This train isn’t supposed to exist.
The train I’m sitting on as I write this, the Amtrak Train Number 41, exists in part because of a series of train wrecks, a hurricane, a pandemic and a maintenance technician shortage.
I’m not supposed to be here either.
For one, the train is running an hour and five minutes behind schedule, so technically, I should at least 50 miles south of here. But also — this week was supposed to be my vacation. I was supposed to be at my parent’s house in North Carolina, hiking, reading and playing with the dogs.
But I’m not. I’m writing this from Amfleet Cafe Car 28010, somewhere in eastern North Carolina, as the inaugural Amtrak Floridian barrels toward Florida. Why?
Because I volunteered. Because my manager thought it’d make a good story to send me on an Amtrak train for a scheduled 46 hours in coach. And because even now — 54 years after Amtrak was founded — a slow passenger train from Chicago to Miami still holds an inescapable allure.
On the train, I met multiple people who were riding the whole route just to say that they had done it. Some diehard Amtrak fans, like Patrick Egan from Lombard, booked a ticket as soon as they went on sale. At stations across the country, we caught glimpses of rail fans running to catch video of the first Number 41 passing through town.
Amtrak was founded as a quasi-public company in 1970 and started running a year later in a last-ditch attempt to throw a lifeline to intercity passenger trains.
The peak for passenger trains was shortly after World War II before a precipitous decline as interstate highways expanded and planes became cheaper, faster and more accessible. The few passenger railroads left were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy by the end of the 1960s.
From the beginning, it hasn’t been easy. The trains Amtrak inherited from the railroads were already decades old and were not designed to work together. No new sleeping cars had been built in the United States since the 1950s.
Even now, most of the fleet is decades old — even older than the cars were in 1971 — and have been rehabilitated multiple times to keep them on the rails. The coach car I’ve been riding on is an Amfleet II built in 1983.
Public funding for trains has always been a political hot potato.
“When you look at the history of where we were in the late 1960s, it makes sense,” says David Tomzik, a fellow Floridian rider talking to me in the cafe car. “Amtrak was only supposed to survive for three years. That’s the way it was designed — it wasn’t supposed to be a success.”
Tomzik, a former board member of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association and advocate with the Rail Passenger Association, rode the original Floridian to Orlando as a child in 1973.
That iteration of the Floridian ran a much more straightforward route from Chicago to Miami through Indianapolis, Louisville and Nashville. It took about eight hours less than this train.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Amtrak hard. In 2020, service was cut back, dining cars were closed and furloughs and layoffs decimated its work force. The lack of maintenance technicians especially has had a lingering effect as Amtrak tries to keep up with demand.
But Amtrak also continues to try new things. It’s in the process of upgrading the interiors of some its Superliner and Viewliner cars. It has started rolling out new locomotives — the first Number 41 Floridian was pulled by two new Siemens ALC-42 Chargers that are more fuel efficient than Amtrak’s older locomotives.
The Floridian is another way Amtrak is trying to keep things on the rails.
The route is a combination of two routes: the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington, D.C., and the Silver Star from New York City to Miami. Combining the two routes eases traffic in the East River Tunnel, which is undergoing much-needed upgrades after it was damaged during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. It also frees up more double-decker Superliners, in short supply after train wrecks and amid a maintenance technician shortage, to be used out west.
Rail Passenger Association president Jim Matthews called it a “clever response to a bad situation.”
For rail fans, it was an exciting opportunity.
The train has been packed since we left Chicago’s Union Station on Sunday evening, and we’ll keep picking up passengers all the way to Miami on Tuesday evening.
Although the novelty of the route drew some passengers, many more were planning to travel this route anyway and were surprised to see the fanfare that awaited them at Union Station.
Hendrix Skylan, a singer-songwriter who performs under the name Hendi Sky, booked a coach seat to head to a music festival in Orlando. She was surprised to see TV news crews on the train when she got on board in Chicago.
“It’s nice to see things from inside, on the ground, rather than being up in the sky and looking down on everything like little ants,” Skylan said.
For many riders, some of the appeal is the connections you make on the train.
It’s not like an airport, which can feel like a chore as everyone rushes to their destination. There’s no rushing on Amtrak — frequent delays means it’s unlikely you’ll make it to your destination on time on many longer routes. I’ve been expecting from the beginning of this trip that we’ll get to Miami at least two hours later than scheduled.
Everyone who is on the train has, to some degree, opted into the experience.
Two of the riders I met in the Floridian cafe car, Tory Thompson and Ezekial Ellis, just got married on Saturday and were on their honeymoon, taking the train to New York City.
After talking to them for a bit, I realized that they’d gotten married at the University of Chicago, not far from where I live. They had their rehearsal dinner at a restaurant just a few blocks away from me.
Amtrak is not the fastest way to travel. It’s not the cheapest, nor the most reliable. I definitely wouldn’t recommend riding for two days straight in coach like me, with no access to a shower or freshly-prepared food.
But it’s a special experience. There’s something about seeing the country fly by from your window, about the way the train sways back and forth, about the people you meet on board, that’s hard to replicate anywhere else.
And it’s hard to put into words. If you really want to see what I mean, you’ll need to buy a ticket yourself.