@Seaboard92 I hope you did notice that they carefully avoided almost everything that had anything to do with any LD service. So all of that jiggery pokery with the Star and Crescent is apparently out of scope of whatever Amtrak is trying to peddle in this random map at present.
Simple things like Denver - Pueblo for some reason does not extend to La Junta or Trinidad? Wut?
In short, it is not a connected service plan based on basic mathematical models of connected graphs. It is a collection of random one ended lines added to the current map in most cases.
Oh I agree it is really a haphazard map of things, most of which don't really make a whole lot of sense. Connectivity is something Ithink is important when planning a route network. Even on the Airline Empires simulation game connectivity means wonders for your bottom line. Connecting routes and connecting hubs is great but having spoke routes as well to bring additional traffic into the hubs is the way to go. It looks like whomever drew this map looked more at the Spirt Airlines model where it's more linear base than connected. I would continue to draw the lines in ways to make things more viable.
I've long thought the North South corridor from Detroit to New Orleans actually made a lot of sense. There are enough variations one can do on it to make it really interesting. When one looks at that line there are so many interesting branches and cities you could make a fairly comprehensive regional system. Going from North to South
Main Line
-Detroit
-Toledo
-Dayton
-Cincinnati
-Louisville
-Nashville
-Chattanooga
-Birmingham
-Montgomery
-Mobile
-New Orleans
Then factor in from Toledo you are getting interchange traffic if timed right east/west.
At Cincinnati and Dayton you have the 3 C Branch which is Cleveland, and Columbus into this system.
At Louisville you are adding a Chicago branch with Indianapolis in the middle.
At Nashville you could theoretically branch to Memphis.
At Chattanooga is when you really start getting to the fun part. You can do a branch that goes out to Atlanta and swings back into the main line at Montgomery.
The ultimate kicker in this is you don't really have to run on each branch that frequent to really have a good network. No one train has to use the entire network or hit all the cities but if they are on the main trunk line for a portion they are making the infrastructure worth building because the cost per train lowers.
I would have to sit with a timetable to really demonstrate what I'm trying to describe but the basic thing is to get every three hour service between intermediate points on the trunk line but the destinations and originations being different for each train.
It's really a unique run because of all the variants and options you can attach to it which you can't easily do elsewhere in the country. The closest I could think is doing something on the Silver Service which has Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa. On that you can easily throw an Atlanta branch off from either Columbia or Raleigh to Jacksonville.
