Amtrak Silver Star

[DanBoris]

It looks like a change may be coming to the Amtrak Silver Star which currently runs between New York City and Miami with stops in Orlando and Kissimmee. If you try to book the train any time after December 5th, 2024 it only lets you book it as far north as Washington DC. I contacted Amtrak about this and was told that changes were coming to the route but they did not provide specifics.

The speculation is that Star is going to be combined with the Capitol Limited creating a new route that will run from Chicago to Miami. Limitations of Capitol Limited booking lends support to this rumor.

The Silver Meteor also runs from NYC to Miami, although on a slightly different route, and it appears un-effected.

Personally I liked the Star because it arrives in Orlando at around 10:00 AM and leaves at around 8:00 PM so I can still get a pretty full park day on my travel days. The Meteor runs closer to the middle of the day so can't do much more on the travel day.

 

[jec6613]

Amtrak is having a severe shortage of Viewliners at the moment as the Viewliner I need refurbishment. While it's possible that it'll run to Chicago via DC, that doesn't seem the most likely reason - much more likely that they have to re-equip with Superliners, which has happened in the past to the Cardinal.

Only seems odd that the Silver Star, their most popular long distance route, is the one getting truncated, but aside from the LSL it's the one with the most Viewliner sleepers so it's perhaps a choice of truncating one route vs truncating multiple.

 

[jec6613]

Quick update... it appears that only about 50 Viewliners are currently service of the 75 built, with almost half of the Viewliner I's sitting at Beech Grove, and Amtrak so far is quiet on any possible reason why, but whatever it is has been going on for a while, with the Night Owl and Cardinal losing sleepers in the last few years.