lakshore limited

[retired teacher]

Does anyone know why there are no early trains from

Chicago to New York City? It seems they are only available in the evening.

 

[GlobalistPotato]

Because the trains are to arrive in New York City during civilized times (despite being the city that never sleeps...), plus the trains are scheduled so that passengers coming in on the Western LD trains can connect to the Eastern LD trains.

 

[the_traveler]

Trains are scheduled that way due to the connecting trains from the west (Empire Builder, California Zephyr, Southwest Chief and Texas Eagle) arrive in the afternoon. Unlike in "the Old Days", there are not an overabundance of trains (thank Congress

), so they try to coordinate schedules to avoid the need for an overnight stay. Plus they try to have "convenient arrival and departure times" at the endpoints. (I doubt many people would like to depart from LA at 3 AM just to get to Chicago at 3 AM, so they can leave at 6 AM to NY!!

)

 

[Anderson]

It's those Western LD connections that are driving the Eastern connections. Amtrak could move the LSL and CL back a couple of hours and keep decent arrival times (actually, they could move the LSL all the way back to noon and arrive in NYP at 10 AM, assuming they kept the current timetable), but they would destroy connections (let alone "guaranteeable" connections) with a lot of Western trains that don't hit CHI until early afternoon. I've said it more than once, but Amtrak really needs a CHI-NEC train that can arrive before midday so folks don't have to write off a whole day with their travel plans.

 

[GlobalistPotato]

It would be nice if Amtrak introduced a section frequency on the LSL route to provide extra service. Plus is that the Eastbound train would serve Ohio at civilized times, bad news is that Ohio will still be served at bad times with the Westbound train.

 

[jis]

As usual CSX and NS might have an opinion on this matter too They'd rather see two (or even three) trains disrupting freight flow close together rather than being scattered all over the day I am sure. The exception being New York State and the Empire Corridor of course which has always had trains all through the day, since day 1 of Amtrak.