One of Toledo’s two daily round-trip Amtrak trains will be temporarily combined Nov. 10 with the Washington-Miami leg of another train to create a through service between Chicago and Florida via Toledo, Amtrak announced Monday.
Tickets are now available for the Floridian, which will have other intermediate stops including Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Savannah, Ga., Jacksonville, Orlando, Fla., and Tampa.
The train will use single-level Amfleet and Viewliner equipment, the latter including a baggage car, dining car, and sleeping cars. The equipment matches that already used on the Lake Shore Limited train that stops in Toledo en route between Chicago, New York, and Boston.
“The Floridian offers customers an exceptional and sustainable journey to great destinations between Chicago and Miami, providing the amenities and delicious food our guests enjoy when traveling with us,” said Eliot Hamlisch, Amtrak’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer.
Dining-car service, featuring chef-prepared meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and table service with glassware, cutlery, and linen tablecloths, will be included in the fare for sleeping-car passengers and will be available on a limited basis for an extra charge for coach passengers.
All passengers also will have access to a cafe car offering “a variety of meals, snacks, and beverages for sale,” Amtrak said.
Amtrak’s statement said the Capitol Limited and Silver Star are being combined to accommodate an upcoming project to rehabilitate railroad tunnels under the East River in New York. The Silver Star now has New York as its northern terminus, and rerouting it to Chicago will help reduce the number of train movements through those tunnels while capacity is constrained.
“The project includes comprehensive reconstruction of two tunnel tubes damaged by floodwaters that entered during Superstorm Sandy in 2012,” said Kimberly Woods, an Amtrak spokesman. “During this project, one tube will be closed at a time, minimizing service impacts while maximizing track access for construction, and renewing the tunnel infrastructure to serve customers for another 100 years.”
Use of single-level cars on the Washington-Chicago portion of the service also will release double-decker Superliner cars the Capitol Limited now uses for reassignment to other Amtrak routes. Amtrak has had a shortage of those cars after a repair backlog began during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We will also add capacity on our western Long Distance routes by reallocating railcars,” Ms. Woods confirmed.
“This move will free up badly needed equipment while taking pressure off Northeast Corridor infrastructure during the renovation of the [tunnels] project,” Jim Mathews, president and chief executive of the Rail Passengers Association, said in a statement accompanying the Amtrak announcement. “Rail Passengers applauds Amtrak for this innovative solution to keeping passengers moving during critical state of good repair work. We believe riders will flock to this new service.”
Amtrak did not say how long it expects the tunnel work to take.
The train will bear the name of a service Amtrak operated during the 1970s between Chicago and Miami via Louisville and Nashville. Amtrak said it will operate on schedules similar to those of the Silver Star and Capitol Limited.
The Capitol Limited is currently scheduled to stop in Toledo eastbound just before midnight and westbound around 5:30 a.m. It also stops in Sandusky and in Waterloo, Ind., about 12 miles west of the Ohio/Indiana border.
While the combined trains will offer a single-seat ride between northwest Ohio and southeastern cities for which a train change now is required in Washington, the westbound train will become more vulnerable to tardiness because of its more distant originating station.
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