Short answers to these questions...
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.
...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.
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