The Capitol Limited was a great train. It was the flagship train for the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) during its initial 48-year incarnation and an Amtrak train for its second, and final, 43-year run. During the years, it saw several changes in routing, but it always ran on the B&O main between Washington, D.C. and Chicago through Pittsburgh under that railroad’s flag and from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh under Amtrak.
From one of America’s stellar trains during its first incarnation to one of the shortest a few years before its final demise, the Capitol Limited it took its passengers along much of the scenic Potomac River on the way to and from Washington, D.C., and provided a level of service in its first incarnation and a level of comfort even at the end of its life that was unsurpassed elsewhere east of the Windy City.
The Capitol Limited made its last run on Nov. 10, 2024. It has been combined with the portion of the Silver Star route between Washington and Florida, but the new train no longer serves points north along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC) to New York Penn Station. The new combination consists of memories of sorts from four historic trains that are no longer with us. It combines the routes of the Capitol Limited and Silver Star, the name of Amtrak’s 1970s-vintage Floridian, and the numbers from Amtrak’s version of the Broadway Limited, which Amtrak inherited from the Pennsylvania Railroad and ran until 1995. Ironically, the numbers are reversed, with Train 41 running east from Chicago and Train 40 going west.
A Great Train Most of Its 91 Years
The “Cap”began life on May 12, 1923 as a luxury service, an all-Pullman train running between New York Penn Station and Grand Central Station in Chicago on an overnight schedule. Until 1926 it used the Lehigh Valley (a portion of that route is now NJ Transit’s Raritan Valley Line) and the Reading to get to Philadelphia, where it got onto B&O rails for the rest of the trip.
From then until 1958, the train originated at the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal, also known as Communipaw Terminal and Jersey City Terminal (the building is preserved in what is now Liberty State Park, but there are no tracks leading to it), ran on the CNJ to Bound Brook (partially on today’s Raritan Valley Line) and the Reading to Philadelphia, where it continued on the B&O. It was during that era that the train assumed the royal blue and silver livery with gold pinstripes that had become the “look” of the B&O. It ran as Trains 5 and 6. The eastern terminus of the train was changed to Baltimore’s Camden Station and later to Washington, D.C., but the B&O ran a connecting Rail Diesel Car (RDC or “Budd car”). By 1969, the Capitol Limited was the only train on the route between Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and its run ended on April 30, 1971, along with two-thirds of the other intercity trains in the nation.
I rode the B&O version of the train one time. It was April 1971, and I took one last trip on several trains that I knew were not going to be included in Amtrak’s skeletonized long-distance system. Train 6 left Chicago (Grand Central Station had shut down, and the train was moved to Union Station) at 3:50 PM, and I bought a ticket to La Paz, Ind., the nearest stop to which I could purchase a ticket. I went immediately to the dining car and proceeded to enjoy a hurried meal of short ribs, cherry pie and coffee, all served on the B&O’s signature Century china pattern, which featured scenes of the railroad in blue, reminiscent of patterns popular in 1827, when the B&O was founded. The railroad’s famous salad was gone from the menu, but the dinner was great. I had to eat it quickly, because I got off at Gary, found my way to the South Shore Line (today’s Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District), and rode it back to Chicago. Three weeks after I rode, the mighty Capitol Limited rolled into history on a high note.
Revival, and 43 Years on Amtrak
For more than ten years, there were no passenger trains on the historic B&O route, except for a few commuter trains on the Baltimore-Washington and Washington-Martinsburg routes, which are operated by Maryland’s MARC today. The one train that continued west of Martinsburg used the route as far as Cumberland, and then went through West Virginia to Cincinnati as the Shenandoah, a name the B&O once used for a Chicago train. Amtrak discontinued it and restored the Capitol Limited on Oct. 1, 1981. It ran on the historic B&O east of Pittsburgh and ran combined with the Broadway Limited, which was discontinued in 1995, west of there. Two years later it began to run independently from the Broadway Limited and was assigned numbers 29 and 30. It was later rerouted west of Pittsburgh through Alliance, Ohio to Cleveland, where it got onto the historic New York Central main (now part of Norfolk Southern). Ironically, the now-defunct Broadway Limited and its successor, the Three Rivers (both using numbers 41 westbound and 40 eastbound) ran on the historic B&O route, now CSX, through Youngstown and Akron.
For most of its years on Amtrak, the train’s consist included three sleeping cars, a dining car, a lounge car, and three coaches, using Superliner equipment. Beginning in June 2018, though, Amtrak began downgrading it. Dining service was discontinued and replaced with pre-plated meals for sleeping car passengers only, a custom that later spread to other trains in the East and temporarily nationwide. The consist was shortened, too. In its last years, the train ran with only two coaches and two sleeping cars, with a single food-service car between them. Sleeping car passengers were given pre-packaged meals, while coach passengers were restricted to purchasing lounge car snacks. When I rode in the spring of 2022, the consist was at its nadir: one sleeping car, one coach, and one food service car.
My Last Ride on the Capitol Limited
I had planned to take my last round trip on the “Cap” by taking Train 29 from Washington, D.C. to Chicago on Oct. 29 and returning from Chicago on Nov. 9, on the last scheduled departure of Train 30. The consist on Train 29 had regained the coach and sleeping car that it had previously lost, so there were two of each. Coach passengers were still not allowed to purchase meals, only lounge car snacks, so I had lunch in the city and brought snacks to eat later. There were no snacks available for coach passengers at dinnertime, because the attendant had to serve the pre-packaged meals to passengers in the sleeping cars. An announcement said that the lounge car would be open later for “other activities,” but with no explanation. I asked the conductor what that meant, and he said it would be open for regular lounge car activities, with no mention of available food.
From my vantage point on the right side of the train (facing north), I got to see some of the Potomac River and other scenery along the historic former B&O main. It was also pleasant to relax in a reclining seat with plenty of legroom, a notable improvement over the Amfleet II cars on the Lake Shore Limited and other trains that serve New York, whose seats have less legroom and do not recline to nearly as obtuse an angle. Our train ran behind schedule, but not severely enough to jeopardize any Amtrak connections.
On that trip, the consist was augmented by three private cars at the rear end of the train, all built during the “Streamliner” era of the 1940s and 1950s. They were headed for the Heber Valley Railroad, a tourist railroad that runs excursions from Heber, Utah, about 28 miles from Provo. The cars were scheduled to leave Chicago the next day on Train 5. Mike Manwiller, who was supervising the move for the Heber Valley line in his capacity as its CMO, showed me the cars: a parlor car, a lounge car that had seen service on Amtrak, and a sleeping car with a lounge section named Catalpa Falls, which still sports the original Tuscan red livery it had when built for the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1949. The only rails of PRR heritage over which it rode on that trip are between Alliance, Ohio and Cleveland.
As I arrived in Chicago on Oct. 30, I looked forward to riding back on similar equipment on Train 30 as I enjoyed my customary lunch during such layovers at Lou Mitchell’s (a famous coffee shop near Union Station), enjoyed the warm day, and boarded Train 3 for Los Angeles.
It was not to be. Circumstances beyond my control and Amtrak’s prevented me from getting back to Chicago in time for the final official run of the once-mighty Capitol Limited. I spent the weekend, including Friday, in L.A. Then I took Train 4 to Flagstaff to spend three days with a longtime friend who had moved to Arizona. I was ticketed to leave “Flag” on Thursday morning and spend a day in Chicago, to eliminate the risk of misconnecting with Train 30 on Saturday. When my friend took me to the Flagstaff station, the agent announced that Train 4 would be annulled at Albuquerque on account of a broken rail and a BNSF freight train derailment near Needles, Calif.. I changed my ticket to a Friday departure, expecting to be held over for one additional day. Then came a blizzard that dumped up to three feet of snow in parts of New Mexico and Colorado, forcing BNSF to shut that part of the railroad down and canceling Train 4 until Saturday’s departure from Los Angeles. I could not leave Arizona until early Sunday morning, which meant a short layover in Chicago, the trip to New York on Train 48, and no opportunity to ride the legendary Capitol Limited for the return portion of my final round trip.
I was struck by one final bit of irony at Chicago Union Station as I waited for the Lake Shore Limited on Monday. The departure board showed both Train 30 to Washington and Train 41 (the number of the now-defunct Broadway Limited, but in the other direction) to Miami, both with 6:40 departure times.
An advocate in New Jersey who monitors the passenger rail blogging sites relayed this report from Sunday, Nov. 10, which has not been confirmed at this writing: “The last northbound Silver Star reportedly arrived in Washington on Sunday and was truncated, not continuing to New York, and its single-level equipment became the last westbound Capitol Limited, departing more than two hours late and with the single-level equipment that the Floridian will use.” If that report is accurate, the Silver Star was not allowed to lie in state at New York’s Penn Station or even at Sunnyside Yard, and the consist of the now-legendary Capitol Limited was not allowed to carry passengers on its last trip to Chicago, a very different ending than the one that concluded its previous incarnation back in 1971.
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.
