The era that will end when the last Amfleet car is removed from service began six years before the first Amfleet car went into service. The Amfleet era began with the Penn Central Metroliner. In 1969, the Metroliner changed the perception of passenger rail in the northeast. Old, dirty and slow became new, shiny and fast. To use an overworked phrase, Metroliner was a game-changer for northeast passenger rail. I gladly paid the upcharge to ride “The Metro” to New York. I recall it was an extra 50 cents.
With Budd having built the Metroliners and still having the detailing and tooling for the design, Amtrak saw an opportunity to quickly upgrade its rattle-trap passenger fleet with a proven and available product. Thus was born the Amfleet car – a Metroliner car without the motors. Amtrak purchased the unpowered Metroliner cars with the aim of expanding Metroliner-type service to more trains in the northeast and to nonelectrified routes. Like the Metroliner before it, Amfleet was a game-changer for Amtrak. Finally the old Penn Central “roach coaches” could be replace with cars that looked like modern transportation. A modest order grew to a big order and finally to a huge order.
The term “work horse” certainly applies to Amfleet. The oldest Amfleet cars have been in service for 47 years. To put that in perspective, when Amtrak was formed in 1971 it inherited cars from the participant railroads. Few (if any) of those cars were even 30 years old. A 47-year-old car in 1971 would have been built in 1924.
Now in 2022, Amfleet is no longer the new shiny car on the rails. But, I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Amfleet has defined Amtrak for most of its existence. Amtrak got its money’s worth out of that purchase.
Ticket jacket from trip to New York on November 1, 1969. The "2300" is round trip for two Philadelphia to New York.
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