Amtrak came back to Louisville in 1999, but not for long. The Kentucky Cardinal was often called "The worst train on Amtrak." I road it twice and each time was an adventure. It was late on each of my trips (both ways.) The only really good thing about the trips was the cost. My first trip cost $7.00 each way and the last trip was $14 each way. I happened to catch some "Rail Sales."
Continue reading for all of the details or Google "Amtrak Kentucky Cardinal."
In the 1970’s Amtrak ran the Floridian through Louisville on its Chicago to Miami route. Seemed like it was never on time and that was the main cause for Amtrak discontinuing it in 1979. Actually, it was discontinued due to low ridership caused by its poor performance. I remember going to the station near Outer Loop and National Turnpike adjacent to the CSX Osborne Yard to see the last Amtrak train leave Louisville. It was a southbound train. I don’t remember exactly what time it was supposed to arrive. It was around sunset or maybe just a little later. I didn’t hang around to see it. It was several hours late. I had to go to work the next morning. That was in October 8, 1979. Amtrak was struggling to survive and the many of the host railroads were doing all they could to get rid of it. The trains scheduled was set based on traveling 65 mile/hour or faster. The host railroads, mainly the PennCentral through Indiana, often issued slow orders. Trains were often restricted to long sections of 15 miles per hour. A single 15 mile section of slow orders could put the train about an hour behind schedule. That only complicated things because now the train was missing its scheduled meet to pass a freight train going the other direction and might have to wait 30 or 45 minutes on a passing track for a freight to arrive. Now it was nearly two hours late and things just kept on compounding the problem. One thing for sure, the host railroads were not going to jeopardize the schedule of their own freight trains just to help expedite that unwanted Amtrak service.
Twenty years later, Amtrak returned to Louisville in the form of the Kentucky Cardinal, Amtrak trains 851 (northbound) and 850 (southbound). Originally the service terminated in Jeffersonville Indiana but once the station ( a platform, a sign, and a stub end track) was completed in Louisville, service was extended the last few miles to that station. The original equipment was Superliner sleeping car and a hi-level ex-ATSF Heritage coach. The train was really doomed from the start. Between Louisville and Indianapolis, a distance of about 125 miles, the train was restricted to 30 miles per hour over the Louisville and Indianapolis Railroad. This made a 2 hour drive or bus ride a 4 hour train ride. Then, when you got to Indianapolis, if it was one of the nights when train 51, the Cardinal was running, you would have to wait for it to arrive and it was seldom on time. The trip from Louisville to Chicago could be driven in 6 hours or less. By Amtrak it was about a 12 hour adventure. The first time I made the trip we spent about 2 hours in Indianapolis waiting for train 51 to arrive. There’s not much to see of do in Indianapolis at 3 AM, especially when the station is also the Greyhound bus station. After we finally coupled onto the Cardinal we departed Indy. At last we were finally moving and I do mean moving. I had a GPS receiver with me and we were doing 79 miles per hour. Unfortunately, that didn’t last too long. About 50 miles north of Indy we hit a 20 mile section of restricted speed. For over an hour we were moving at 12 Miles per hour. I also had a scanner with me and I heard the train crew talking to the dispatcher. They ask for permission to go faster but the dispatcher denied the request. You could tell that the engineer was not happy but he had to obey the order. The rest of the trip was rter uneventful. We arrived in Chicago over 2 hours late. On the return trip we were the tail end of train 50 to Indianapolis. They parted the train there and the Cardinal was on it’s way. The crew coupled the locomotives to the coach and then nothing happened. You could hear them bring the locomotive that supplied the head end power up to speed but no lights, fans, air, or anything. They did that several times and no luck. The conductor told me that they had a defective connector on one end of the coach. They were going to run the locomotive around to the other end. That meant that they had to turn them around on the wye. After maybe 15 minutes the locomotives came back and connected to the other end of the coach. After a few minutes we finally had lights, air, and other services. We were ready to leave. The only problem was, we were headed the wrong direction. We had to go through the wye again. We sat there another hour waiting for a freight to arrive and pass… 55 minutes waiting and 5 minutes for it to pass. Finally, we were on our way again, facing toward the rear of the train. We were over 2 hours late when we arrived in Louisville.
Remember those nice coaches I mentioned earlier? By the time I took this trip they had been replaced with a 84-seat Horizon coach. Not bad for a couple of hours on a day trip. After all, it’s still more room than you have on an airplane, but not very comfortable is you want to catch a few ZZZs.
My last trip on the Kentucky Cardinal was not much different. By this time Amtrak had already announced that the Kentucky Cardinal would be stricken from the roster. My brother and his two children went with me. We had planned on catching a baseball game when we got there. That was not to be. We arrived in Indianapolis pretty close to schedule. By this time, Amtrak had had so much trouble maintaining the schedule of the Cardinal that they had adjusted it so that train 51 reached Indianapolis over 2 hours after train 851 got there. The schedule for train 851 had not been adjusted. When we got to Indianapolis the conductor told us that train 51 was running about 3 hours late. The crew left the train. The locomotives uncoupled and moved into position to wait for train 51, and we had a 5 hour wait in Indy in a coach with no power, no air (it wasn’t hot but the air got stale), and the toilet wasn’t working. We took a trip down the street and found a Steak & Shake that was open and we had some burgers and shakes. After awhile we found our way back to the train, laid the seats back and tried to catch a little sleep. I always hate leaving the station like that. You never know when someone might get their wires crossed and get the wrong information. You walk away from the station thinking you have 5 hours before the train leaves and then the other train arrives, couples up, and leaves and you arrive to see no train.
On our way back to Louisville we encountered a several delays here and there. None of them were major but they all added up to well over an hour. Often Amtrak can make up some time between stations or cut a station stop short. There was no way of doing that south of Indianapolis. The schedule was set up expecting the train to do 30 miles per hour and there was no extra time built into that schedule. There were no stops except Jeffersonville and that was just long enough to drop passengers off. If you were late leaving Indy you were guaranteed to be late at Louisville. When we finally got close enough to see Louisville we figured we would be at the station in about 5 minutes. That was not to be. We sat on the bridge over the Ohio River for over 30 minutes. There is a draw bridge over the navigation channel to allow tow boats to pass. The bridge was up and we had to wait for a tow to pass. I remember my brother saying, “Poor old Amtrak. They have to wait for everybody.”
He really summed it up pretty good. Amtrak seems to have to wait for everyone else. They wait for freights on the host roads, wait for hours to turn around in a wye, and even have to wait for tow boats. No wonder the Kentucky Cardinal failed. It was often referred to as the worst train in the Amtrak system. It was designed to fail, with 12 hour schedules each way and poor on time record, you could catch a Southwest Air flight for $20 more and be there in an hour.
From Louisville to Chicago the train traveled on the following host railroads: CSX for about 100 yards, L&IRR, CSX again, N&W, UP, METRA, Amtrak, and others