Amtrak’s THREE RIVERS, named for the three rivers that enter Pittsburgh, was begun on September 10, 1995 to replace a portion of the historic BROADWAY LIMITED. Running from the steel city to New York City, the train was extended over the rest of the route of the BROADWAY along the ex-B&O Willard Sub to Chicago on November 10, 1996. The train was mostly a mail carrier and made its voyage primarily during nightfall. Stops were established on most of the former BROADWAY locations except Garrett, Indiana. Ridership never was reasonably high, although this was caused by lack of comfortable equipment; the train carried mostly low-level short-distance cars such as Amfleet and Horizons. Full-dining service was never established and no Viewliners were used at first; four 10-6 sleepers were used until their waivers expired in 2001. The number of head-end cars outnumbered the passenger cars by a ratio of 3 to 1. The train made its final run on March 7, 2005.
Here are two rare videos of the THREE RIVERS at Fostoria , Ohio in the middle of the night in May, 2000. Note the large number of head-end cars. Note the Viewliner on the second train.
At least on these trains, those were long distance Amfleet II cars. same as on the Lake Shore.
It was a great train to put passengers who had misconnected from late trains from the West. I will agree that the food service offered on that train was far from adequate.
I remember seeing the “Three Rivers” once at the Hammond/Whiting station with 10 head-end cars, two coaches, a food-service car and a sleeper. It reminded me of the “Lake Cities” in the late 1960’s before the mail contracts were cancelled.
I rode the Three Rivers from Chicago to Pittsburgh twice. The food service was not any worse than the food one gets on the Texas Eagle, although the selections were more limited.
Was the Three Rivers speed restricted because of the head-end express cars? Also, did those cars have lock-tight couplers?
In the era that the Three Rivers was running, quite a number of Amtrak trains were hauling ‘express’ as Amtrak was trying to make a market in that form of business, much to the displeasure of the railroads on whose tracks Amtrak operated. With a top management change, Amtrak made the decision to eliminate that business as it extended their scheduled running times to the detriment of the passengers; as the trains would make a stop after leaving their initial passenger loading point to pick up the express cars, and make another stop before their final passenger stop to set off the express cars; not to mention the extended running times account the size of the trains.