Atlantic Coast (Silver/Palmetto/Carolinian) Service discussion Q4 2023 - 2024

[jis]

It did, but after B&O made it “freight only” east of Baltimore in 1958, they didn’t serve New York (Jersey City). Not sure if B&O domes ever did…

From the following Wikipedia article it would appear that the Strata Domes of the Columbian may have run to Jersey City at least for a while between 1949 and 1958, but it is ambiguous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_(B&O_train)

Incidentally the two original Strata Domes and the additional three Budd built ones for C&O, acquired by B&O all ran on the Florida Special under lease to ACL between Richmond VA and Miami for a while (about a year or so). See http://www.trainweb.org/web_lurker/BO/ Incidentally this page hints that the domes never ran North of Baltimore.

On the Florida Special service they were restricted to Richmond because apparently they could not clear the First Street Tunnels with the then catenary in place. Since then clearance within those tunnels have been increased enough to fit Superliners and presumably most if not all Domes.

 

[Palmland]

B&O feature cars, domes and observations, always started in Washington. They were used on the National and Capitol Ltd, Columbian, and Shenandoah. Even in ‘59, after NY service ended, they were added in Washington although the train began in Baltimore at Camden station.

One of the highlights of my summer trips on the National Limited (to Cincinnati and St Louis) was backing into Washington. Standing at the rear door of the last car it was fun to watch the flagman signal the engineer as we came to a stop, then coupled to the two sleepers to the southwest (MP and Frisco) and the observation, ex NYC.

I suspect the Washington terminal for these cars allowed a same day turn. Perhaps there is a lesson here for Amtrak, although intermediate switching seems a foreign concept unless it involves the whole train.

 

[lordsigma]

The million dollar question would be if this comes to pass would it only be during the tunnel work and would they revert back to Superliners on the Capitol when it's done, or would they keep the Cap on single level equipment and just eliminate the run through at the end. I guess we'll find out eventually. It would obviously consume more single level equipment without the run through but even without the run through it's probably still a better equipment assignment given the pool of single level equipment vs. Superliners.