The question would be what the status of a train that was, say, 7-8 cars long sending 4-5 cars (say two coaches, a food car, and two sleepers) through would be. It seems clear that it would occupy at least some sort of mixed status (and point of fact there's precedent for cars not running through as part of an LD service...the MSP cutoff car on the Builder [numbered separately] and the occasional cutoff car at DEN [not numbered separately] seem to allow for this, as would the Atlanta cut-off cars on the Crescent [proposed by Amtrak]).Because sections, as currently implemented, attach to other trains (in their entirety to my knowledge); I do believe that's the historical practice as well. Declaring the Pennsylvanian to be a section, while not actually treating it as such, would run afoul of the PRIAA requirements. A revived Broadway, similarly, would be an entirely different train which continues on to Chicago, not a second Pennsylvanian terminating in Pittsburgh.And what is the difference between what I described and operating a "New York section" of the Capitol Limited via the Pennsylvanian's route (or, for that matter, a revived Broadway presumably using the Cap's routing west of PGH)?
At least as far as I can tell, the Cap's weak performance is largely down to the lousy timings at every intermediate destination going both ways save Cumberland. A major part of the train's weakness, from what I can tell, is down to (A) not meeting with the Star, meaning that through sleeper passengers who can't get a room on the Meteor likely don't travel, period; (B) bad connections with the Pennsylvanian requiring long waits in the PGH station (four hours WB), with the note that PGH-CHI is the largest non-endpoint city pair for the train; © not being able to command higher prices because the Silvers command them (you have at least some revenue being transferred here); (D) bad intermediate station times in CLE, TOL, and PGH; and (E) through traffic crowding out intermediate traffic to some extent.
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As to the two threads, I'm inclined to leave them be or to close the other with a redirect here at the end.