End of N&W Passenger Service and the beginnings of Amtrak

[NW Mailing List]

Ken, Larry, et al;

One of the members of the convention committee is a retired railroad
white-collar guy who continues to consult in the railroad business.  He
maintains, at length but over coffee, that Amtrak was designed to fail, and
it was only political pressure that has kept it alive.  He also maintains
that, as currently constructed, except for certain specific areas such as
the Northeast Corridor, it is virtually impossible to break even on
passenger service in this country.  Sometimes attitudes flow from the top
down, and this may account for some of the "The Customer be Damned"
attitude (that may be correctly attributed to Commodore Vanderbilt).

Frank Bongiovanni

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 3:10 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> I rode the last Hilltopper Roanoke-Catlettsburg-Roanoke. At Catlattesburg,
> the train ostensibly connected to the Cardinal although it was a many hour
> overnight connections (as I recall, the EB Cardinal arrived before the WB
> Hilltopper and then the EB Hilltopper departed before the WB Cardinal so
> both sets of connecting passengers spent several hours in the station.
>
> There was a brief return of Amtrak service to N&W in July 1981 when
> Illinois subsidized an extension of a Chicago-Champaign train to Decatur
> (mostly on IC before turning west to Decatur at Tolono). That service
> lasted two years according to a Wikipedia article. It wasn’t on N&W very
> much but it was enough to make my Amtrak pass valid again (I left N&W just
> two months after the service started but did get a pass trip in due to the
> air traffic controllers strike that summer).
>
> --
> Larry Stone
> lstone19 at stonejongleux.com
>
>
>
>
>
> > On May 20, 2021, at 11:29 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for the compliments Shawn, it is much appreciated. I am hoping to
> frequently have some bonus material for members only in the future.
> >
> > Amtrak did not operate trains on any N&W trackage, except perhaps as a
> detour move until March 24, 1975, with the inauguration of the
> “Mountaineer” which was a Norfolk-Chicago daily train via the N&W to
> Kenova, the switched over to the C&O at Tri-State Station (Catlettsburg,
> KY), and continued to Cincinnati via the C&O, then on to Chicago.
> >
> > The Mountaineer was never a success, and in 1976 was being considered
> for some schedule changes and reequipped with Amfleet cars. The drastic
> cold winter in Chicago in February 1977 caused many Amtrak steam-heated
> conventional cars to freeze up, and the Mountaineer was discontinued for a
> time, but returned with Amfleet equipment.
> >
> > It would be discontinued on May 31, 1977 and replaced with an
> Amfleet-equipped “Hilltopper” that ran from Washington DC to Catlettsburg,
> Kentucky. A train to nowhere, basically, was referred to as the “City of
> Nowhere” by some. On January 8, 1978, it was combined with the “Night Owl”
> and still ran to nowhere. It was discontinued on October 1, 1979 as part of
> budget cuts ending service on N&W lines until the inauguration of the
> Northeast Regional train on October 31, 2017 to Roanoke.
> >
> > I might also put this in as a follow-up to the story in the next Arrow.
> >
> > Best
> > Ken Miller
> >
> >> On May 20, 2021, at 10:57 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> The latest "Arrow" is a gem, as they always are. What a great
> publication! I also enjoyed the bonus on-line material available to members.
> >>
> >> After the end of N&W passenger service, I assume Amtrak continued to
> operate passenger trains on at least some N&W lines. The latest issue of
> "Trains" magazine indicates Amtrak operated a Cincinnati-Roanoke-Norfolk
> train, the Mountaineer, until 1977. The Hilltopper, a
> Cincinnati-Roanoke-Richmond, VA train, operated until 1979. Did these
> trains use the N&W line across southern Ohio between Cincinnati and
> Portsmouth? I lived near the "Peavine line" during this time, but never
> recall seeing an Amtrak train. Maybe I was just never trackside when they
> went through Batavia, OH where I lived. If they used the N&W across
> southern Ohio, does anyone know what their schedules were? Thanks
> >>
> >> Shawn Harley
> >>
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