Amfleet is headed for the history books

I can’t recall the train or the location, but I distinctly remember my reaction the first time I boarded an Amfleet car in 1975. I probably said “wow.”

That might surprise some who recall being underwhelmed by the new equipment. There was plenty to criticize, I suppose. They were austere in appearance, especially with those inside-bearing Pioneer trucks adapted from commuter service. The traditional Dutch doors in the vestibule were gone, replaced by automatic sliding doors that certainly fit the image of a sealed tube. Then there were those windows, often dismissed as “rifle slots,” pale replacements for the picture windows of the postwar era.

But the Amcoaches and Amcafes were new, and that’s what counted. They were evidence Amtrak was going to stick around. They were the first major investment in U.S. intercity passenger cars in a quarter century. And, for my money, they were a comfortable ride, a pleasant place to watch Midwestern scenery go flying by at 79 mph. I especially liked the indirect lighting and the way the low-hanging baggage rack made for a cozy reverie. My colleague, Dave Ingles, compared the interiors to first class in a DC-9.

Whatever they mean to you, the original Amfleet cars have earned a place in history, especially now that Amtrak has announced plans to replace them. The railroad recently put out a request for proposals to manufacture a new fleet for Northeast Corridor and Midwest services. The deadline for bids is March 15. The requirements for the cars — 125 mph operation, improved wi-fi, compliance with positive train control, for instance — show how much has changed since 1975. 

We already have a sense of what the next cars might look like. The consortium of state-supported Amtrak corridor services in the Midwest and California has placed an order with Siemens for new single-level cars based on those in use on Florida’s new Brightline. Later, presumably even more cars will be needed whenever Amtrak decides to replace the Amfleet II cars, the follow-up fleet of 150 long-haul coaches delivered in 1980.  

It will be a while before the last of the Amfleet I cars are retired, but it’s not too soon to reflect on what they meant to Amtrak in those uncertain early days. Not yet five years old, the company desperately needed new equipment, not only to provide a reliable alternative to its aging streamliner-era cars but also to show the public it could look forward, not backward. To that end, Amtrak committed $192 million for 492 cars, and suddenly Budd was back in the intercity passenger car business, Shotwelding up a storm in its plant on Red Lion Road in Philadelphia. 

Truth be told, the Amfleet I cars were actually a throwback. Not a long one, but a throwback nonetheless, to 1969, when Penn Central introduced the Budd-built Metroliners for service on the Northeast Corridor. In fact, the Metroliners’ pedigree actually goes back to the Pennsylvania Railroad, in that the trains were ordered by PRR before the 1968 PC merger. By the time they were in revenue service in January ’69 they wore the PC “mating worms” logo. 

The Metroliners were glorified multiple-unit commuter trains, generally going no faster than 100 mph, with occasional sprints at 110. But they gave the high-density New York–Washington market an alternative to GG1s and old Pennsy, New Haven, and NYC cars. By the time Amtrak was ready to buy new cars, Budd still had the Metroliner tooling handy. 

Even Amtrak President Paul H. Reistrup acknowledged the hand-me-down nature of Amfleet when he gave an address at the University of Wisconsin’s Graduate School of Banking in the summer of 1975. “We compromised with them,” he said, “and placed an order for Metroliner-type cars but without the Metroliners’ on-board motors for self-propulsion.” 

When the time came, Amtrak introduced the new Amfleet with its usual public relations flair. I asked my friend Kevin McKinney, an early member of Amtrak management and founder of Passenger Train Journal, to put that inaugural in perspective.

“Amfleet was a Godsend,” he told me. “Fortunately, Budd built the Amfleet with the same strength and quality that had traditionally been a hallmark of the company. And little did we know at the time that the new cars would have to last well over four decades. Forty-four years before 1971 was 1927 and [Amtrak’s] early equipment planners thought cars built in the 1940s were, in 1971, too old!”

It will be interesting to see what fate has in store for Amfleet, once the replacements arrive. They might be excellent candidates for someone’s excursion fleet, or even a tourist railroad willing to engage in some 1970s nostalgia. Pair them up with an F40. At the very least, some examples belong in railroad museums willing to move beyond the “classic era” of steam locomotives and streamliners. 

I wish I had a chance to encounter those first Amfleet cars more often, but most of my train riding these days is aboard Amtrak’s Milwaukee–Chicago Hiawatha trains, a service dominated by the Bombardier-built Horizon fleet, cars that, to my mind, are inferior to the old Budds. To paraphrase Amtrak’s early slogan, those early Amcoaches “made the trains worth traveling again.”