Southern Railway - Amtrak Overlap and Transition

D.Carleton wrote:Somewhere in the deep recesses of my cranium is another reason for Southern staying out of NRPC, protecting the CNO&TP. The “Rat-Hole” had been completely reengineered and rebuilt and the fear was the line being clogged with a passenger train. Southern’s independence would preclude this.

Could be, I believe the Rio Grande was in the same situation at the time. They were in competetion with the Union Pacific
and they did not want their single track line through the Rockies to handle any more passsenger service than the
existing tri-weekly service at that time. Like the Southern the Rio Grande also maintained a high standard on their one
remaining main line passenger train.
Noel Weaver

Noel, I've heard this same reasoning behind DRGW's abstaining from Amtrak.

The SOUTHERN CRESCENT always operated combined with a Boston-Washington corridor train under AMTRAK. That train carried a parlor car and a diner-lounge (customary in the early days). An occasional exception occurred when the northbound was running late, but not too late to wait to be combined with the next train (and that wasn't very often), or during the Thanksgiving rush where the combination would have resulted in a 25 car train.

R Paul Carey wrote:I was in Boston when the Southern Crescent coaches and sleepers were operated through. The train operated with an ex-NH "County" series Baggage-Parlor car, a diner from Amtrak's pool (I recall Tarboro and Fitzgerald, ex-ACL), and additional coaches from the Corridor "pool".

SR's equipment included many of their modernized heavyweight coaches, some with plain bearings and six-wheel trucks, many with steam-ejector A/C, and all of it very well maintained.

SR added additional equipment at Washington southbound, including their diner, which never operated north of Washington. There may have been a clearance issue, as some non-standard battery boxes and other gear on certain "heritage" cars did not clear the third rail at NYP.

The impeccable maintenance of SR's equipment was regularly noted and compared to Amtrak's by Mr. Claytor, who took great pride in pointing out to any who would listen as to what could be done when management cared !!

When I worked in Sunnyside Yard (SY) back in the mid '70s as an electrician, one of "my" trains was the Southern Crescent. The SR's cars were ALWAYS impeccable compared to the Junk that Amtrak ran. Most of Amtrak's cars back then had bad batteries, and every time the train went below about 30 MPH, the AC would stop running due to a tripped low voltage relay.

We were told by our foreman (who apparently knew very little about Ohm's Law) that we were not to shop a car if AC worked while plugged in to shore power, even if it would not work under battery power. They used to have us wedge a matchbook into the relay which caused it to stay closed, which would keep the AC on for a little longer until the battery voltage dropped to zero (I'm actually surprised that that "trick" never started a fire since the current HAD to be WELL over what the wire was rated for (I guess the batteries were SO BAD that the current never got high enough to start a fire)).

Needless to say, ALL the SR cars were ALWAYS in FULL working order, and we were under orders to fix ANYTHING that was wrong in them. Apparently Amtrak didn't give a damn how bad their cars were, but made sure that the SR cars always worked (I guess since they were able to charge SR for any repairs done in SY).

Nothing to add about changing cars or the Amtrak connection but I would like to note what a treat (and contrast) it was to ride the Southern Crescent during those last few years prior to Amtrak's takeover of the train. I rode the Southern Crescent a number of times between Charlottesville and Atlanta a once on to New Orleans. My recollection is that the sleeping car attendant wore a starched white jacket and black bow tie and as mentioned in an earlier post there was a welcoming packet in your sleeper. I still have one of the brochures from the packet entitled "The Southern Crescent; A History of Good Service" (sixteen pages with pictures). Boarding in C'Ville still allowed time for dinner in the exceptional dining car. On one trip I decided to pass on the more traditional dinner entrees and try the Spanish Omelet. It was absolutely delicious and became my regular dinner selection on future Crescent trips. What a great train!

I recently completed ten days on Amtrak from Williamsburg (VA) to Los Angeles and Sacramento and return. The Coast Starlight was a cut above other Amtrak trains but nothing like the old Southern Crescent.

Bill O'Connell

I think the sleeping car passengers got a shoe shine right up until the end as well.
I ran that train from New Haven to New York a good number of times and remember more than once having an argument with my fireman over supplying steam to the train, he tried to tell me that the train did not need much steam and I made it very plain that it need lots of steam for the AC and that it was his job to see that they got it. That generally closed the case. We did not have any equipment on the New Haven that required steam for AC so most of the troops did not realize that it was important on the Southern cars.
Noel Weaver

As an aside, I wonder how efficient the steam ejector A/C was?. Probably irrelevant with the passing of steam traction, at least for passenger cars. But I take it a single steam engine could haul a lenghty train plus provide heating and cooling , no mean feat .

A few of the RR's went the "steam injector" AC route,but the closed loop freon systems were more effective/efficient
in the long run,as long as the axle driven generator and batteries were maintained in proper condition.

n2cbo wrote:

Needless to say, ALL the SR cars were ALWAYS in FULL working order, and we were under orders to fix ANYTHING that was wrong in them. Apparently Amtrak didn't give a damn how bad their cars were, but made sure that the SR cars always worked (I guess since they were able to charge SR for any repairs done in SY).

For freight equipment, and I assume passenger as well, the AAR provided a fixed scale of charges for any possible repair procedure, and I know some railroads analyzed their own repair costs; if a particular operation carried an AAR charge greater than the railroad's in-house cost, car inspectors were instructed to look for those instances on foreign cars and tag every one of them.

For Mssr. Norman, I'm sure Mssr. Dunville shall not mind if I retitled his very interesting thread to cover it's expansion.

Santa Fe had postwar steam ejector equipment. Southern, ACL, SAL and RF&P all had electro-mechanical, at least for sleeping cars.

Jeff: The 2 a day each way service could start as a combined train ATL - CLT. Split and run part thru CVS and other part to Raleigh - Richmond (RVR) Combine with night owl there to Boston. Reverse for southbound. Then when traffic demands run separately . Of course Amtrak still needs a new ATL station. Right now the Crescent ties up ATL twice a day - One to 1.5 hours each.
Then again will need about 30 additional single level cars and 6 sprinters in inventory.

I rode from Boston to New Orleans in late July, 1978. In fact my return trip in August was supposed to be the last day the Southern Crescent was to run (an agreement with Amtrak was announced the night before I left New Orleans). Even though the schedule said there was thru service, I was put on an earlier train and had to wait at NYP for 90 minutes to board the Crescent. (The travel agent who sold us the tickets said they wouldn't hold the Crescent if the Boston train was late). The seats on the Crescent were assigned (which was not the case on Amtrak). And there were at least two or three Southern Budd coaches and at least one Southern sleeper in the consist (The name Holston River comes to mind). The Lounge car was an Amtrak congy. There was no dining car. When we got to Washington the train was broken up and we were coupled up. Two Amtrak sleepers (one through to LA) would be on with 14 other cars including the ones from NY. Southern had a deluxe sleeper with a lounge in it on the tail of the train. Their Dining car was in the middle of the train. When we got to Atlanta a dome coach was added to the end of the train and that was our only change. (The Atlanta-Birmingham-New Orleans section only ran three days a week) On the return trip I was assigned to an Amtrak coach that looked like it could have been an ex-New Haven silver side. It had no air conditioning and in short order all of us were re-seated in other cars. That car made it all the way to New York dark and hot. Northbound the same cars (Diner, Lounge) were removed and we had an Amtrak lounge/snack car the rest of the way. Somewhere I still have color slides I took on that trip. Southern allowed us to ride in the vestibules with the doors open and I spend most of my time either there or in the dome.