(The Herald-Dispatch published the following story by Bob Withers on its website on October 8.)
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Pretty soon, you can ride the rails to Baltimore, Wilmington, Del., Philadelphia and New York without changing trains in Washington, D.C.
If, that is, Congress keeps the money rolling.
Effective with Amtrak’s timetable change at midnight Sunday night, Oct. 26, the Washington-Chicago Cardinal, which makes stops at Huntington and Ashland on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, will become a New York-Chicago train.
“The change is designed to improve patronage on the Cardinal and consolidate maintenance of our Viewliner sleepers at our Sunnyside Yard in New York,” said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari in Chicago. “We want to better serve our existing customers and attract new ones.”
Magliari said the Cardinal’s ridership for fiscal 2003, which ran from Oct. 1, 2002, through Sept. 30, was down 3.7 percent from 69,584 to 66,993 people. But figures for August 2003 compared to a similar period a year ago was sharply up, from 6,722 to 8,319 passengers, for a 23.8 percent increase.
“The economy is improving, and along with it the Cardinal?s ridership,” he said.
The changes also involve slight schedule adjustments. Eastbound train No. 50 will leave Chicago at 7:30 p.m. CST, instead of 8:15 p.m., and arrive in Huntington at 8:43 a.m. EST instead of 9:33 a.m. It will stop in Washington at 7:30 p.m., Philadelphia at 10 p.m. and New York?s Penn Station at 11:30 p.m.
Westbound, train 51 will leave New York at 9:05 a.m. on Sundays and 9:25 a.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays and Philadelphia at 10:35 a.m. Sundays and 10:51 a.m. Wednesdays and Fridays. It will depart Washington at 1:15 p.m. on all three days, arriving here at 11:40 p.m. instead of the current 11:13 p.m. and arrive in Chicago at 10:50 a.m. CST instead of 11:05 a.m.
“Passengers can arrive a little earlier in Chicago westbound and go all the way to New York eastbound without a change of cars,” Magliari said.
He explained No. 51’s varying times between New York and Washington by saying that the train needed to be placed in available “slots” on the busy Northeast Corridor, which handles dozens of other trains.
Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black in Washington said another major change involves the high speed Acela trains in the corridor.
“They have a 70 percent on-time record and we want that to be 90 percent or better,” Black said. “So we’re reducing some of the station stops, primarily between New York and Washington, and adding three or four minutes to the schedule.”