Passenger Trains > Happy 45th Anniversary Amtrak

It was 45 years ago today that Amtrak started up. In Photo 1, I compare the first system timetable with the current one, which turns out to be the last one that Amtrak says it will print. For a first day ceremony, Amtrak had Penn Central E8A No. 4316 painted in a one-of-a-kind livery (Photo 2). The unit continued in revenue service for several months in this look before being painted in the Phase I scheme and given roster number 322. It later became No. 461 before being retired in July 1981. 

I saw my first Amtrak train on Amtrak's innaugration day. It was the southbound City of New Orleans leaving my hometown of Mattoon, Illinois, and I viewed it from across a cornfield from my backyard. It was running late and I was disappointed because it looked exactly the way it had looked the day before with its Illinois Central locomotives and passenger cars. I was a senior in high school set to graduate in about a month and for some reason I thought that on Amtrak day the trains would take on a new appearance. They did in time, but not on the first day. I don't know what I expected, but I thought it would be something different. The image is from my collection and the photographer is unknown to me.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/16 02:52 by SDP40F600.

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Enjoying the Journey for 45 years.

Posted from Android

Proud to have been a part of Amtrak NEC Engineering from its conception in 1976 through 1985 and beyond.  Go Amtrak!!!

The way some folks here do nothing but complain about Amtrak, I don't think everybody is celebrating the 45th.

I remember the beginning of Amtrak. At the time I was commuting from Lancaster to Harrisburg on the Penn Central and there was some doubt as to whether the trains would continue running. Fortunately they did.
The most interesting thing was that they were going to run a connecting train on the Port Road branch, a line that hadn't seen regular passenger trains for many years! So I went to Holtwood and managed to catch sight of the first one. I think that I was also thinking that there might be some Amtrak logos or paint, but it was just a Penn Central GG1 and cars.

Posted from Android

I for one am wondering why our leaders at times until recently (hopefully) tried every trick in the book to get rid of it and it's still going, only thing I wish Amtrak wouldn't of done was get rid of the trains they had in 79, 95 and 97!

How about the Desert Wind, Pioneer and the rest of them  no longer with us.

Chris

Here are two northbound Surfliner pics from this afternoon: (1) Departing Fullerton, and (2) passing through Santa Fe Springs at speed.
We can lament the trains that are no more, and enjoy (and ride) the ones still here....

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I'd say that 45 years is quite an accomplishment for a company that appeared to many to be intentionally designed to fail within a very few years and then (that initial short-life goal having been thwarted) has been perennially treated like an unwanted step-child by nearly every Congress since.  Add to that the various Amtrak presidents and other high corporate officers who have had an NEC-service-only goal and it's a wonder that we still have even a bare-bones national system in place.

For my family the advent of Amtrak 45 years ago was a sad time when my father's long-time passenger job was abolished (as I described five years ago at http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,2456281,2456281#msg-2456281) as the result of Amtrak killing all service on the SP&S line.  Of course on the other side of the coin Amtrak's many-years-later decision to hire their own engineers and conductors provided an opportunity for me to work passenger service which certainly wouldn’t have occurred had Amtrak not been created.  Absent Amtrak I highly doubt that there would have been any passenger train service surviving by the mid- or late-‘70s except perhaps on the NEC.  I was grateful for the 19⅔ years that I had running on Amtrak; not only for the passenger experience but also because of the drastic change in working conditions for SP&S engineers following the “Bungling Nuisance” merger in 1970.
 
I’m glad that Amtrak is still around in even a skeletal national system.  Having not been on an Amtrak train in 2⅔ years that’s fixin’ to change as my wife and I are departing PDX on #28 a week from today on a three-week trip to visit her parents in Arkansas who live about 20 miles south of the Cotton Belt 819.