A few times a year, we get a thread that discusses bringing back a grandiose terminal like Buffalo Central or Detroit Central. The accepted wisdom is that it's too costly to rebuild such a large terminal, but other than that, we don't have much perspective.
Tonight I was reading from an old favorite - "Limiteds on the Lakefront" by Alan Lind. It's the story of Illinois Central passenger service in Chicago. Center to that topic is Central Station. Central Station was a 6-track terminal with a train shed and vaulted waiting room and associated coach yard, commisary, etc... It did not handle commuter trains - IC ran a very dense suburban service handled by Metra Electric today out of Randolph station, half mile north.
Central station handled 58 trains in/out per day in 1934. That's on a six track terminal. Half were IC, half were Big Four and Michigan Central as tenants. Compare that to Amtrak's current 26 trains, and the fact that Chicago is probably their busiest terminal outside of the NEC. You can imagine, then, it would be a bit crazy to restore Buffalo Central or Michigan Central for 4-6 trains/day. That's 10% the load they were designed for (or perhaps even less - not sure how many trains used MCS or BCS). There is no way you could even turn the lights on for that kind of traffic. Hence the reason Amtrak unloaded a lot of those stations fairly early in the program.
Tonight I was reading from an old favorite - "Limiteds on the Lakefront" by Alan Lind. It's the story of Illinois Central passenger service in Chicago. Center to that topic is Central Station. Central Station was a 6-track terminal with a train shed and vaulted waiting room and associated coach yard, commisary, etc... It did not handle commuter trains - IC ran a very dense suburban service handled by Metra Electric today out of Randolph station, half mile north.
Central station handled 58 trains in/out per day in 1934. That's on a six track terminal. Half were IC, half were Big Four and Michigan Central as tenants. Compare that to Amtrak's current 26 trains, and the fact that Chicago is probably their busiest terminal outside of the NEC. You can imagine, then, it would be a bit crazy to restore Buffalo Central or Michigan Central for 4-6 trains/day. That's 10% the load they were designed for (or perhaps even less - not sure how many trains used MCS or BCS). There is no way you could even turn the lights on for that kind of traffic. Hence the reason Amtrak unloaded a lot of those stations fairly early in the program.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.