Early Amtrak curiosities

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Twin Star Rocket

Service Attendant
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
189
Location
Texas
If you research the the timetables of the first two years of Amtrak you'll find some interesting operations.
First, trains #12 and 13 operated daily between Oakland and San Diego as the COAST DAYLIGHT. At the same time, #11 and #14 operated three times a week as the COAST STARLIGHT between Seattle and San Diego.

Secondly, you will find trains # 5 and 6 operated daily between Chicago and Denver as the DENVER ZEPHYR and the same train numbers operated three times a week between Chicago and Oakland as the CITY OF SAN
FRANCISCO.

Essentially there was an extension of the COAST DAYLIGHT and DENVER ZEPHYR three times a week.
 
While it would be nice to see the SM return to Ocala and Waldo, my guess would be that, even if Amtrak wanted to do that, it would not be able to ... since CSX owns both tracks,the one they currently run on and those that run through Waldo, they would probably rather keep both the SM and the SS on the same tracks rather than schedule around them on two different tracks. The tracks that run from Orlando through Waldo and on to Jacksonville stay fairly busy with freight. All three of the Amtrak trains run on the tracks that run from Orlando through Palatka to Jacksonville.

The sad thing is, many of the tracks used in past routes have been abandoned with many of going from "rails to trails" with the tracks removed ... and would he difficult to get back to lay rails down.
 
Southern Pacific traditionally used odd train numbers for "toward San Francisco" rather than westbound/southbound as most other roads did. I have been told -- secondhand, but by someone who worked for the road in Portland and should know -- that SP continued to call the Starlight 11 from Portland to Oakland, 12 from Oakland to LA, 13 from LA to Oakland, 14 from Oakland to Portland until the time of the UP merger, though Amtrak quit putting the 12/13 numbers in the timetable when the Coast Starlight became daily.

The short-lived overnight Sacramento-LA train was similarly 15/18 in the public timetable, 15-16 and 17-18 to SP.

There were a number of other cases where a train was daily over part of its route but triweekly over the rest, with the same train number (Builder west of Minneapolis, Inter-American/Eagle west of Ft. Worth, Crescent west of Atlanta). Chicago-St. Louis Eagle had a different number (321/322 instead of 21/22) the days it didn't continue south of St. Louis.
 
Southern Pacific traditionally used odd train numbers for "toward San Francisco" rather than westbound/southbound as most other roads did. I have been told -- secondhand, but by someone who worked for the road in Portland and should know -- that SP continued to call the Starlight 11 from Portland to Oakland, 12 from Oakland to LA, 13 from LA to Oakland, 14 from Oakland to Portland until the time of the UP merger, though Amtrak quit putting the 12/13 numbers in the timetable when the Coast Starlight became daily.

The short-lived overnight Sacramento-LA train was similarly 15/18 in the public timetable, 15-16 and 17-18 to SP.

There were a number of other cases where a train was daily over part of its route but triweekly over the rest, with the same train number (Builder west of Minneapolis, Inter-American/Eagle west of Ft. Worth, Crescent west of Atlanta). Chicago-St. Louis Eagle had a different number (321/322 instead of 21/22) the days it didn't continue south of St. Louis.
Nice post, my Grandpa was a 40 year SP Hand and I rode these Trains many times as a kid as well as the Mopac Eagles.
 
Nice post, my Grandpa was a 40 year SP Hand and I rode these Trains many times as a kid as well as the Mopac Eagles.

All true. And freight maniifests that were scheduled trains (i.e., with regular numbers rather than Xabcd where abcd was the locomotive number) traveling northbound through the Central Valley of Calif would magically change from odd to even train numbers around Stockton, once they were no longer traveling toward San Francisco but now traveling away from San Francisco.
 
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