Would a daylight Crescent even work?

[afigg]

I think Richmond-Raleigh is a probable improvement a few years down the line, but it's going to require VA and NC to talk to one another because so much of the line is within VA. Actually, I think you're looking at Petersburg-Raleigh being the big gap...Richmond-Petersburg will probably get some marginal improvements in connection with the Richmond-Norfolk service.

The NC and VA DOT rail departments have been cooperating quite extensively on the development of the SE HSR route and plan. (SC and GA have been non-players until recently.) I gather NCDOT has been taking the lead on the ambitious plan for the Richmond VA (starting just south of the Richmond Main street station) to Petersburg VA to Raleigh NC route. The plan is for much of the route to use the abandoned CSX S-line with major upgrades to operate at 110 mph speeds with curve straitening and for all grade crossing to be closed. If implemented as planned, the travel time from Richmond and DC to Raleigh would be reduced by 2-3 hours. The Tier 2 EIS final document for the Richmond to Raleigh SE HSR section is scheduled to be completed in 2011. Once that is in place, then the next step is to get the billions in funding to build the Richmond to Raleigh section. If you have not seen the extensive reports and maps, they can be found at www.sehsr.org.

If the SE HSR corridor from Richmond to Petersburg to Raleigh to Charlotte NC is built as planned, it will make a daytime WAS to ATL train via that route a logical extension, even if GA does not contribute much to it.

 

[afigg]

I also agree with the idea,, but in my opinion, just do a Washington to Atlanta daily Superliner train with two sets of equipment.

Start out with two SL coahes, a CCC and a sightseer. (4 cars total - and one engine). And keep in simple - just use the NS mainline.

Even if Amtrak had the spare Superliner equipment - they don't unless/until a Superliner 3 order comes in - where would the maintenance base support for the Superliners be located? My understanding is the Capitol Limited maintenance is done mainly in Chicago. The inclination and probably the market surveys would be to run a daytime train to Atlanta out of NYP which would limit it to single level cars. The <750 mile requirement for state funding support also complicates the political issues for a WAS to ATL train. The NYP-ATL consists could be identical to the Palmetto so they could switch trains between the 2 routes. Question is whether Amtrak has enough Amfleet 2 capacity to add 2 trainsets with a Diner Lite car to provide 2 trainsets for a daytime NYP to ATL run.

But to make this a viable daytime service, the trip times probably have to get down to 15 to 16 hours. The Palmetto is under 15 hours end to end. Maybe, by the time the Viewliner 2s enter the fleet and Amtrak has new single level coaches coming in, improvements on pieces of the route would allow 15-16 hour run times. Still, this is an obvious candidate service to add, if Amtrak were to consider adding LD trains in the near future.

 

[MattW]

Would New Orleans to Atlanta really be that bad of a market if the train ran overnight? The Current Atlanta-Washington schedule is convenient in that you can go about your day, board the train, sleep, and you're there in Washington. Could the NOL-ATL market increase if you had the same convenience of moving while sleeping?

 

[NativeSon5859]

New Orleans to Atlanta is and always has been a big local travel market. The problem is, 12 hours by train is way too long, when it can be driven in 7 easily. The train trip takes up a whole day. I actually think an overnight run would increase ridership between NOL and ATL...you'd still have reasonable arrival/departure times at each city and you won't be wasting an entire day just getting there. BHM would get lousy arr/dep times but there's no way around that if you do ATL-NOL overnight.

Lv.NOL - 6:05pm

Ar.ATL - 6:53am

Lv.ATL - 7:20am for WAS.

Ar.ATL - 9:15pm from WAS.

lV.ATL - 9:35pm

Ar.NOL - 8:15am

...or something like that.

 

[Anderson]

BHM is also, I believe, much smaller than NOL or ATL as a market. This would actually pair nicely with the daylight trains we're talking about...if you can't make a run in 6 hours or so, looking at an overnight becomes an eminently reasonable option. Honestly, a morning arrival in NOL would've probably gotten me on the Crescent for a conference I went to there a few years ago...I looked into it, but the timings were just awful so I scrapped the option.