Floridian (Amtrak)
The Floridian is a former Amtrak route running from Chicago directly to Miami. Its route mainly followed that of several former Louisville and Nashville Railroad passenger trains, including the Hummingbird. The train served Lafayette and Bloomington, Indiana; Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Decatur, Birmingham, Montgomery and Dothan, Alabama; and Thomasville, Valdosta and Waycross, Georgia. At Jacksonville, Florida, the train split to serve two different routes, one serving St. Petersburg, Florida via Orlando, and the other serving Miami via Ocala and Winter Haven. These two legs crossed each other near Lakeland, Florida.
The Floridian was notorious for poor on-time performance, frequent problems owing to poor condition of equipment inherited from the private railroads, and poor condition of some of the trackage it traversed.
The train used the lines of the L&N (in Indiana, over the former Monon Railroad, which merged into the L&N shortly before the formation of Amtrak), and Seaboard Coast Line. All are now part of CSX Transportation; some parts of the line have been abandoned.
Amtrak discontinued the train in October 1979. This left Louisville and Nashville without passenger train service, two of the largest such cities in the nation. (Louisville briefly regained Amtrak service with the Kentucky Cardinal, which ran from 1999 to 2003.)
History
The Floridian was originally known as the Pennsylvania Railroad's South Wind, which operated on its home road from Chicago to Louisville, KY via Logansport and Indianapolis, IN; the L&N from Louisville to Montgomery, AL; the Atlantic Coast Line from Montgomery to Jacksonville, FL and the Florida East Coast Railway to Miami.
This train being operating in the late 1930s utilizing a seven-car trainset built by the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company of Red Lion, PA. The set, which did not include sleepers was not dissimilar from similar trains built for the Seaboard Air Line for the New York-Miami Silver Meteor and the Southern's New York-New Orleans Southerner, except that it was painted in the Pennsylvania's Tuscan Red, which required special preparation of the stainless steel that composed the cars' sides.
The South Wind ran every third day between its respective endpoint cities, in coordination with the Dixie Flagler (an FEC-owned train that used the C&EI, L&N, NC&STL, CofG, ACL and FEC) and the City of Miami--another colorful seven car train. This coordination enabled passengers to have the convenience of daily service between the city pairs of Chicago and Miami, but without the need to expand consists for each train to be daily.
During the diesel era, the South Wind was typically headed by the E-units of the Pennsylvania, Atlantic Coast Line, and Florida East Coast Railway. Though the train used the L&N for a significant portion of its run, Don Ball, Jr. stated that thanks to a run-through agreement between the PRR & ACL, that L&N units were only used in emergencies and this is borne by the many pictures of PRR E7 and E8 units in Miami and ACL E-units in the Midwest.
The 1963 strike of operating unions on the Florida East Coast Railway resulted in the abrupt end of all passenger services on that railroad. While passenger trains would return in two short E9-powered consists that operated due to a requirement in FEC's charter to provide such trains, the South Wind along with other name trains such as the City of Miami, Florida Special and the East Coast Champion to utilize the Atlantic Coast Line's Jacksonville-Palatka-Tampa main line between Jacksonville and Auburndale, FL and the Seaboard Air Line route from Auburdale to Miami. This would be a harbinger of the future with the upcoming Seaboard Coast Line (1967) merger and the eventual operation of this train by Amtrak.
While the train grew in size throughout the 1940s, and 1950s, the 1960s saw the decline that caught most passenger trains in the United States. The Pennsylvania Railroad merged in 1968 with the New York Central to form Penn Central, a railroad that was as hostile to passenger service as the Southern Pacific, though unlike the SP, the PC's services were noted for their poor quality and consistent efforts to reduce their scope.
The South Wind was not immune and the PC stopped handling it between Chicago and Louisville, leaving the L&N and SCL to carry on the service until May 1, 1971 when the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) assumed responsibility for the provision of passenger services over the L&N, SCL, and Penn Central among others.
Amtrak restored the South Wind--later renamed Floridian--as a through Chicago-Miami train. However, its northern terminus was now Chicago's Central Station (owned by the Illinois Central), which it shared with Amtrak's Panama Limited (the re-named City of New Orleans and not the original IC All-Pullman flagship) until that facility was vacated later in favor of consolidating all services at Chicago's Union Station.
However, the new Floridian had to contend with Penn Central's poor track conditions, which resulted it using at times the former Chicago & Eastern Illinois and Chicago Indianapolis & Louiville (Monon) routes north of Louisville. One winter, the Floridian also froze to the tracks reminiscent of a similar incident thirty years earlier that resulted in Pullman ladders being used as firewood aboard the City of San Francisco.
Amtrak also began serving the west coast of Florida by combining a St. Petersburg section with the Miami section in Jacksonville, FL. This St. Petersburg section ran over the former Atlantic Coast Line route via Trilby, FL which is now largely dismantled. Also of note during this period was Amtrak's abandonment of Jacksonville Terminal/Jacksonville Union Station located at the corner of Bay & Water Streets in favor of a new station along the former Atlantic Coast Line on the Kings Highway. For the Floridian (and the other Florida trains), this mean the end to the need to back in and out of Jacksonville Terminal, which was stub-ended for all trains except those of the FEC--which was still operating under strike. Today Jacksonville Terminal survives as a convention center that pays homage to its rail heritage, and only sees the freight trains of the FEC pass by.
During Amtrak's tenure, it continued to utilize E-units from many railroads before replacing them with the SDP40Fs which began arriving in the mid 1970s. The consists remained steam-heated until the end and at times included dome cars along with the regular complement of coaches, Pullmans, and foodservice (diners and lounges) cars.
The Floridian was briefly combined with the Louisville, KY-Sanford, FL run of Auto-Train. This resulted in consists of AT U36B locomotives and purple, red, and white auto carriers mingling with Amtrak platinum mist, red, and blue cars. Unfortunately, the success with the original Lorton, VA-Sanford, FL Auto-Train did not replicate itself on the Louisville-Sanford run, in part due to the poor timekeeping of the Floridian and this train was discontinued before Auto-Train itself finally succumbed to financial difficulties in the early 1980s.
A similar end would come for the Floridian as it ceased operations in 1979, along with the National Limited, North Coast Hiawatha, Lone Star, and Champion, thus helping to roll back some of the key parts of the original Amtrak system and gains made since its May 1, 1971 founding. The discontinuance was the outgrowth of a DOT report compiled during the Carter Administration that recommended the reduction of services on several routes that did not meet a metric for cost coverage. This report also recommended the discontinuance of the Chicago, IL-Oakland (San Francisco), CA San Francisco Zephyr--which as the California Zephyr has gone on to become one of Amtrak's most popular trains.
There has been no concrete effort to re-establish a Chicago-Miami service, either on the route of the South Wind & Floridian or on that of its partners the City of Miami and Dixie Flagler. During the early 2000s, Amtrak extended the Kentucky Cardinal to a re-opened Louisville Union Station, then followed that act by discontinuing the train again. Any future service restoration will depend upon the interest of the private sector in the project which will be needed to restore infrastructure to its 1950s-era utility and undertake the market-building necessary to make such trains great again.
