Floridian (train, 1971–1979)

Floridian

The Floridian at Winter Park in 1973.
Overview
Service type	Inter-city rail
Status	Discontinued
Locale	Eastern United States
Predecessor	South Wind
First service	November 14, 1971
Last service	October 9, 1979
Former operator(s)	Amtrak
Route
Termini	Chicago, Illinois St. Petersburg, Florida Miami, Florida
Stops	32
Distance travelled	1,597 miles (2,570 km) (Miami) 1,481 miles (2,383 km) (St. Petersburg)
Average journey time	38 hours 40 minutes (Miami) 38 hours 33 minutes (St. Petersburg)
Service frequency	Daily
Train number(s)	56, 57
On-board services
Class(es)	Sleeping cars and reserved coach
Catering facilities	Dining car and café-lounge car
Observation facilities	Dome cars
Baggage facilities	Baggage car
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Track owner(s)	Louisville and Nashville Railroad Seaboard Coast Line Railroad
Route map mi 0 mi Chicago IL IN Wolverine to Pontiac Blue Water to Port Huron Pere Marquette to Grand Rapids Central Time Eastern Time 84 South Bend 101 Elkhart 156 Waterloo IN OH 234 Toledo 281 Sandusky 316 Elyria 341 Cleveland Lake Shore Limited to New York and Boston 397 Alliance OH PA 481 Pittsburgh Pennsylvanian to New York 541 Connellsville PA MD 634 Cumberland Potomac River MD WV WV MD MD WV 706 Martinsburg 725 Harpers Ferry Potomac River WV MD 764 Rockville MD DC Northeast Corridor 780 Washington, D.C. Potomac River DC VA 789 Alexandria Amtrak to Chicago, Roanoke, and New Orleans 889 Richmond Staples Mill Road Northeast Regional to Newport News 917 Petersburg Northeast Regional to Norfolk VA NC 1,015 Rocky Mount Silver Meteor 1,085 Raleigh Carolinian and Piedmont to Charlotte 1,093 Cary 1,153 Southern Pines 1,181 Hamlet NC SC 1,255 Camden 1,288 Columbia 1,337 Denmark Savannah River SC GA Silver Meteor 1,425 Savannah St. Marys River GA FL 1,573 Jacksonville 1,631 Palatka 1,683 DeLand 1,715 Winter Park 1,720 Orlando 1,738 Kissimmee 1,788 1,850 Lakeland 1,819 Tampa 1,867 Winter Haven 1,908 Sebring 1,950 Okeechobee 2,011 West Palm Beach 2,029 Delray Beach 2,039 Deerfield Beach 2,053 Fort Lauderdale 2,061 Hollywood 2,077 Miami

The Floridian was a train operated by Amtrak from 1971 to 1979 that ran from Chicago and–via two sections south of Jacksonville–Miami and St. Petersburg, Florida. For its Nashville to Montgomery segment its route followed that of several former Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) passenger trains, including the Pan-American and the Humming Bird (Cincinnati—Louisville—New Orleans). Originating in Chicago, the train served Lafayette and Bloomington, Indiana; Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Decatur, Birmingham, Montgomery and Dothan, Alabama; and Thomasville, Valdosta and Waycross, Georgia.

The Floridian was notorious for lackluster on-time performance, owing to poor track conditions and the poor condition of the equipment it inherited from railroads previously operating on the route. The train used the lines of L&N (including the former Monon Railroad in Indiana, which merged into the L&N shortly after the formation of Amtrak), and Seaboard Coast Line. All are now part of CSX Transportation; some parts of the former route have since been abandoned by CSX.

Amtrak discontinued the Floridian in October 1979, leaving Louisville and Nashville without passenger train service, two of the largest such cities in the nation to have this distinction. (Louisville briefly regained Amtrak service with the Kentucky Cardinal, which operated 1999–2003.) The train was also the very last of a number of long-distance trains that ran between Chicago and Miami for much of the 20th century. Previous trains, on different route configurations between those endpoints, passing through different cities on their respective routes, included City of Miami, Dixie Flagler and South Wind.

History

Pre-Amtrak

Main article: South Wind (passenger train)

The Floridian as conceived by Amtrak was a successor of the Pennsylvania Railroad's (PRR) South Wind, which operated over PRR track from Chicago to Louisville via Logansport and Indianapolis, Indiana; then L&N from Louisville to Montgomery, Alabama; the Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) from Montgomery via Waycross to Jacksonville; and then either the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) to Miami or the Atlantic Coast Line to St. Petersburg.

Amtrak

Amtrak retained the South Wind as a through daily Chicago-Miami train. However, the train was rerouted away from Logansport to the James Whitcomb Riley route via Indianapolis, changing its northern terminus to Chicago's Central Station (owned by Illinois Central Railroad [IC]), which it shared with Amtrak's Panama Limited (the renamed City of New Orleans and not the original all-Pullman flagship) until that facility was vacated later in favor of consolidating all Amtrak services at Chicago's Union Station. The Floridian began using Union Station on January 23, 1972.

The southbound St. Petersburg section of the Floridian at Clearwater in 1979

Amtrak also began serving the west coast of Florida by splitting the now-daily South Wind into St. Petersburg and Miami sections. The train split at Auburndale, with one section continuing to Miami and another going to St. Petersburg via Tampa. On November 14, the South Wind was reconfigured as the Floridian. The St. Petersburg and Miami sections were retained, but the split now occurred in Jacksonville, with the St. Petersburg section serving Orlando and Tampa and the Miami section serving Winter Haven. These two legs crossed each other near Lakeland, Florida. The reconfigured train also added a stop in Nashville, which had long been served by the South Wind but had initially been left out of Amtrak for much of the spring and summer.

On paper, the new Floridian should have been a success. It ran through several major Midwestern and Southern cities (Chicago, Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham) en route to Florida, and its predecessor had existed for over three decades. However, it was fraught with problems. It had to contend with deteriorating Penn Central (PC)/ex-New York Central (NYC) track in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, which resulted in occasional use of MoPac (former Chicago & Eastern Illinois) and L&N (former Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville: Monon) routes north of Louisville. In January 1977, the Floridian was cancelled for two weeks due to severe winter weather in Chicago. Two other long-distance Penn Central trains retained by Amtrak, the National Limited (successor to another PRR mainstay, the Spirit of St. Louis) and the James Whitcomb Riley, were plagued by similar problems.

During Amtrak's tenure, it continued to utilize E-units from many railroads before replacing them with then-new EMD SDP40F locomotives which began arriving in the mid 1970s. Unfortunately, these engines had a tendency to derail, especially on rickety PC trackage. The train suffered terrible delays and frequent derailments, including one at 10 mph. The consists remained steam-heated, and never received Head-End Power (HEP) equipment.

The Floridian was briefly combined with the Auto-Train Corporation's Louisville, Kentucky—Sanford, Florida Auto-Train service in the mid 1970's. The success with the original Lorton, Virginia—Sanford Auto-Train did not replicate itself on the Louisville-Sanford run, in part due to the severe delays on the Floridian, and the Louisville-Sanford Auto-Train was suspended indefinitely a few years before Auto-Train Corporation itself finally succumbed to financial difficulties in April 1981. As part of this move Amtrak stopped serving Union Station in Louisville on November 1, 1976, instead using Auto-Train Corp's station near Louisville International Airport. This continued until the Floridian's discontinuance.

In 1979, the United States Department of Transportation compiled a report that recommended the reduction of services on several routes that did not meet a metric for cost coverage. Per this report, the Carter administration required all Amtrak routes to meet a minimum cost/farebox ratio or face discontinuance. Unfortunately, the aforementioned track issues and delays resulted in a steep decline in ridership for the Floridian. It made its last run on October 9, 1979 and was shuttered along with the National Limited, North Coast Hiawatha, Lone Star, and Champion, thus rolling back some of the key parts of the Amtrak system and also alleviating some of the losses it had incurred since its May 1, 1971 founding.

This DOT report also recommended the discontinuance of the Chicago—Oakland (San Francisco) San Francisco Zephyr—which, as the California Zephyr, has become one of Amtrak's most popular trains.

Proposed restoration

There has been no concrete effort to re-establish direct Chicago-Miami service, either on the route of the South Wind/Floridian or on that of its partners the City of Miami and Dixie Flagler. During the early 2000s, Amtrak extended the Kentucky Cardinal to a re-opened Louisville Union Station, then discontinued the train again.

In the 2000s, Nashville residents proposed restoring train service to the city. However, in 2007 Tennessee state officials said resumption of service was unlikely, since federal funds were unavailable. Officials also stated that there was insufficient demand to justify restoring rail service at the time.

In June 2021, Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) added an amendment to the Surface Transportation Investment Act of 2021 which requires the Department of Transportation (not Amtrak itself) to evaluate the restoration of discontinued long-distance routes, such as the Floridian. The bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee with bipartisan support, and was later rolled into President Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was passed into law in November 2021. The report must be delivered to Congress within two years. The law also provides $2.4 billion in new funds to Amtrak's long-distance route network.

On October 28, 2022, the Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study was announced by the Federal Railroad Administration. Its purpose is to evaluate the restoration and addition of discontinued and new long-distance passenger services, as well as the upgrading of tri-weekly long-distance services (the Sunset Limited and the Cardinal) to daily operation. The criteria for either restoring or creating new long-distance routes are that they connect large and small communities as part of a "regional rail network", provide economic and social well-being for rural areas, provide "enhanced connectivity" for the existing long-distance passenger trains, and reflect the support and engagement of the locals and region for restored long-distance passenger service. These criteria include the Floridian, among other trains. The study will take place through 2023, and will engage with stakeholders, the rail companies, and communities as it "evaluates how to better connect people with long-distance rail services".

External links

• Media related to Floridian at Wikimedia Commons
• Floridian Passenger Rail Service Reestablishment Act of 1993 (failed Congressional bill)
• 1979 timetable