I respectfully disagree. Naming all the trains on one service -- City A to City Z making stops B, C, D, etc. inbetween -- with a single name is more useful to the traveling public. It helps people think of the trains as a single service with the various frequencies reinforcing each other. "If I miss the 7am
Lincoln Service, I can catch the 9:25 am
Lincoln Service." Stated another way, a traveler needs to know that the
Empire Builder is not a
Hiawatha, the
Texas Eagle is not a
Lincoln Service train, and the
Coast Starlight is not just another
Pacific Surfliner, but what does a traveler gain from knowing that the 7am train from CHI to SPI is the
Ann Rutledge but the 9:25am train between the same cities is the
State House?
IIRC, there's only two places on Amtrak where trains of the same corridor service making the same stops have different names: the
Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr and the
Illini/Saluki. IMHO, the State of Illinois (which pays Amtrak to operate those trains) needs to decide on one train name for each of these services and stick with it for all the trains on that service.
That said, I believe that the long-distance trains should be individually named -- the two Silver Service trains already have different names, and if any other long-distance route ever has two or more trains a day, each one should have its own name. I also would have no problem reusing the
Twilight Limited or
Lake Cities names for new routes or services.