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10 | First&Fastest Spring 2011

Things Were Not theSame after May 1, 1971by George E. Kanary

5We certainly did not see Turboliners in regular service in Chicago before Amtrak. This train isheaded for St. Louis in August 1977. —All photos by the author except as noted

D-Day for AmtrakIn mid April, 1971, I was returning from

Seattle, Washington on my favorite trainto the Pacific Northwest, the NORTHCOAST LIMITED. For nearly 70 years,the flagship train of the Northern PacificRR, one of the oldest named trains in thecountry, had closely followed the route ofthe Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804,and was definitely the super scenic way toSeattle and Portland. My first associationwith the North Coast Limited dated to1948, when I took my first long distancetrain ride alone at age 10, to and from theState of Washington. The train still hadsome heavyweight sleepers, but the stream-lined observation car, where I spent a lot oftime, was making only its second roundtrip. You could still smell the fresh paint. Sitting in my room and watching the

Mississippi rolling along outside my win-dow, sorrow came over me like a dark cloudas I realized that this train, running overthis magnificent piece of high speed rail-road, would no longer exist in two weeks.The senior crews that held down the

glamour runs like the NORTH COASTand the EMPIRE BUILDER, by then com-bined east of the Twin Cities, would go

back into freight service or retire. Thefriendly stewardess-nurses would find otheremployment. The locomotives and carswould go into the AMTRAK fleet and bedispersed country wide, some even windingup running on the other side of the river onthe Milwaukee Road to the Twin Cities. That was only one example of the serv-

ices that would be lost with the advent ofAMTRAK on May 1, 1971. Chicagowould be hit hard with the cutback of trainservices. No longer would the ladies ofDanville, Illinois be able to ride the trainto Chicago for a day of shopping andreturn home by early evening. Nor wouldthe folks from Clinton, Iowa have a similarservice any longer. Indeed, there would beno passenger service anywhere on theChicago & Northwestern RR, including,amazingly, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Therewould be no Madison trains on theMilwaukee Road route. All of the UnionPacific trains whose routes took them outof Chicago over the west line of theMilwaukee Road would be terminated.These were just a few of the trains lost in

what I considered to be an inauspiciousbeginning to the new service. Even thenew name, AMTRAK, was a disappoint-ment to me, since I preferred the classiersounding RAILPAX, which was eliminat-ed at nearly the last moment.In addition, wasn’t AMTRAK really

being brought into existence to eliminatethe passenger train in America? Didn’tPresident Richard M. Nixon only sign theauthorization bill because it was attachedto something else he badly wanted? Wasn’tRoger Lewis, the new CEO and presidentof the new corporation an oil industry manwith no railway experience? Weren’t thenew locomotives that were anticipated tobe ordered, freight engines that would besold to the freight railroads when passen-ger service ended? There were a lot ofquestions unanswered.The railroads that went into Amtrak did

so by turning over their locomotives andcars, servicing facilities and some depots inlieu of cash, based on a formula that deter-mined the amount of their alleged passen-ger train losses. While the equipment of

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the western roads was considered to be inrelatively good to excellent condition, theequipment of the eastern lines, with theexception of the Southern, which did notimmediately join AMTRAK, was mostlyrealized to be borderline junk. Even theBudd built cars of those lines, considered asbuilt to last forever, were in severely deteri-orated condition. Nonetheless, these carshad to be used and western route passen-gers, long used to traveling in high style,were occasionally treated to the spectacleof riding in an under maintained, worn outcar that came from the Penn Central. Thefolks at the Santa Fe who had never fal-tered in the flawless operation of their pas-senger trains must have cringed when theyfirst heard the new AMTRAK slogan,“We’re making the trains worth ridingagain”. Soon it was announced that JohnReed, CEO of that road, had revoked theuse of the copyrighted name, SUPERCHIEF, because, among other indignities,it was learned that the lounge cars and din-ers were serving Manhattans in Martiniglasses! What would Mr. Reed think oftoday’s airline style plastic?Nearly two generations have come of

age since AMTRAK was founded and formany people it is the only passenger trains

they have ever known. All thoughts ofelimination of the service ended when thegasoline shortages of the early 1970sarrived. A terrible inconvenience formotorists, the shortages, whether real orcontrived, were providential for the fledg-ling new passenger railroad. Peopledescended on the train stations across thecountry, and when they did, they discov-ered that many of the archaic practices ofthe past had been eliminated. No longerwere credit cards not accepted, no longerdid the traveler have to pay a hefty firstclass fare in addition to a charge for asleeping car space, and reservations werenow uniform, nationwide. The short haultrains had been modernized with Amfleetcars and new locomotives were arriving.Despite the entire amazing acceptance ofthe new American passenger train and itsever increasing passenger loadings,Amtrak continues to be a political punch-ing bag. The present administration is thefirst to acknowledge that it deserves prop-er funding and must continue, thoughthere are many friends of the railroad onboth sides of the aisles in Washington.While many of the famous names of the

passenger trains have been maintained andsome new ones added, AMTRAK has

become a generic name denoting passengerservice across the nation. On a recent out-ing to the beautiful Chicago BotanicGardens near Glencoe, Illinois, I spent afew minutes watching the operation of theGarden Railroad, a big treat for the youngand old, as it wends its way through thescenes created from natural materials, overhigh trestles and low waterways. A trainthat was a model of the German high speedIntercity Express, the ICE train, was oper-ating but it was painted in the AMTRAKcolor scheme. A group of young boys care-fully watched for it to appear and when itdid, several of them dutifully called out,”HERE COMES AMTRAK”! AMTRAKhad definitely arrived. Chicago, long known as the railroad

capitol of North America and still today,the heart of the Amtrak system, lost manyof it’s passenger trains on Amtrak Day,May 1, 1971. In time all intercity trainswere consolidated at Union Station, ful-filling a long time dream of Chicago cityplanners. But for a period of just under ayear some trains continued to operate outof Central Station, the Lakefront home ofthe Illinois Central trains as well as trainsof the New York Central bound for Detroitand Cincinnati.

5A harbinger of things to come, Great Northern’s Empire Builder, operated by the Chicago Burlington & Quincy between Chicago and Minneapolis,was detouring over The Milwaukee Road due to flooding in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. The train is still on Chicago Union Station Companytrackage as it passes west of the Noble Street tower in June 1965. Under Amtrak this would be the Empire Builder’s route out of Chicago.


Things Were Not the Same after May 1, 1971

Amtrak Chronology2-14-69 Association of American

Railroads announces that itsboard has voted to ask forFederal subsidies for passengertrains and a Federal passengercar pool.

6-11-69 Twenty eight senators sign aresolution asking for a study ofsubsidies or government operation.

9-29-69 Senate TransportationCommittee begins hearings.

1-18-70 Department of Transportationannounces its “RAILPAX”plan, involving formation of aNational Railroad PassengerCorporation. The proposal isopposed by the Office ofManagement and Budget.

5-6-70 Railpax bill is passed by Senate,78-3

10-14-70 House passes its own RAILPAXbill, which is accepted bySenate on a voice vote.

10-30-70 President Nixon signs theRAILPAX bill.

11-30-70 Transportation Secretary Volpeannounces end points for pre-liminary route system.

1-28-71 End points for final route sys-tem are announced.

3-22-71 Exact routes and stops areannounced.

4-19-71 It is announced that NRPCwill operate under the nameAMTRAK rather than RAIL-PAX.

5-1-71 Amtrak assumes responsibilityfor intercity passenger trainoperation.

5-10-71 Add LAKE SHORE LIMITED,Chicago-Cleveland-Buffalo-New York.

5-20-71 Add one train, Philadelphia-New York-New Haven-Springfield-Boston. (Inlandroute)

6-6-71 Add NORTH COASTHIAWATHA, Chicago-Minneapolis-Fargo-Bismarck-Butte-Sandpoint-Spokane-Seattle.

6-10-71 CITY OF NEW ORLEANSwreck kills 10 passengers.

7-1-71 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY,(Chicago-Cincinnati) andGEORGE WASHINGTON,(Cincinnati-Washington-Newport News), through-routed.

Information was compiled by John Swider

6The early days of the “rainbow trains,” equipment painted in the colors of their former owners,gave way to the red, white and blue stripes together with the “pointless arrow,” Amtrak’s initial logo.What did survive was the variety of dome cars, including sleeper domes. Locomotive 626 is leadingthe second section of the eastbound California Zephyr on New Year’s Day of 1976 through theHighlands station in Hinsdale, Illinois. The dome car rearest the camera served on the Chesapeake& Ohio, Baltimore & Ohio and finally the Seaboard Coast Line before coming to Amtrak.

5E-unit 296 is leading a Chicago-bound Detroit train through Ogden Dunes, Indiana, on the formerNew York Central in June 1974. In the foreground is the single track of the Chicago South Shore &South Bend. The South Shore’s service to South Bend could have qualified as a “long distance” serv-ice under the Amtrak legislation. However, parent company Chesapeake & Ohio decided not toinclude the South Shore under Amtrak. —John F. Doyle photo 6Amtrak train 5, California Zephyr,passes under the Oak Street bridge in Hinsdale, Illinois, in November 1974. The “strings” hangingdown are a railroad artifact dating from the early days of railroads. Known as “tell-tales,” they werea warning to men riding on the top of freight cars that a close overhead clearance was just ahead.


Amtrak FollowupChange came quickly to the passenger

train scene on May 1, 1971. My friend,Robert ‘Bob’ Campbell, now and for sometime, the senior Amtrak engineer in zone8, the Midwest region, was a BurlingtonNorthern fireman on that day. Having hadApril 30th off, he deadheaded west on theevening of the 30th to Galesburg, Illinoisto work number 20 into Chicago, whichdeparted Galesburg eastbound at 2:40 am,only to find that it had been annulled. TheAmerican Royal Zephyr no longer existed. It didn’t take long for the folks along the

route of the American Royal and theKansas City Zephyr to complain loudly toanyone in the Statehouse or Washingtonwho would listen to their complaints aboutbeing left with no passenger service. Whilethe service had been seriously eroded underthe regime of CEO Louis Menk, at leastsomething survived and now Amtrak hadtaken it away. The 403b provision of theAmtrak enabling bill which required thestates serviced by local trains to pay for thatservice was implemented and the result wasthe institution of the ‘Illinois Zephyr’, alocal daytime train serving all stopsbetween Chicago and Quincy, Illinois.The equipment first used on this train

was the former Chicago & Northwestern‘Bi-Level Streamliner’ coaches includingthe ‘Sip and Snack’ lounge cars and anEMD F-7 locomotive.The cars were acceptable enough, but

the locomotive was apparently pure junk,and it and the entire train were seen onmany occasions being dragged in behind aBurlington Northern freight engine. Itwas, however, a preview of the future forAmtrak in that all the utilities on the trainwere powered by electricity, the 480 VoltsAC being generated on the locomotive forlight, heat and air conditioning, the use ofsteam, propane powered air conditioningdrives and axle driven lighting generatorsand batteries being a thing of the past.From the first day, the on board service

crews, the dining and lounge car staff andthe sleeping car attendants becameAmtrak employees. The operating depart-ment people, the conductors, brakemenand engineers continued for many years asemployees of the host railroads which con-tracted with Amtrak for service and billedit on a monthly basis. Rumors about abus-es of the system by the railroads abounded,for example, the Burlington Northernallegedly billed Amtrak for all of its

5Turboliners were among the more interesting equipment that Amtrak brought to Chicago forregional service. About to arrive at Chicago Union Station, this set is inbound from St. Louis atthe 21st Street interlocker in August, 1975.

5Early in its southbound journey to Chicago, this Turboliner is passing the Milwaukee Solvay Cokeplant. Now gone, this area in South Milwaukee looked like Dante’s Inferno as coal was being con-verted into coke.

5Oh, how we miss domes and observation cars. They were a sign of truly luxurious trains. A for-mer New York Central Brook-series, Budd-built, sleeper-lounge-observation car built for theSouthwestern Limited, NYC’s premier St. Louis train, is passing through Hinsdale, Illinois, in July1976. This is eastbound train number 6, the California Zephyr.



Amtrak’s first executive management team was more focused on getting out of the passenger busi-ness than staying in business. This was the arrival of locomotives more suited for freight service.The thinking was they would have value to the freight roads if not needed by Amtrak. The six-wheelaxles at high speeds did not ride well, nor were they kind to the track structure. 56GeneralElectric-built 705 is leading train 348, the Illinois Zephyr, just east of the Hinsdale, Illinois, stationin April 1976.The coaches are ex-Chicago & North Western, built for service between Chicagoand Wisconsin.

switching and hostling, including all of itssuburban trains. The corporation began to employ the

train crews directly beginning with theNortheast Corridor in 1982 and by theearly 1990s the conversion was complete. As a railfan, engineer, trainmaster and

road foreman of engineers, Bob Campbellwatched with interest as the Amfleet carsarrived, first hauled by steam boilerequipped EMD E-8s and E-9s, utilizing for-mer US Army baggage cars converted tohead end power cars. Soon the big EMDSDP40Fs arrived in 1973, steam boilerequipped, the plan being to slide out theboiler package and replace it with a headend power unit but as it more widelyappeared, a series of locomotives that couldeasily be sold to the freight railroads whenAmtrak was shut down. They were fol-lowed by the P30CH engines from GeneralElectric in 1976, a design based on theU30CG locomotives built for the Santa Fe.With their sixteen point throttles and

hard riding trucks, they were much dis-liked by engineers but still survived inservice until 1992. They were the firstlocomotives that Amtrak ordered thatwere delivered with head end power alter-nators. Despite their faults, they were typ-ical GE locomotives in that they could‘Dig in and haul’, and were regulars on thelong Amtrak Auto Train, which common-ly handled up to 48 cars. The SDP40Fs were plagued with derail-

ment problems including a number ofhigh speed wrecks attributed to the designof the draft gear on the rear of the loco-motive as well as the rigidity of thetrucks. They didn’t last long, being takenout of service by the late 1970s andreplaced with the EMD F40, at first con-sidered to be the locomotive for shorthaul trains. The first 30 of the F40s weredelivered in 1976, all equipped with headend power, while a number of the secondorder were delivered as rebuilt SDP40Fs,the rebuilding being only items like thecontrol stands, prime mover, and tractionmotors. They were based on the successfuldesign of the GP40-2, having the sametrouble-free electronics and along withsubsequent orders with large fuel tanks,became the workhorse of the Amtrakfleet, 216 of them operating around thecountry. Even though there were varietiesof locomotives purchased, some of themsecond hand when the corporation founditself in a motive power pinch, they held

sway until they began to be replaced bythe smooth riding streamlined GE P40sand the powerful P42s. Amtrak today has351 diesel and 74 electric locomotivesfrom many builders as well as a few formerelectric MU cars and has had over theyears exotics like the Turbo Trains. Therail car fleet standardized on the Doubledeck ‘Superliners’ while utilizing Phase 2Amfleet cars and the newly designed‘Viewliners’ on most of the eastern routesand Phase 1 Amfleet and Horizon cars onthe short haul trains.Today, with 42 years of railroading

behind him, 23 of them as an engineer ofAmtrak trains, especially, the prestigiousSouthwest Chief, and a long time servingas the local chairman and treasurer of hisBLE division, Bob Campbell is looking for-ward to retirement, to build the ‘O’ scale

model railroad that has eluded him formany years. Such is the life of an engineerworking six days a week, with half of one’slife spent away from home. One would suppose that he has seen it

all, yet Amtrak is on the cusp of a new age,the beginning of the high speed era. Theservice continues to expand despite theeconomy with another train now runningon the 403B route that began it all, theChicago-Quincy ‘Carl Sandberg’ as well asthe original Illinois Zephyr. Two genera-tions have come of age in the 40 yearssince the Amtrak D Day. Amtrak has like-wise come of age, routinely and effectivelygoing about its business of carrying everincreasing millions of passengers. On its40th anniversary we wish it continued suc-cess and look forward to the new age of railpassenger transportation.


5Looking north from Taylor Street in May 1977, the Southwest Limited is pacing a Burlington Northern suburban train. 6Seconds later a Detroittrain followed. When Amtrak assumed the Chicago-Los Angeles train the traditional name, Super Chief - El Capitan, was retained. El Capitan wasdropped in 1973. John Shedd Reed, Santa Fe’s president, withdrew permission to use the name Super Chief in 1974 when he believed Amtrak’s serv-ice did not live up to the traditions of “his railroad’s” Super Chief. The train was then named the Southwest Limited. After Amtrak equipment andservice was upgraded, the train became known as the Southwest Chief beginning with the October 28, 1984, timetable. The 500-series locomotiveswere adapted from a freight design. Both the Santa Fe and BN restricted the operating speeds of these locomotives due to suspected damage to thetrack structures. The locomotives were designed for lower speed heavy-haul freight service rather than high-speed freight service. Their replacements,also built by the Electro-Motive Division, were the 200-series. With their four-wheel trucks, they were more suitable for high-speed passenger serv-ice as well as commuter train service.



5Amtrak’s desire to consolidate all of its operations at Chicago Union Station resulted in the closing of Illinois Central’s Central Station. Trains oper-ating on the IC, such as The Illini, had to back in and out of Union Station and traverse the St. Charles Air Line. This outbound train is about to crossCanal Street at 16th Street.

5E-units did not survive the arrival of the 200-series locomotives. Near the end of its service life on Amtrak, the 417 is leading the Abraham Lincoln,southbound through Lemont, Illinois in July 1978. This train will be stopping at Joliet in a few minutes.


Trains maintained or rerouted onAmtrak startup day, May 1, 1971.All trains from Union Station exceptas noted:Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe: #15,16, TexasChief, #17,18, Super Chief-El CapitanBurlington Northern: #1,2, Denver Zephyr,#17,18, carried as part of Denver Zephyr, triweekly beyond Denver to Oakland, CA. viaUnion Pacific and Southern Pacific RRIllinois Central: #1,2, City of New Orleans,#9,10, Shawnee, from Central Station. Gulf Mobile & Ohio: #1,2, AbrahamLincoln, #3,4, The Limited.Penn Central: PRR #48,49, BroadwayLimited, NYC #14,17, Chicago-Detroit. NYC#303,304, Chicago-Cincinnati, #90-93, TheSouth Wind, from Central Station.Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific:#9,23,27, #12,24,46, daily, Milwaukee expresstrains. #31,32, daily, Empire Builder.Rerouted from Burlington Northern toMilwaukee Road.

All information for this list was compiled by JohnSwider, a timetable collector since 1939 and amember of the National Association of TimetableCollectors. John provided the author with all thetimetables and information pertinent to April 30and May 1, 1971.

Chicago trains not associatedwithAmtrak:Chicago Rock Island & Pacific: #11,12,daily, Peorian, #5-9, 6-8, daily, Quad Cities,intercity service. Chicago-Blue Island-Jolietsuburban train service, from LaSalle StreetstationBurlington Northern: Chicago-Aurora sub-urban train serviceChicago & North Western: Chicago-Kenosha-Harvard-Geneva suburban trainservice, from Northwestern StationMilwaukee Road: Chicago-Fox Lake-Elginsuburban train serviceIllinois Central: Chicago-Richton Park-Blue Island, South Shore District Electricsuburban train service, from Randolph StreetstationPenn Central: Chicago-Valparaiso suburbantrain service, later operated by AmtrakGulf Mobile & Ohio: Chicago-Joliet subur-ban train serviceNorfolk & Western: Chicago-Orland Parksuburban train service, from new platformadjacent to Dearborn StationChicago South Shore & South Bend:Chicago-Michigan City suburban train serv-ice, Chicago-South Bend intercity servicefrom Randolph Street station


Chicago Trains Discontined at Amtrak Startup: Norfolk & Western, former Wabash: #121,124, City of Decatur.

Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe: #1,2 San Francisco Chief, #23,24, former Grand Canyon.

Louisville & Nashville, former C&EI: #3,4, City of Danville.

Baltimore & Ohio: #5,6, Capitol Limited. From C&NW Station

Chesapeake & Ohio, Pere Marquette district: #8,9, Pere Marquette.From C&NW Station

Burlington Northern, former CB&Q: #5,6, former Kansas CityZephyr, #7,10 Morning Zephyr, #8,9, Afternoon Zephyr, #19,20, for-mer American Royal Zephyr, #25,26, North Coast Limited, #31,32,Empire Builder, #11,12, former Nebraska Zephyr, off before Amtrak.

Grand Trunk Western: #155-156, International, #158-159, MapleLeaf, #164-165, Mohawk.

Chicago & North Western: #121, 149, 153, 209, 152, 160, 206, 216,Milwaukee, Green Bay, Menominee, Ashland, WI, #1,2 Clinton,Iowa. Former Kate Shelly 400

Illinois Central: #3,4, Mid American, #5,6, Panama Limited, #7,8, Illini, #11,12, Hawkeye, #21,22, Governor’s Special, #52,53,every other day, City of Miami.

Gulf, Mobile & Ohio: #5,6, Midnight Special.

Penn Central former Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads:PRR #22,23, Manhattan Limited, #50, The Admiral, #54,55,Pennsylvania Limited, every other day #90,93, South Wind, NYC # 27,28, 51,52, 61,62, 63,64,

Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific: MILW #5,6, MorningHiawatha, #11,22, The Sioux, #117,118, The Varsity, #56, The FastMail. MILW-UP #101,102, daily, City of San Francisco, #103,104daily, City of Los Angeles-Challenger, #105,106, daily, City ofPortland, #111,112, daily, City of Denver. All above combined in one train, lead numbers, 103-111, 112-104, nicknamed, “City of Everywhere”.

Information was compiled by John Swider

5The route of the California Zephyr is shown as running over the D&RGW whereas this did not take place. The train ran over the Union Pacificthrough Wyoming west from Denver to Salt Lake.

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