What's your favorite passenger train?
It's the Empire Builder and CB&Q's Pioneer Zephyr for me!
What else? SUPER CHIEF!!! Followed by the Texas Chief.
Dick
Texas Chief
I WOULD HAVE TO ICK 3 OF THE NEWEW AMRAK SUERLINERS AND VIEWLINERS LSD RAINS. 'CITY OF NEW ORLEANS"-CHICAGO-NEW ORLEANS," THE CRESCENT" VEWLINER NEW ORLEANS-WASHINGTN-NEW YORK AND THE "XCAPTIOL LIMITED" SPERLINER CHIACHGO-WASHINGTON D.C., ALL 3 HAVE SUPERB SLEEPING,DINING ACCOMODATIONS.
GRAND AVE,
Without a doubt, the Talgo Cascade train sets from Seattle to Portland!
A great ride, great service and great price.
It will be nice to see the new interior with the new leather seats.
I am a Talgo and guided-axle fan myself (rode the TurboTrain once).
People tend to be divided into two camps. Some people are impressed with Talgo, others grump that anything other than 4-axle conventional passenger cars "rides roughly."
I also understand that the Cascades Talgo has a segment between Seattle and Vancouver that is on some rough track? How much of the rough-riding attributed to lightweight trains is intrinsic to light weight or the unconventional suspension, how much is attributable to bad track? Most of the 1950's lightweight experimental trains (John Quincy Adams Talgo, Daniel Webster Train-X, and Roger Williams RDC) ran on the New Haven, which back in the day probably had bad track owing to "deferred maintenance."
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
This one!
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=9268
Why? Because it represents progress and hope. A decade before, the Shoreline was sinking into the swamp. The early Amtrak trains ran with a rag-tag mess of worn-out, threadbare, dirty, rusting equipment pulled by wheezing E units. It definitely had a bad case of the "disappearing rail road blues."
At the point of this picture, we have nearly new Amfleet cars with AC and heat that always worked and glass windows you could actually see out of. You have a single, nearly new F40 pulling 8 coaches that could nick 100 mph a few places along the way on a ROW that had new, welded rail and concrete ties, making for a lathebed-like suface and smooth ride.
Finally, some progress and hope after decades of decline!
(and for the fuel efficiency fans, an F40 in N8 (160 gal/hr) at 100 mph with 8 Amfleet - about 600 seats, is doing 375 seat-miles/gallon. Not too shabby!)
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
California Zephyr/Rio Grande Zephyr
Electroliner
Congressional(s) and Senator
Silver Meteor
Panama Limited
Gulf Wind
Broadway Limited
Mowhawk (GT)
Liberty Bell Limiteds (LVT)
Super Chief
Merchants Limited
Suncook Valley Mixed
Princeton Junction and Back
Third Avenue Through Express with gate cars (open platform cars)
Twentieth Century Ltd. (as seen in North by Northwest, 1959.)
Santa Fe Chiefs/El Capitans, etc.
Washbash
Capitol Limited
Empire Builder
MOPac Eagle
Twin Star Rocket : Minneapolis - Houston
Olympian Hiawatha : Chicago - Seattle
Empire Builder : Chicago - Seattle / Portland
Black Gold : Tulsa - Fort Worth
It was the NH westbound "Patriot"... only because it went through my hometown in 1968 (it didn't stop) somewhere around 3:30PM. That was time enough for me to get out of school, ride down to the station, sit down with my back to the depot wall, and stick my feet out dangerously towards the tracks. Just knowing where the train was coming from, what the name of the train was, and when it was going to do that made it my favorite.
For looks, though, my favorite is the SOUTHERN Crescent, just because I think the locomotives (steam or diesel) looked really cool.
For a traditional long-distance train, Via's Canadian is my favourite, as it features tasty meals in elegant surroundings, classic sleepers and, best of all, the Park car dome.
Also a favourite north of the border is the Rocky Mountaineer, since it has great food and service, a dome (albeit the Park car is better for all-around views) and, great for photos, the open air platform.
As for steam, the Silverton rates high on my list. No diesel helper and great scenic views which can be enjoyed from an open-air car or window.
hf1001 wrote: What's your favorite passenger train?It's the Empire Builder and CB&Q's Pioneer Zephyr for me!
My favorite train?
Hmmm let me think.
Boy, that's a tough one........
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
yosemitevalley wrote: For a traditional long-distance train, Via's Canadian is my favourite, as it features tasty meals in elegant surroundings, classic sleepers and, best of all, the Park car dome. Also a favourite north of the border is the Rocky Mountaineer, since it has great food and service, a dome (albeit the Park car is better for all-around views) and, great for photos, the open air platform.As for steam, the Silverton rates high on my list. No diesel helper and great scenic views which can be enjoyed from an open-air car or window.
Even the 10 miles from Hermosa to Durango? 10 miles at 10 mph. Zzzzzz. If only they could pick it up to 20 mph through there......
Erikthered. You must have seen quite a variety of equipment on the Patriot in 1968, including:
PRR P-70 coaches in various types of modernization.
New Haven prewar lightweight "American Flyers" Some all green and some with letterboard orange stripe
Postwar 8600-series fluted silver-sided lightweights (orange McGinnis stripe).
An occasional beautiful PRR Budd borrowed from the Senator-Congessional pool
A New-Haven parlor-baggage combine (I think the only 1st-class accomodation on the train at the time.) Again, fluted silver-sided postwar lightweight.
Usually FL-9 power? Usually two units but sometimes three?
A real mixture of heavyweight head end stuff, including express box cars, turtle-roof PRR shorty baggage cars, stainless steel ex-Santa Fe New Haven baggage-express cars, and even an occasional New York Central head-end car of just about any type imaginable.
I remember the Patriot in the last New Haven days as really being quite a mishmash of equipment, as opposed to the Merchants and Yankee Clipper and Colonel, which generally ran to just the postwar New Haven Lightweights, and the Senator, which was usually all PRR except for headend. But I might be wrong.
The Southerner, then the Southern Crescent, never ran behind steam except (as indeed I saw) when there was a diesel dilemma and then the PS-4 was simply coupled ahead of the E-unit(s).
The Crescent ran behind steam in its heavyweight days, as an all-Pullman train. It was dieselized before it got leightweight equipment.
The Southerner and the Southern Crescent took the all Southern route to New Orleans via Birmingham, while the Crescent always ran via the West Point Route and the Louisville and Nashvill between Atlanta and New Orleans, using the power of those two operations (the two West Point route railroads pooled power), at least during its steam days. With diesel, Southern power continued to Montgomery over the West Point route, and the L&N power used from there if my memory is accurate. Someone can remind me of the names of the two West Point route railroads.
I agree with you about the looks of Southern passenger diesels. Great paint job!
Correction: On some weekends when traffic was light, only one FL-9 was needed between Boston and New Haven, with no headend equipment, just a few coaches, diner or grillcar and up front the parlor-baggage. At this time the Patriot used an EP-5 New Haven- Penn Station and of course a GG-1 Penn Sta. to Washington. Only on rare occasions did FL-9's run through to Penn Station, but it did happen on occasion.
1.San Joaquin Daylight.My first train ride was on this train when it had a dome car and a diner.
2.Southern Crescent
3.Rio Grande Zephyr
4.Durango-Silverton train.I rode this when it was owned by the Rio Grande.
5.BC Rail RDC from North Vancouver to Lilooet.This is the only part of the line I have ridden.
1. AT&SF Super Chief
2. GN Empire Builder
3. CN Super Continental
4. CP Canadian
5. CB&Q/D&RGW California Zephyr
6. SP Shasta Daylight
7. NYC Twentieth Century Limited
8. PRR/RF&P/ACL Florida Special
9. PG&E Cariboo Dayliner
10. NP North Coast Limited
Don Oltmann:
I found your favorite train (the F40 and the 10 Amcoaches) at this Web site
http://ntlsearch.bts.gov/tris/record/tris/00343669.html
This is an abstract of a 1981 study on Amtrak fuel efficiency, and from the description of the routes and the tonnages, it looks like your train.
I wonder if the F40's take a hit on fuel consumption because they run the prime mover at full RPM all the time for the HEP -- they didn't run a constant 100 MPH on that route but had to make stops, and the motor was going full blast stopped in the station.
Paul Milenkovic wrote: Don Oltmann:I found your favorite train (the F40 and the 10 Amcoaches) at this Web sitehttp://ntlsearch.bts.gov/tris/record/tris/00343669.html This is an abstract of a 1981 study on Amtrak fuel efficiency, and from the description of the routes and the tonnages, it looks like your train.I wonder if the F40's take a hit on fuel consumption because they run the prime mover at full RPM all the time for the HEP -- they didn't run a constant 100 MPH on that route but had to make stops, and the motor was going full blast stopped in the station.
All that is true. Still, at one ton per seat, 277 ton miles per gallon works out to roughly 277 seat miles per gallon, or at 50% LF, 140 pass miles per gallon. About double what a family of 4 would get in a minivan road trip and about 5X better than flying.
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