On July 30, Amtrak announced it was planning to tarnish the Silver Star, the train that has traveled between New York and Florida since 1939. It will throw its venerable silver piece into the trash, along with the even-more venerable Capitol Limited. Both will be replaced by a train that Amtrak will call the Floridian, but will bear no resemblance to its predecessor of the same name, which ran between Chicago and Florida during the 1970s. The plan will take effect on Nov. 10. Amtrak says this move is “temporary,” but some rider-advocates see a detriment for some riders, and are complaining. That’s a story for another time, though.
The Silver Star has not merely been “tarnished.” I believe Amtrak plans to get rid of it, along with the Capitol Limited, which served as the flagship train on the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) from 1923 until 1971, and which Amtrak restored in 1981. In recent years, that train has become a shadow of its former self, running at one time with one sleeping car, one coach and a food service car sandwiched in between.
The new Floridian will run on the current schedules of the Capitol Limited and on schedules similar to the current Silver Star south of Washington, D.C. Passengers north of Washington will need to take a train on the Northeast Corridor (NEC), changing at Washington Union Station. (To or from Baltimore, trains on MARC’s Penn Line can cover that short segment.) The new Floridian will reduce the number of Amtrak’s long-distance trains by one, the result of combining one route with most, but not all, of another route. This will bring the number of long-distance trains that are available (not counting the Auto-Train, which requires passengers to transport an automobile) from 14 to 13, the lowest in Amtrak’s history.
Amtrak’s First Floridian
Amtrak operated the Floridian through the 1970s. It was descended from the South Wind, a joint service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Louisville & Nashville (L&N), Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) and Florida East Coast that ran between Chicago and Florida, serving Miami and St. Petersburg. The South Wind used the L&N, now part of CSX, between Louisville, Ky. and Montgomery, Ala. It ran every other day during the pre-Amtrak era beginning in 1940 and alternated with the City of Miami, a joint service of the Illinois Central (IC), Central of Georgia, ACL and FEC. (ACL and Seaboard Air Line, SAL, merged in 1967 to form Seaboard Coast Line, SCL)
After some changes to the route in Indiana and schedule changes (from two days and one night to two nights and one day), Amtrak’s first Floridian lasted until it was discontinued along with five other routes in 1979. The 1979 Amtrak timetable showed the southbound Floridian as Train 57 and the northbound run as Train 56. At that time, the route served Lafayette and Bloomington, Ind., bypassing Indianapolis, on the Monon (Chicago, Indianapolis, & Louisville Railwa, now CSX), which hosts the Cardinal from the Chicago suburbs to Indianapolis today. After a run on the L&N between Louisville and Montgomery, it ran on the SCL (now also part of CSX) the rest of the way to St. Petersburg and Miami. It used the ACL route from Montgomery to St. Petersburg, through Jacksonville and Orlando and as far as Tampa on the route of the now-doomed Silver Star. The Miami section split at Jacksonville and used the former SAL route through Ocala and on the route Amtrak uses today between Winter Haven and Miami.
Train 57 left Chicago at 9:30 PM and was scheduled to arrive at St. Petersburg at 1:03 PM and Miami at 1:10 PM, two days later. Train 56 left Miami at 5:00 PM and St. Petersburg at 5:30, and was scheduled to arrive at Chicago at 7:00 AM, two days later. That meant a running time of 38½ hours southbound and 38½ or 39 hours northbound, depending on the point or origin of each section.
Floridian Restoration Proposals
There has recently been talk about bringing passenger service back to the Floridan route, or at least on portions of it. Service still runs between Jacksonville and Miami, with the doomed Silver Star diverting to Tampa with two stops at Lakeland, before and after the Tampa stop. That will continue. North of Florida, there was only one attempt to restore service on any of the route. It was the Kentucky Cardinal, which ran as a section of the Cardinal to the East from Chicago on three days a week, splitting at Indianapolis, and as a stand-alone train the other four days. It ran for only 3½ years, from the end of 1999 until the middle of 2003. It was an extension of the Hoosier State between Chicago and Indianapolis, which was discontinued in 2019, when the State of Indiana dropped its financial support.
At first, the Kentucky Cardinal did not reach its namesake state, terminating at Jeffersonville, Ind., in the hope of serving a major UPS package-handling facility. For its final 19 months, the train returned to Louisville Union Station. There was hope that the train would be extended to Nashville. One issue of the Amtrak timetable showed the line going to the “Music City” on a map, and CSX ran a test train, but the operation was cut back to Indianapolis instead.
More recently, Amtrak has proposed state-supported corridor-length routes that would serve most of the places where the original Floridian went, on a proposed routing through Chattanooga, Atlanta and Savannah. The Amtrak Connects US plan, announced in 2021, proposed routes between Chicago and Louisville through Indianapolis; between Nashville and Atlanta through Chattanooga; and between Atlanta and Savannah. There was a conspicuous gap between Louisville and Nashville, which would have completed the through route between Chicago and Florida when combined with the current Florida service. It is unclear how many of the states that would have to support and help fund those routes would do so. The current FRA Corridor Identification and Development Program also lists those routes as potential corridors for restored service, and it is also unclear how many of them will eventually host passenger trains. In addition, the FRA’s Long-Distance Service Study selected the old Floridian route, but re-routed through Atlanta, as a proposed service for restoration. However, that study has a planning frontier of 2060, 81 years after the original Floridian ran for the last time.
The new Floridian will be a completely different train, except for serving Chicago and the part of the route between Jacksonville and Miami, through Tampa.
What’s In a Name?
In this case, plenty. Amtrak is re-branding the combination of the Capitol Limited and the Silver Star as a new Floridian, but with a much longer running time. As a train that will go from Chicago all the way to Washington before turning south with a westerly component, it will leave the Windy City at 6:40 PM and arrive at Miami at 6:09 PM two days later, for a scheduled running time of 46½ hours. It will leave Miami at 11:05 AM and arrive two days later in Chicago at 8:45 AM, taking 46:40 for the entire trip. That running time is 17 hours longer than the old South Wind, about eight hours longer than the 1970s-vintage Floridian, and it won’t serve any communities not already on the Amtrak system.
In announcing the new combined route, Amtrak claimed that it would be “temporary” in a Sept. 23 news release: “Amtrak is temporarily combining the Capitol Limited and Silver Star trains to create the Floridian due to the upcoming East River Tunnel Rehabilitation Project in New York. During this project, one tunnel tube will be closed at a time, minimizing service impacts, maximizing construction access and modernizing the tunnel infrastructure to serve customers for another 100 years.” I asked Amtrak how long this “temporary” situation would last, and the answer I received was “We have no such plans to announce at this time.” If Amtrak later gives me a date on a return to the rails of the Capitol Limited and Silver Star routes (including the full length of the latter route), I will let you know.
While Amtrak did not mention the shortage of Superliner equipment now being used on the Capitol Limited as a reason for the change, that shortage is well-known at Amtrak and among the rider-advocacy community. It could be alleviated by an accelerated program to return as many of the cars now awaiting repair at the Beech Grove shops to service, as well as more-vigorous efforts to induce CN to back off from its demand that only Superliner cars and longer consists than necessary be used for the Illini and Saluki trains, whose route runs only within Illinois.
The East River Tunnel Rehabilitation Project will rehabilitate the tunnels under the East River that serve Penn Station and Sunnyside Yards in Queens, where Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trainsets on runs that originate and terminate at Penn Station are stored, as well as Long Island Rail Road trains serving Penn Station. The reason given is repair and improve the tunnels after damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Amtrak’s statement about the project says that it will be completed in 2027, but Amtrak has not said that the two doomed trains will regain their current names and full routes at the conclusion of the tunnel project. This brings into question whether Amtrak intends to restore them to their pre-Floridian status and, perhaps more important, to restore through service between the NEC and Florida on the Silver Star. I’m not convinced that Amtrak will not do that, but we can’t be sure of the outcome.
Calling the combined train the Floridian could be problematic, too. Brand names are always part of the marketing strategy of a private-sector business or a public-sector agency. A brand is a valuable asset, a piece of intellectual property often protected by a trademark or service mark, and Amtrak has such marks for its train names. Would Amtrak give up the Floridian name by restoring the Capitol Limited and Silver Star names? That appears highly unlikely, because brand names are intended to associate the product or service with the mark’s owner in the minds of current and potential customers.
It is almost unheard of for a brand to be created with the intention of using it only temporarily. In 2018 and 2019, Railway Age covered the flirtation between Brightline, Florida’s private-sector service now running between Orlando Airport and Miami, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. The trains would have been re-branded “Virgin Trains,” but Brightline managers changed their minds and kept the Brightline brand going. Amtrak’s trademarked registrations for the Capitol Limited and Silver Star could also be jeopardized, at least if Amtrak does not resume using those names within three years after the coming name change (see ITC, Ltd. v. Punchgini, Inc., 482 F.3d 135, 145-53 (2d Cir., 2007). Trademarks are valuable intellectual property assets that distinguish the owner’s goods or services from those offered by anyone else and help protect the owner’s reputation. They derive from actual use of the mark in interstate or foreign commerce, and they can be lost if the owner stops using them for an extended time.
As has been reported, Amtrak is pushing for state-supported corridor-length routes on portions of a variation of the 1970s-vintage Floridian route that, if all were implemented and the gap between Louisville and Nashville were filled, the result would be full restoration of that route. While that event appears unlikely, it would be even more unlikely for Amtrak to give such a train its old name back, if another train is known by that name at the time. A major purpose of the trademark law is to prevent public confusion, but a switch like that could cause such confusion. So, unless Amtrak specifically warrants that the name change will be temporary and specifies an end date, it appears likely that the change will be permanent.
Rider Costs and “Benefits”
The “benefit” touted by Amtrak is that the new combined train will be a “through train” between Chicago and Florida, the first since 1979. Amtrak explained its motivation for combining the two routes by saying, “We are taking this opportunity to offer a through train and provide a long-sought Midwest to Florida service.” In terms of the Chicago endpoint and the portion of the route in Florida, that’s true, but the impending routing bears no other resemblance to any other train that has run between the Midwest and Florida since the decline of long-distance trains to Amtrak’s skeletal network.
The “one-seat ride” has been perhaps the strongest talking point for the plan’s proponents. In its Sept. 23 release, Amtrak quoted Jim Mathews, President of the Rail Passengers’ Association (RPA) as saying: “Our members have had a long-standing dream of restoring a one-seat ride from the Midwest to Florida, and we’re thrilled that a new generation of American passengers will be able to experience this service for themselves. This move will free up badly needed equipment while taking pressure off Northeast Corridor infrastructure during the renovation of the East River Tunnel Rehabilitation Project. RPA applauds Amtrak for this innovative solution to keeping passengers moving during critical state-of-good-repair work. We believe riders will flock to this service.”
It appears unlikely that effectively truncating the Silver Star at Washington and removing it from the NEC will alleviate congestion in the East River Tunnels or at Sunnyside Yards during the East River Tunnel Rehabilitation Project. While those tunnels are busy, much of the congestion occurs during peak commuting hours on weekdays, when service on NJ Transit and the LIRR runs at the highest density. Train 91 now leaves Penn Station at 11:02 AM, well after the morning peak is over. Train 92 is scheduled to arrive at Penn Station at 7:10 PM, after the evening commuting period ends, and the consist is scheduled to move to Sunnyside Yard for storage at a later time. Neither of those moves would appear to interfere with the tunnel rehabilitation project, even when capacity is reduced, because that effect would be felt primarily when the “commuter trains” are running, not at midday or evening.
Other advocates have expressed contrary views to Matthews’, which I will report later in a separate story. While riders and their advocates “have had a long-standing dream of restoring a one-seat ride from the Midwest to Florida,” it is not clear, and appears unlikely, that they dreamed of having to go through Washington, D.C. to get there. It appears that they would rather take a train that would serve places like Louisville, Nashville and Atlanta, a train that would also have transported them between Chicago and Florida much faster than the coming reincarnation of the Floridian.
Will riders “flock to the new service”? Time will tell. The service already exists in a slightly different form, and Amtrak currently recognizes the connection between the two doomed trains, at least on the way to Florida. A check on the Amtrak website for a trip from Chicago to Miami on Nov. 4, during the Capitol Limited’s and Silver Star’s final week of operation, shows that a passenger can leave Chicago on Train 30 and either change to Train 91 (6:35 PM arrival in Miami) or Train 97 (6:59 PM arrival) for the same fare in coach and a sleeping car fare about 10% higher on Train 91. Ironically, Amtrak’s reservations function does not officially recognize the connection from Train 92 to Train 29 at Washington, but it violates its own rules (or at least its own custom) by not doing so. Train 92 is due into the Washington D.C. at 3:04 PM, and Train 29 is due out at 4:05. Amtrak has historically allowed through-ticketing and a “guaranteed connection” if there is 60 minutes or more between arrival and departure at the connection point. Is Amtrak intentionally refusing to honor what would normally be a connection to discourage potential customers from booking that combination of trains? I don’t know, but there is a colorable argument for that proposition.
Of course, Amtrak will recognize that trip after through-running begins, but there is an anomaly with fares. On Nov. 15, the Adult fare between Chicago and Miami with a change from Train 30 to Train 97, which arrives 50 minutes later than the through train, is $260. Using the through train, the fare is only $113, which is $13 less than the fare from Chicago to Washington, D.C. on the same train!
The same fare applies from Miami to Chicago that day. Will the riders “flock” to the “new service” as Mathews asserts? Again, I don’t know, but Amtrak is offering a bargain fare to attract them. Will this fare be a genuinely temporary loss leader, or will Amtrak stop sacrificing revenue and charge the same fare between endpoints, regardless of which train riders take? In response to my question on the subject, Amtrak said: “Pricing is dynamic and is always subject to change due to market conditions.” In other words, all I can say now is that time will tell.
Whatever benefits the riding public might gain from the through-routing, there are also drawbacks that will face future riders, sacrifices that Amtrak does not mention. Even today, with separate trains and a change at Washington, D.C., station crews are available to assist passengers in making the change. Riders who use both trains have been making this transfer for more than 40 years, so they would not suffer a significant loss if the trains were to continue to run separately.
That does not hold for today’s riders on the Capitol Limited, especially in coach. Whatever differences there might be in comfort level on the Superliner and Viewliner (single-level) sleeping cars, it is vastly different in the coaches. Superliner coaches offer seats that recline to a significantly greater angle than the Amfleet II cars that now run on Eastern long-distance trains and will soon run all the way between Chicago and Miami. Those seats are also further apart, which means more leg room. Coach passengers will have a less-comfortable trip on the Chicago-D.C. portion of the route than they have now.
The inconvenience that riders along the NEC will experience is perhaps more serious. While Amtrak touts a one-seat ride between the Midwest and Florida with the coming change, every rider on today’s Silver Star route who boards or alights anywhere from New York to Baltimore will lose the one-seat-ride they currently enjoy—which Amtrak considers a selling point, at least about the upcoming service offering. If Amtrak considers the addition of a one-seat ride on a future operation to constitute a benefit, then the loss of a currently available one-seat ride for riders throughout the Northeast should be considered a detriment, and it appears reasonable to assume that the number of NEC riders going south of Washington, D.C. exceeds the number of potential riders who would be attracted to the “new” route, especially on less-comfortable coaches. I asked Amtrak ridership number projections, and they replied: “Projections are proprietary information.”
To make matters worse, riders along the NEC will pay higher fares to take the two-seat ride on an NEC train and the truncation of the currentl Silver Star. Starting Nov. 15, riders are advised to take Train 141, which is scheduled to leave New York at 8:24 AM, 2:38 earlier than the current departure time of Train 91, to get to their destinations at the same time. Running time to Miami will be 33:45, with a layover longer than two hours in Washington, D.C., compared with today. Northbound, it will be even longer: 34:40 (arriving at 9:45 PM rather than the current 7:10 PM), with a 3:04 layover, compared to the current trip time of 31:30. The Silver Meteor, Trains 97 and 98, is currently scheduled for 27:44 southbound and 27:08 northbound, although the running time on Train 97 will be extended by 45 minutes (2:30 PM departure) for slightly longer running time on the NEC and a longer layover in Washington, D.C. The fares will also be higher, up to about 10%, for the two-seat trip than for a through trip on Trains 97 or 98.
Another loss for current Silver Star riders when it becomes the northerly segment of the new Floridian is a loss of connectivity to trains going north of New York. The last train from New York to Boston leaves at 9:29 PM, so the convenience of changing trains there will become a thing of the past. Amtrak now advises Boston passengers to wait at Washington for almost seven hours (6:54 to be precise) and take Train 66 (the now-officially anonymous Night Owl, which is due into Boston at 10:05 AM, after more than 12 hours on the NEC and exactly 47 hours after leaving Miami. Their fellow passengers bound for Chicago are scheduled to arrive there 20 minutes ahead of those going to Boston. Southbound, anyone going from Boston to Miami would need to catch the Acela train that leaves at 5:05 AM but does not offer coach-fare seats. They are rewarded with a 37-hour trip, leaving Boston within a few minutes of the scheduled departure of the new Floridian from Pittsburgh. Coach passengers from Boston could only connect at Washington by leaving the night before on Train 65 (also the now-anonymous Night Owl) at 6:45 PM for a 6:29 AM arrival in the Nation’s Capital. Layover time there is 7:14, and the entire trip from Boston would take 46:24, one half-hour less than it will take to get to Miami from Chicago. Amtrak does not recognize that trip, so it would be necessary to purchase segments separately.
Riders on the Hartford/Springfield line could do even worse, because there is no overnight schedule there. Train 141, which would connect at Washington, leaves Springfield at 4:30 AM and Hartford at 5:11 AM, too early for local bus connections. Northbound, it is possible to leave Washington at 4:02 PM or 5:05 PM and reach Hartford or Springfield the same night, but the train from Florida would have to run on or close to schedule, and Amtrak does not recognize those trains as feasible connections. Under today’s schedule, there are trains from New York at 7:50 PM and 8:50 PM on weeknights and 8:00 PM on weekends, and from Springfield at 7:05 AM on weekdays and 6:00 AM on weekends. All those connections will be lost under the new schedule. Same-day connections are not recognized on weekends except, ironically, for a Sunday connecting train scheduled to arrive at Springfield at 12:26 AM, after the local buses have stopped running.
For New York State riders, the current schedule never connected with any trains going beyond Albany-Rensselaer. On weekdays, the last train leaves Penn Station at 8:45 PM, so it connects unless the other connecting train is significantly late. The later arrival of the new connection will not connect to Albany anymore. Ironically, the last Albany-Rensselaer train will leave Penn Station at 10:45 AM on weekends which would allow a 60-minute connection, but Amtrak does not recognize it. Coming from Albany, there is no feasible train that would work on weekdays, even though the 5:55 AM departure (before local buses start) offers a 50-minute connection, which Amtrak does not recognize. The 6:50 AM departure now allows a 1:41 connection, which will be lost.
The schedules for Miami trips are illustrative, and passengers will still be able to use the Silver Meteor, which leaves New York in the afternoon and will still run through to Miami. It does not serve Tampa, but there is a bus that serves that city by connecting with the train at Orlando. For passengers riding to or from the Carolinas, including cities like Raleigh and Columbia, there will be no such alternative. The Meteor does not serve that part of the route.
There is also the question of capacity. Consists are limited, not only on Superliner trains, but also on single-level Amfleet II long-distance trains. For riders traveling between NEC points and places in Virginia, Savannah or Florida points that are served by both trains, there should be some loss of riders who would use the Silver Star today but would switch to the Silver Meteor because it would be significantly faster, somewhat less expensive and more convenient with a one-seat ride to take the Silver Meteor instead. Will the future consist of that train have enough room for new riders making the switch? If not, demand for that train will exceed available supply of seats (and, sleeping car rooms, to some extent), and fares will increase even further.
At this point, all I can do is make educated guesses about these questions. I don’t know for sure, and Amtrak isn’t saying. Again, time will tell.
So how might the new routing work in practice? I plan to let you know in a future report.
David Peter Alan is one of North America’s most experienced transit users and advocates, having ridden every rail transit line in the U.S., and most Canadian systems. He has also ridden the entire Amtrak and VIA Rail network. His advocacy on the national scene focuses on the Rail Users’ Network (RUN), where he has been a Board member since 2005. Locally in New Jersey, he served as Chair of the Lackawanna Coalition for 21 years and remains a member. He is also a member of NJ Transit’s Senior Citizens and Disabled Residents Transportation Advisory Committee (SCDRTAC). When not writing or traveling, he practices law in the fields of Intellectual Property (Patents, Trademarks and Copyright) and business law. Opinions expressed here are his own.
