mileage for the Silver Service

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Woodcut60

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I wonder if the members of this excellent Forum could help me. What is the mileage for the Silver Star and the Silver Meteor? Is Wikipedia correct, stating that the Silver Star is 1,522 miles (NYC-Miami) and the Silver Meteor is 1,389 miles (NYC-Miami)? Thanks for your assistance.
 
The timetables on Amtrak's website would show the mileage. I'm on my phone so it's not easy for my to provide links.
 
That one's harder, because the timetable has the differing routes through FL and the Carolinas. I looked at the timetable, but it's too early on a Sunday morning to be doing that kind of maths. :D
 
I would venture to guess that those numbers are correct since the Silver Star goes to Tampa on its way to Miami, whereas the Meteor has a more direct route. Our resident mileage "expert" PRR60 will know the answer.
 
@AmtrakBlue: Yes, thanks, I've consulted the timetable of course but it only says "1,389 miles" and gives confusing mileage for the Silver Star via Tampa. At least, I find it confusing. So @Ryan is correct by saying that it's harder.
 
Yeah, I didn't think about how it might not have the milage separated in the timetable. Sorry about that.
 
Woodcut60 said:
I wonder if the members of this excellent Forum could help me. What is the mileage for the Silver Star and the Silver Meteor? Is Wikipedia correct, stating that the Silver Star is 1,522 miles (NYC-Miami) and the Silver Meteor is 1,389 miles (NYC-Miami)? Thanks for your assistance.
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I have 1521 for the Star, and 1389 for the Meteor.

To convert from the Meteor to the Star, add 41 miles for the route via Columbia and add 91 miles for route via Tampa.
 
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@PRR 60: Well, according to pennyk you are the mileage expert on this Forum, so thank you very much for clearing that up for me.
 
I just used the path tool on Google Earth and came up with these track miles (rounded to the nearest mile):

• KIS to TPA = 74 miles (timetable = 81 miles, I think)

• KIS to WTH = 39 miles (timetable = 38 miles)

• TPA to WTH = 47 miles (timetable = 48 miles)

The "junction" between these three stations is in the form of a wye located in Auburndale FL. But I don't know how the Silver Star gets into and out of Tampa - perhaps it uses a different wye located about 2 miles from TPA back towards Auburndale/Kissimmee. The route for the Meteor is 41 miles shorter through the Carolinas (per the timetable) and 74 + 47 - 39 = 82 miles shorter in Florida (per my figures) for a total of 123 miles shorter for the Meteor from NYP to MIA. Anyway (right or wrong) using the other miles posted on the Amtrak timetable I come up with Star route = 1472 miles and Meteor route = 1349 miles from NYP to MIA.

For some reason, my figures differ from those given by PRR 60 "I have 1521 for the Star, and 1389 for the Meteor." by 49 and 40 miles, respectively. Maybe there's a warp in the space-time continuum somewhere along the way?

Any comments or questions will be welcomed.
 
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The Neve wye is the one about 2 miles from TPA, so thanks for the confirmation. And thanks too for the Wikimapia lead - that's a new one to me.
 
What a fantastic Forum this is, with so much expert knowledge! Thanks @niemi24s and @Ocala Mike for your additional information.

I have one more question, after browsing through the Amtrak System Timetable. There is no mileage given for the Virginia Service (Northeast Regional). Richmond-Petersburg is 28 miles, but does anyone know what the mileage is between Petersburg-Norfolk-Virginia Beach?
 
Norfolk and Western's Norfolk - Petersburg line was 84.2 miles (Ref: Norfolk and Western timetable in the 1969 The Official Guide of the Railways) so it should be in the same ballpark. The current routing is somewhat different ( connect to ACL at Collier's Yard and then along ACL) so could differ by +/- a mile or two..It will probably be a bit more since the Ettrick (Amtrak) station appears to be a little further than the erstwhile N&W station.
 
Woodcut60 said:
I have one more question, after browsing through the Amtrak System Timetable. There is no mileage given for the Virginia Service (Northeast Regional). Richmond-Petersburg is 28 miles, but does anyone know what the mileage is between Petersburg-Norfolk-Virginia Beach?
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I pulled up a Norfolk service timetable from Spring 2013 which has the mileage. Petersburg is 594 miles, Norfolk is 679 miles (from BOS). Don't know why the mileage is not provided in the Virginia Regional schedule in the system timetable; appears to be space to insert the mileage column.
 
Woodcut60 said:
@afigg: Thank you. Does your timetable say anything about the end of the route, Virginia Beach, and its mileage?
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Norfolk is the end of the railroad route. Service to Virginia Beach is provided by a Thruway bus. Google maps should be able to provide a good estimate for the bus mileage from the Norfolk train station to where ever the bus goes in Virginia Beach.
 
Using the path tool of Google earth, the distance between the centers of the passenger platforms at Petersburg and Norfolk VA is 84.43 track miles. The end of the "route" is by bus from Norfolk to Virginia Beach. While I've no idea what actual route the bus takes, it may well be that shown on Bing Maps - 17.7 miles to the bus stop at 1912 Arctic St., Virginia Beach VA.
 
FYI... In the 1950s it was 661 miles on the ACL from Broad Street Station in Richmond to Jacksonville Union Station via the Nahunta cutoff. The SAL route from Main Street Station in Richmond to Jacksonville Union Station via Columbia and the now-abandoned segment nearer to the Georgia beaches was 640 miles. Yes, the SAL was slightly shorter even if you adjust for the difference between station sites in Richmond. In terms of running speed, however, it was advantage ACL north of Savannah and advantage SAL between Savannah and Jacksonville.
 
Those wondering (as I once did) how accurate the line and path tools of Google Earth might be, here's what I found:

• Measuring the length of a 12,366 foot long local runway in feet, the line and path (about 10 segments) tools were in perfect agreement with measured lengths of 12,373 feet - only 7 feet or 0.057% off the actual length.

• Measuring the length of the 667.1 mile long border between Colorado & Utah and New Mexico & Arizona, the line and path tools differed by only 0.2 miles (giving measured length of 666.6 and 666.8 miles, respectively) and with an average length of 666.7 miles were only off by about 0.4 miles or 0.060%

Methinks that's sufficiently accurate for our purposes here.
 
Short answers to these questions...

Woodcut60 said:
Is Wikipedia correct, stating that the Silver Star is 1,522 miles (NYC-Miami) and the Silver Meteor is 1,389 miles (NYC-Miami)? Thanks for your assistance.
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...are no and yes, respectively.

Concluded this after spending several hours using Google Earth to do some more measuring. Now for the long answers.

▲ The 1389 route miles for the Meteor appears to be correct and was the easiest to verify because it's the shortest and the simplest of the two routes. It's the figure shown on the Amtrak Fact Sheet for the Meteor route on page 10 here... http://www.narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/trains_2014.pdf ...as well as that shown at the bottom of the abbreviated Timetable below.

SilverServiceTTAbbreviateda.jpg

In addition, all the route miles for the Meteor (with the exception of the 502 for the miles between NYP and SEL) have been verified using the path tool of Google Earth.

▲ But the route miles for the Star between NYP and MIA are not given directly in the Timetable. However, there are two ways to determine it: figure it out from the Timetable; or measure it using Google Earth. The Star route is longer than the Meteor route due to a longer route in the Carolinas and also because of the Stars side trip to Tampa. The first difference is seen in the different miles given in the Timetable for Savannah of 829 for the Meteor and 870 for the Star (via Columbia). The difference is 41 more miles for the Star in the Carolinas and this was verified as being correct by using the path tool of Google Earth. That was the easy part.

The hard part was determining how much farther the Star travels because of its side trip to Tampa. Using the pair of mile figures given in the Timetable for Winter Haven FL (the ** figure is for the Tampa or Star route) it would seem the difference would simply be the difference between those two posted mile figures or 1271 - 1180 = 91 miles. However, an attempt to verify this difference using the path tool of Google Earth failed because this method showed the difference to be 82.60 or, when rounded, 83 miles - including the additional distance traveled when using the Neve Wye to reverse direction prior to backing into the station at Tampa. That's 8 miles less than the 91 inferred from the Timetable!

Unless I've erred badly somewhere, my conclusion is that the total additional route miles of the Star between NYP and MIA is 41 + 83 = 124 miles making the total for the Star 1389 + 124 = 1513 miles (and not the 1389 + 91 = 1480 miles inferred from the Timetable and also given on the Amtrak Fact Sheet on page 8 of this: http://www.narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/trains_2014.pdf). The difference between what I came up with and what Amtrak shows is 33 miles.

What is the correct Silver Star route length from NYP to MIA?

Regards
 
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This is the second part of the Silver Service timetable, modified to show the miles (from NYP) for both the Star and the Meteor in separate columns (by deleting the "Symbol" column):

StarMeteorTTb2.jpg

Southbound, the route length difference from Savannah to Kissimmee is 41 miles. After Kissimmee, the Meteor goes 38 miles more of less straight south to Winter Haven but the Stars side trip to Tampa of 121 miles (as measured from Kissimmee to Winter Haven) is 121 - 38 = 83 miles longer than the Meteors trip between those two points. The net result is that from WTH to MIA the total route difference becomes 41 + 83 = 124 miles.

Would appreciate knowing if you spot any errors.

Regards
 
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@niemi24s: My apologies for the late reply. Your calculations seem correct to me. I wonder what PRR60 (supposedly the mileage expert on this Forum) makes of this. Thanks for taking the trouble giving a very elaborate answer to my simple question.
 
Woodcut60 said:
@niemi24s: My apologies for the late reply. Your calculations seem correct to me. I wonder what PRR60 (supposedly the mileage expert on this Forum) makes of this. Thanks for taking the trouble giving a very elaborate answer to my simple question.
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No need to apologiz(s)e and thanks for the kind words. I enjoy a good puzzle and this was indeed a good one. Suspect PRR60's comment was based on data in old timetables, so either they were in error or perhaps the routes (tracks) were modified after being used by Amtrak. Guess the error won't change the course of human history, but correcting it gives a warm fuzzy feeling to a guy who's a little a OCD when it comes to matters of metrology.
 
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