As mandated by congress, the Southern Rail Commission had Amtrak prepare a report on the resumption of gulf coast service from New Orleans to Mobile Alabama and other cities to Orlando Florida. The least expensive, alternative A1, would cost $5.48 million and have 138,300 passengers, and would be an extention to the City of New Orleans train, and would connect Chicago, Memphis, and other cities to as far away as Florida. For clarity in this discussion, I will call it the Orlando Sunshine. It would travel an additional 767 miles through a metropolitan population of 7.3 million, with further connections to the Silver Meteor and Miami, and by busing to Tampa. Connection northward at Jacksonville is also possible, but with a 9 hour layover for the Silver Meteor and 15 hour for the Silver Star. The same could be accomplished with alternative C, which is a stand alone train, but with half the potential passengers and greater cost. Both have the following schedule for selected cities:
New Orleans 5:00 PM
Mobile 8:18 PM
Tallahassee 5:00 AM
Jacksonville 8:15 AM
Orlando 11:30 AM
Return trip:
Orlando 4:15 PM
Jacksonville 7:25 PM
Tallahassee 11:10 PM
Mobile 6:03 AM
New Orleans 9:30 AM
As a hub, New Orleans has poorly designed connectivity. Passengers arrive in the afternoon/evening, stay the night and depart in the morning/early afternoon. The City of New Orleans arrives at 3:32 PM, the Crescent at 7:32 PM, and the Sunset Limited at 9:40 PM. The Crescent departs at 7:00 AM, the S
Don’t mess with the Crescent whose schedules are very tied to the present Atlanta times. Maybe an Atlanta arrival 1 hour earlier would be OK but any earlier would kill Atlanta arrivals from NYP.
Instead for connections to / from Crescent use the Dedicated Thru way buses Gulfport - Hattiesburg or Mobile - Tuscaloosa.
How does the equipment get serviced? It seems that you think the train can run from Chicago to New Oleans to Houston and make a commuter like turnaround and return to Chicago with out allowing any time for its 1000 mile inspection, restocking, cleaning, etc. Get real.
I have marveled at the turn-around time in Miami for the three all-coach trains that were operated between Chicago and that city: all three had the same schedule between Jacksonville and Miami (each one ran every third day), arriving in Miami just before four in the afternoon–and leaving for Chicago before five thirty. There was scarcely enough time for unloading, cleaning the interiors, and boarding new passengers. I do not doubt that there were times when each train arrived in Chicago after midnight–and was to be ready by about eight in the morning after arrival. There was one set of equipment for each train. The FEC may have used its engines on the trains, with the change being in Jacksonville each way.
I suspect if they follow through on this proposal it will destroy the time keeping of the City of New Orleans and make it as unreliable as the Sunset Limited.
I would the rate the chance of resumption of the Sunset east of New Orleans as between zero and none. Same as resumption of daily west of New Orleans. Once you let the original service go, you give the host railroads the opportunity to jack the price to unrealistic levels.
Of course, it doesn’t help when Amtrak folds so easily, instead of waging a fight.
The lesson for Amtrak is: Don’t let your deal go down. Because you’ll probably never get it back at a price you can afford.
If we are going old school, then the Orlando ( Miami ) to new Orleans section of the run needs to be a separate train from the present day sunset, with thru sleepers. It would greatly improve time keeping and eliminate those embarrassing trains that were 6 to 20 hours late.
The old gulf wind made its run over night between new Orleans and Jacksonville. It better served the gulf coast markets snd made better connections in new orleans than Amtrak coast to coast attempt with the catch all sunset.
As I recall, except for one of the three (I do not remember just which one), the idea of same day turnaround in Miami did not last past 1951. In the end, the City of Miami and South Wind ran on alternate days, with the equipment spending the night in Miami as well in Chicago.
Thanks Streak, I was trying to be very careful with Atlanta. That is why i mentioned its time. There is at least an hour of padding from Atlanta to New Orleans to make up for its possible lateness into Atlanta. I was hoping that someone would suggest the best places to throw some money into infrastructure to prevent lateness into Atlanta and where on its way to New Orleans are the best places to speed it up.
Those are very good questions and there are a lot of variables. I don’t have all the answers, but perhaps together we can figure something out.
The City of New Orleans has at least one hour of padding from Memphis to New Orleans and there are probably infrastructure improvements. For the time being, I have left that alone, but we can think about specific changes.
Amtrak is giving 1 1/2 hours to assemble and service the eastbound Orlando Sunshine section. I gave it 40 min more. Maybe that is a problem, and we need to go back to a 5:00 PM departure or something else.
Amtrak is giving 4 1/4 hours to recombine and service the northbound Orlando Sunshine to Chicago. I gave it 30 min less.
Servicing near Orlando is the same as Amtrak
The westbound Houston Rocket section needs to split off and be serviced first. Perhaps someone can figure out how to speed this up. The quicker it leaves New Orleans, the quicker it arrives in Houston. We also need specific infrastructure improvements in order to arrive around 11:30 PM. Maybe we also need a spare locomotive.
Like said the old gulf wind was a overnight train that provided good connection on both ends, new Orleans and Jacksonville. Its crazy to try to run a catch all ( all ways late all ) coast to coast sunset. Run a Miami to new Orleans gulf wind with connections to a new Orleans to LA sunset. Amtrak needs to service its local customer’s first rather than the few that want to endure a coast to coast train.
The “straw” schedule works okay for Mobile to New Orleans day trips, and even helps wiht Orlando - Jacksonville. The rest of the route is pretty useless as it runs east-west where most of the intercity traffic is north-south. It really doesn’t matter what time it serves Pensicola.
New Orleans is not a bad place to have to layover for a night. In fact, it might even improve the trip!
Interesting. By way of contrast, Pensacola had 689,269 emplanements. Some other barely used stops in FL: Lake City - 703; Madison - 399; Chipley 1,886; Crestview 1,357;and even Tallahassee only 2,888. Of course there are also stops in Jacksonville, but no breakout of ridership on the Gulf Coast train. Also Mobile and some MS stops. However, it would appear that the PRIIA study predicting ridership of 80-96K was overly generous.
This proposal is a casebook example of one of Amtrak’s shortcomings: planning based on “doing things the way we (always) do it.” The demographics have changed so radically since 1950 or even 1970. Freight lines recognized this factual trend by greatly reducing routes in areas with declines in population and business in the NE and rustbelt and cornbelt. Why is Amtrak stuck in a time warp?
Looking at those ridership numbers reminds us of why Amtrak basically abandoned the route. There is no train today because Amtrak failed to restart it after the tracks were restored following Katrina. They saw the opportunity to quit and seized it.
A Congress and ridership interested in the route would have insisted on restoration. Obviously, neither was nor did.
Any resumption of service on this route should be focused on the New Orleans-Jacksonville-Orlando market. The proposed schedule allows for reasonable connections with the CNO which should remain a separate train on its present route. Using an extended CNO for this service would just repeat the same problems the SUNSET frequently had especially on the eastbound runs. With a skeletal LD system and a tight equipment situation not all scenarios for service can be attained.
With many of the PRIIA recommendations not acted upon and a new chairman on tap for later this year why not look at some restructuring of service in this region? Reworking the CRESCENT (while not altering the NY-Atlanta segment) to split in Meridian, MS with one section going to Dallas-Fort Worth via Jackson and Shreveport with the southern section going to Houston and San Antonio via New Orleans to connect with a restructured TEXAS EAGLE would be a start. Running the TE as a Chicago-San Antonio (via Palestine TX)-Los Angeles train on a daily two night out schedule would give most of the major cities on this route reasonable arrival/departure times. A big test would be if thru cars from the TE could be interchanged for D-FW at Longview, TX. and if a reasonable transfer time could be achieved at San Antonio.
On the downside the SUNSET would miss connections in LA with the COAST STARLIGHT but there would be LA-AZ daylight service and an opportunity to work various markets between CHI & LA. If thru D-FW cars on the CRESCENT are not possible then thru CHI-HOUSTON cars on an extended HEARTLAND FLYER could be looked at.
It’s time to look long and hard at working the markets within a certain train’s route than trying to make everything connect putting a strain on everything.