posted
As GBN has oft noted, the men at Railroad HQ's around the country on this day in 1971 fully expected that Amtrak would fully relieve them of the 'passenger train problem'. Railpax offered immediate relief from the direct expense of operating their own passenger trains but many, if not most, people in the industry, fully expected that the intercity passenger train would go away altogether in four or five years.
Obviously this did not happen as the long-distance passenger train found enoungh friends to keep some semblance of a national system going for 38 years now.
My question.....while intended primarily for GBN.....is open to all takers though.
I'm curious whether it was a gradual realization that this Amtrak thing wasn't going away or if there was one (or a couple of) watershed moment when the railroad CEO's suddenly thought "We've been duped and we're not happy about it."
Just curious for some insight on 'Amtrak Eve' regarding how we got from 'there' to 'here'.
-------------------- David Pressley
Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!
Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes. Posts: 4203 | From: Western North Carolina | Registered: Feb 2004
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My guess is that these people were extrapolating the trend in passenger train ridership of the 1950 to 1965 to 1970 time period. If the line were extended it would have hit the zero level somewhere around or before 1975. this of course is one of the dangers of extrapolating statistics. There need to be a "sanity check" on what is really possible. When I see trend projections I always think of one of the discussions in my Highway Engineering course. Prof. Bullington made the comment (in 1966 give or take a year) that, if we extrapolate the reduction in the average number of people in an automobile on the road, by 1980 1/4 the cars on the road will be empty.
Posts: 2810 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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I'm a bit younger than Mr. Norman (I was still in high school on A-Day), but I did attend the press conference in Sept. 1970 at which Amtrak's route network was announced.
My recollection is that, following Mr. Nixon's resignation in August 1974, the Congress and FRA "got serious" about Amtrak. The Amfleets were ordered even before 1974, which was an acknoledgement that Eastern corridor services were around to stay, and the Superliners were ordered in 1975 (IIRC). Also, about the same time Amtrak started "rebuilding" the SDP40Fs into F40s at about the same time.
Once Paul Reistrup replaced the hapless Roger Lewis as president of Amtrak, he became an effective spokesman in front of Congress. Also, of course, the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the ensuing increase in gas prices (not to mention the 55 MPH speed limit) helped as well.
It is hard for us today to remember just what a turbulent and difficult time the 1970s were. People who are freaked out by today's recession clearly didn't live through the 70s.
Amtrak reached a "high water mark" in patronage in 1979 (just before the Carter cuts of late 1980), and never managed to return to that level of ridership until the 1990s.
Posts: 614 | From: Merchantville, NJ. USA | Registered: Aug 2000
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The Oil embargo of 1973: I was living in the DC area at the time, working on WMATA. A lto of people discovered trains and other ways of getting places rather than driving. I recall driving down I-81 one night with wife and baby going toward the relatives down south and having the road almost to myself.
In the same time frame, somewhere I saw a political cartoon that showed two guys behind a railroad station ticket window with a crowd of faces on the other side: One of the guys had a bottle in his and and was saying: "I gotta lay off this stuff. I am seeing hundreds of people out there trying to buy tickets."
At that time Amtrak had plenty of equipment available to lengthen trains and they used it. It was common to see the Florida trains stopping at Alexandria with over 15 cars and the Southern Crescent, still being operated by Southern, with four units and 16 or more cars.
Posts: 2810 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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I recall that a similar oil squeeze in the late 70's prevented the 'Carter Cuts' from being more draconian. Even the Crescent, which had just transferred to Amtrak, was under threat for a time.
Speaking of the Crescent, I recall riding the still Southern Crescent during the summer of either 1977 or 78 from Washington to Spartanburg, SC. The railroad had a special movement of 5 or 6 sleeping cars going as far as Greensboro. The train departed Washington in two separate sections (about 8 coaches w/ lounge and diner in the first section, at least 8 sleepers and another diner and lounge in the second section).
Being a young railfan, I stayed up for the action. In Greensboro our section pulled in first, the northbound Crescent pulled in minutes later, and the second southbound section pulled in within a minute or two of that. The northbound Crescent departed first and then about 3 or 4 of the sleepers going through were switched off the now terminated second section southbound and added to the rear of my first section train.
Even at age 15 or so I realized that I was witnessing a scene held-over from the glory days of passenger railraoding and that by the late 1970's things like this just weren't supposed to still be happening.
-------------------- David Pressley
Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!
Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes. Posts: 4203 | From: Western North Carolina | Registered: Feb 2004
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As a very junior railroad employee, I was way to far down the ladder to have any idea what 'senior management' was thinking. My sense, though, is that since the railroad had eliminated the expense, operating a couple passenger trains was not a big deal. This was in the day when there was plenty of capacity.
I do remember doing a study in our department (intermodal) on why our revenues had taken a big spike in the late 60's in that still regulated market. Of course the answer was Uncle Sam. The sudden and complete shift of mail away from passenger trains caused some of it to land in intermodal.
Posts: 2397 | From: Camden, SC | Registered: Mar 2006
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Yes, recall that in 1979, following the fall of the Shah of Iran, oil prices briefly hit $51 a barrel (higher than they've ever been since, save for a brief time in summer 2008). People just poured onto Amtrak trains.
Of course it wasn't just high prices. There were shortages as well, largely engineered by an incompetent allocation scheme devised by Jimmy Carter's Energy Department. In short, all gas stations got X% of their previous year's sales as an allocation -- this despite the fact that sales patterns in a "normal" summer reflected the fact that folks were on summer vacations (with their cars).
This turned a 5% shortage into a much larger one in the metropolitan areas, while if you could get to beaches or resorts, when you got there everybody had lots of gas to sell. Great.
It did help Amtrak patronage, though.
Ah, the 1970s. Orange and brown upholstery, avocado-green appliances, pantsuits and leisure suits -- and lots of shortages. People today have it easy -- no orange and brown upholstery.
Posts: 614 | From: Merchantville, NJ. USA | Registered: Aug 2000
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I believe there are still quite a few orange and brown Superliners....
-------------------- --------Eric H. Bowen
Stop by my website: Streamliner Schedules - Historic timetables of the great trains of the past! Posts: 413 | From: Houston, Texas | Registered: Mar 2006
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