Most of the New York Central's trains didn't have names by that point. Although I didn't know it, the railroad was only a few weeks away from merging with the Pennsylvania and New Haven to form the disastrous Penn Central.

I rode in coach with several family members. I remember that there were very few passengers on the train that night. Each of us had the luxury of having two seats to ourselves.

That's something that had never happened on our trips seven or eight years earlier. But by the late 60s, very few people were riding trains at all. Our car was almost empty.

What's great about traveling on the Lake Shore Limited today is that the journey still looks and feels the same. The railroad and the rolling stock have changed, but the overall experience and the view outside the window has changed very little. You see the same amazing Hudson River. The same spooky old factories. The same deserted little towns. The same haunted-looking rust belt cities that have seen better days.

What seems so ironic is that the UP is the "whipping boy' over indifferent performance today as an Amtrak host. Although the City was notably downgraded from 1968 onward (no Challenger coach section, the City of Everywhere combination, closing the Pullman Co, removal of the Dome Diners), that "last supper' was mighty impressive. To watch the City "highball' from Savanna, was simply knowing that something great had come this way, but was not going to come again.

First Amtrak ride was #7 (1st) Empire Builder Chi Milw, with a return on a Hiawatha.

Air transport enthusiasts recently 'tasted" what "we" did almost thirty three years ago when the Concorde was withdrawn from service.

Train # 18, the Super Chief, from Alb. to Chgo. Roomette in the center of the car. Great steak dinner just after passing through Raton Pass tunnel and the famous
Fred Harvey french toast for breakfast after leaving KC.

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The Copper Country Limited [Milwaukee Road] and the Peninsula 400 [CNW} still my favorites

I was 11 years old when Amtrak was formed. I don't recall exactly what I was doing that day. It was in May, 1971. I was in grammar school, probably bored, and probably drawing pictures of trains in my composiition book the day Amtrak trains first turned a wheel.

I spent a lot of my free time exploring the former right of way of the old New York, Westchester & Boston Railroad. It was overgrown and lined by a strip of woods on either side. My own little world, really. There were crumbling remains of stations and bridge abutments. Particularly exciting was a dark pedestrian tunnel beneath a spot where the right of way was perched atop a high embankment. For all I knew, that weed-choked, long forgotten right of way that boredered my neighborhood could have once hosted steam trains which went clear up to Canada. It was a path beyond my limited horizons, plain and simple.

A few years later, I'd learn that the NYW&B was a 20-mile-long electric railroad, and that it resembled a subway line more than a railroad in the conventional sense. And I also learned that the Westchester was by no means an important trunk line. In fact, its last stop was little more than a mile and half distant from the section of it that, by the time the late sixties had arrived, had become my own version of Sherwood Forest.

A Nordstroms department store now occupies the site of the Westchester & Boston's northernmost station. The right of way has been turned into a formal greenway.

Dave

During our spring break, I and a good friend took a "farewell to railroad passenger service" trip. Unlike me, he (his parents) had to pay for the tickets, which circumscribed the scope somewhat. Still, it was quite a trip (although the fast-vanishing passenger network deprived us of both the SR's Cincinnati -- Atlanta train and a chance to ride the E-L). Here's the itinerary:

Washington - Lynchburg (SR)
Lynchburg - Cincinnati (N&W)
Cincinnati - New Orleans (L&N)
New Orleans - Jacksonville (L&N/SCL)
Jax - Savannah (SCL)
Savannah - Atlanta (CofG)
Atlanta - St. Louis (L&N)
St. Louis - Detroit (N&W)
Detroit - New York (PC)
New York - Wash (PC)

We took sleeping cars for night travel (except ATL - STL, which was coach only). The "Pocahontas" and "Nancy Hanks" both still had domes, and sleepers had returned to the "Gulf Wind" after an absence (we had two open sections in "Surf Bird"). Most of the trains had diners. It was a great trip, but I've had 33 years to regret the trains we missed: financial constraints meant nothing west of Chicago. I'm so sorry to have missed:

- C&NW to upper Michigan
- The UP mainline trains via C&NW
- CB&Q to the Twin Cities (got it later on a service diversion)
- The NP main
- Several interesting Florida routings (Naples, plus the ACL to Tampa via Ocala)
- Atlanta - Augusta
- Atlanta - Montgomery
- Chicago to Florida service (any route, even Amtrak's)