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Enroute on No. 5
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by notelvis: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by tarheelman: [qb] [QUOTE]Originally posted by palmland: [qb] Great picture of ATSF engines. It was clear even in the latter days of railroad operated passenger service which carriers had some degree of pride in their operations. [/qb][/QUOTE]I agree---Santa Fe took great pride in their operations. Southern Railway did, too. Not surprisingly, Southern opted to continue its passenger service at the time that Amtrak was formed. It's been said that ATSF only gave up its passenger service to Amtrak in '71 at the last minute, after being told that they couldn't drop their unprofitable routes and keep the ones that were still making a small profit. [/qb][/QUOTE]Seaboard is another railroad that wasn't in a hurry to join up with Amtrak. The kicker, as you allude to, is that the Amtrak legislation mandated that any railroad choosing not to join Amtrak in 1971 would have to maintain all of their existing passenger trains until January 1, 1975 before they could again petition for discontinuance. Southern took advantage of a loophole by having their fully merged subsidiary, Central of Georgia, join Amtrak and thus discontinuing the 'Nancy Hanks' (Atlanta to Savannah) and CofG's section of the 'City of Miami' on April 30, 1971. It has been suggested that it was by throwing the CofG passenger trains 'under the wheels' that Southern was able to maintain the rest of their passenger operations.....and that the Southern Crescent was the only one they really wanted. On May 1, 1971 the remaining Southern passenger trains were the 'Southern Crescent', the 'Piedmont' (a DC to Atlanta day train), the tri-weekly remnant of the 'Asheville Special' running from Asheville to a connection with the 'Piedmont' in Salisbury, NC, and a nameless one coach train between Washington and Lynchburg. This train was a remnant of the 'Birmingham Special' via Knoxville and Chattanooga. These trains were operated well by the Southern with clean equipment, pleasant staff, and mostly on-time trains. The parade of train-off petitions cranked up again shortly after the mandatory January 1, 1975 deadline. By June 1975 the 'Crescent' was only operating tri-weekly south of Atlanta where it had previously operated daily as far as Birmingham. The 'Lynchburg Special' trains #7 and #8 disappeared. The 'Piedmont' was discontinued south of Charlotte and rescheduled so as not to make the connection with trains #3 and #4 in Salisbury. With the connection broken the Asheville train was averaging fewer than 19 passengers per trip and it was discontinued two months later in August 1975. The 'Piedmont' made it's final runs just after Thanksgiving in 1976.......so in just 23 months Southern had divested itself of every passenger operation save for the Crescent.....and the steam excursions but they are another story. This was a particularly sad story for me as my first passenger train trips were aboard train #4 from Asheville to Salisbury and then on to visit an aunt in Washington, DC aboard #6, the northbound Piedmont. I developed an affinity for FP7's and dome cars all at the same time! [/QB][/QUOTE]
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