The Cardinal is perhaps Amtrak's most obscure long-distance train and is Cincinnati's only intercity rail service.  It does its thing only 3 times per week in each direction -- its endpoints at Chicago and New York city distract from the true focus of this train, which is the remote population of West Virginia.  There the train snakes 200 miles through the mountains, including 100 miles along the banks of the Kanawah River and through the world-famous New River Gorge.  It stops at various towns along the bottom of the gorge with fewer than 500 residents.  Thanks to deceased WV Senator Robert Byrd, the train travels through this barely-populated wilderness during daylight, meaning eastbound trains leave Cincinnati -- a metro with a larger population than the entire state of West Virginia -- at 3:20am.  Chicago-bound trains leave NYC at 7am and reach West Virginia by noon but don't get to Cincinnati until 1:30am. 

 

I bought this ticket via Amtrak's website about 2 months before the trip, and so got the round-trip ticket for $120, about $200 less than the cost of flying.  Also, the hotel in Baltimore was within walking distance of Union Station so I avoided airport cab rides in Cincinnati and there. Unfortunately the #1 bus to Union Terminal does not operate overnight, so I had somebody drive me down there.  The train was sold out on the way east and was nearly sold out on the way back. 

 

Where 16 platforms operated between 1933 and 1972, only one remains.  For a period during the 80s, The Cardinal stopped at a purpose-built platform close to the 6th St. Expressway.  I think this had to do with which line it used north of Cincinnati.  Then the train used the other branch of the C&O bridge viaduct approach, which touches down sooner an passes under this viaduct at a right angle.

 

Here is the lonely scene at 3:20am, awaiting the eastbound train:

 

On the train...yes that is The Carew Tower visible.  And yes, this guy played around on his phone for THE ENTIRE TRIP.  I didn't see him look out the window even once!

 

Passing beneath the Brent Spence Bridge approach:

 

I slept from about 4am until about 11am...when I woke up we were racing along the New River:

 

More New River Gorge:

 

You can see the tracks in this video...there are actually tracks on both sides of the New River for at least 10 miles:

 

You can see one of the New River dams in the distance:

 

This is Amtrak's Wi-Fi service...it worked less than half of the time:

 

Each seat has a plug to keep your phone or whatever going:

 

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Somewhere out of the mountains in Virginia:

 

A perfect yuppie town in Virginia:

 

Getting close to Washington, DC:

 

The Cardinal shares tracks and stations with commuter rail services in Northern Virginia that assume travel into DC's Union Station:

 

Parallels one of the Washington Metro lines:

 

Crossing The Potomac:

 

 

 

Tracks split just south of the US Capitol...this other set of tracks bypass Union Station and rejoin the Northeast Corridor tracks about 5 miles of east of here and so I assume are used mostly by freight trains:

 

 

 

Baltimore Penn Station:

 

Baltimore Penn Station:

 

 

View from the hotel:

 

 

Heading back west...

 

 

The eastbound Cardinal is 50, the westbound train is 51:

 

Here it is:

 

Passing through Washington again:

 

More perfect yuppie towns in Virginia:

 

It's all a little too perfect:

 

Buried utilities:

 

Charlottesville, VA, home to The University of Virginia:

 

Student housing:

 

UVA student housing way better than The Banks or U Square:

 

Some trendy-looking mid-rise going up next to UVA:

 

Luxury student mid-rise and perfectly-kept wood houses:

 

America's higher-ed arms race:

 

 

 

 

 

We're back in West Virginia along the Kanawah, near Montgomery:

 

 

Kanawah River, just upstream from Charleston:

 

Hauling ass along the old C&O line paralleling the Ohio River:

 

The train still travels in excess of 70mph until just before DT Cincinnati comes into sight...then it's a 20~mph circuitous approach through Newport and Covington, then very slow down the C&O bridge viaduct to Cincinnati Union Terminal:

 

 

6th St. Expressway:

 

...and that's it.  The train arrived at its scheduled time, 17 hours after I left Baltimore.  I was so tired of being on that damn train that I didn't take any photos of the empty terminal!

 

 

 

 

Are all of the tracks used at the Baltimore station? That canopy looks horrible.

 

The Cardinal is doing something right, carrying a record number of passengers and having record revenue year after year. Its costs could be lowered if they were daily trips, as the crew members are given "away pay" for the days the train isn't running. One of the biggest obstacles to daily trips is in Virginia, where CSX uses the Buckingham Branch Railroad that is single tracked. Funding to add sidings has always been a problem, and it really needs to be double tracked.

 

I was looking at the station passenger numbers a while back and most are steady, some are increasing and a few are declining - the latter not by much.

It looks like they had an Amtrak train catch fire in the station recently, and that's why the canopy is burnt:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-train-fire-20160310-story.html

 

I couldn't tell how many tracks were in use at Baltimore.  It looked like about 7, with the one furthest away out of service and the one closest to the station used by Baltimore's light rail.  It runs a spur off of the main light rail line between the station and Downtown and Camden Yards, distance of 1-2 miles.  They have just one train that does this route.  So it goes back and forth all day and night.  I rode it with maybe 4 people.  I assume that it gets a lot busier during commutes, since some of Baltimore's commuter trains stop here, which is a solid mile north of the downtown. 

 

The train should run every day, if not twice per day.  It gets a lot more use than people would expect.  I think the web helps people figure out if it will work for them in a way that wasn't possible in the 70s-90s, when there was no easy way to get information on it.  Also, the $120 RT web fare to the east coast is impossible to beat, even on Greyhound. 

 

 

^ The only reason I have never been able to take the Cardinal is because it doesn't run every day. It would be very easy and convenient to take one day off and have a long weekend in Chicago if the train had daily service in each direction, even if it ran at the same times it does now. My brother lived in Charleston, WV for years and I always wanted to take the train there but it would have always required me to take at least 2 days off work. If they began to offer daily service I think it would become very popular because it would attract new riders that so far haven't been able to make the 3 trains/week schedule work. This is especially true for the Cincinnati to Chicago portion, as the TSA is currently trying their best to make a flight from Chicago to Cincinnati take just as long as the train.

Took the trip from CIN to BAL back in January. I had the worst headcold which made the trip pretty miserable, but I have to admit that traveling along the New River is beautiful. I actually took the train out and flew back from BWI to Dayton a week later. The plane ticket was actually a bit cheaper than the one-way Amtrak ticket, but it meant flying from Baltimore to Atlanta with a three hour layover.

 

The Baltimore light rail was dead when we rode it. That whole stretch of Howard Street that it runs on is almost completely devoid of businesses. When I went back up to Penn Station to catch a MARC train to Washington, I just took one of the free circulator buses from the Inner Harbor up Charles Street. I rode all of the circulator lines during the week I was there and they were always packed - much more so than the light rail or the subway.

Charlottesville is on fire!

Have you been to Charlottesville lately Chris? I remembered the pedestrian mall being pretty dead when I first visited it back around 2000, but it's exploded with activity and new development since then. Reminds me a lot of Ithaca in a way.

The Baltimore light rail's path through downtown Baltimore has to be the most bombed-out section of any American city that has a pretty major trail transit line traveling through it...right down there with the light rail pedestrian mall in Buffalo.  That line gets a lot of ridership during the week, so my guess is that there is some entity holding onto a lot of those buildings for redevelopment.  Everything around it has been scrubbed clean of anything interesting...DT Baltimore and the Inner Harbor have almost zero local businesses.  It's completely taken over by national shopping, restaurant, and entertainment chains.  It's like The Banks + NOTL + Kenwood Mall, with absolutely nothing local in the mix.  I'm sure the whole thing was programmed by something like a 3CDC organization, laid over some sort of 1980s-era urban plan.  Also, Camden Yards is again scrubbed totally clean of anything unique. 

 

 

^ The only reason I have never been able to take the Cardinal is because it doesn't run every day. It would be very easy and convenient to take one day off and have a long weekend in Chicago if the train had daily service in each direction, even if it ran at the same times it does now. My brother lived in Charleston, WV for years and I always wanted to take the train there but it would have always required me to take at least 2 days off work. If they began to offer daily service I think it would become very popular because it would attract new riders that so far haven't been able to make the 3 trains/week schedule work. This is especially true for the Cincinnati to Chicago portion, as the TSA is currently trying their best to make a flight from Chicago to Cincinnati take just as long as the train.

 

For Cin-Charleston specifically, the CUT departure and arrival times would still suck.  If there was a second daily train that left Cincinnati at the opposite hour (3:30PM instead of 3:30AM), it would get to WV during the early evening and to Washington, DC around 6am.  It would get to NYC at 11am. 

 

 

^ To illustrate Jake's point about Howard Street. It's pretty astounding.

 

 

 

Nice pics, Jake. This has always been West Virginia's train to access its remote towns, tourism sites (Greenbrier) and active sports destinations (New River Gorge). But if we can use its presence to attract investment into the Chicago-Cincinnati portion to speed it up and ultimately get more trains there, this will be worthwhile.

 

Are all of the tracks used at the Baltimore station? That canopy looks horrible.

 

The Cardinal is doing something right, carrying a record number of passengers and having record revenue year after year. Its costs could be lowered if they were daily trips, as the crew members are given "away pay" for the days the train isn't running. One of the biggest obstacles to daily trips is in Virginia, where CSX uses the Buckingham Branch Railroad that is single tracked. Funding to add sidings has always been a problem, and it really needs to be double tracked.

 

I was looking at the station passenger numbers a while back and most are steady, some are increasing and a few are declining - the latter not by much.

 

Virginia DOT is putting nearly $50 million into the Buckingham Branch railroad, including new or lengthened passing sidings, continuous welded rail and even Positive Train Control signals on the Amtrak-used portion. That plus reduced coal traffic is freeing up capacity on that and other parts of the Cardinal route that will make daily service possible. Amtrak predicts that ridership will increase 96 percent by running the Cardinal daily. And while the average subsidy per passenger will decrease by running the train daily it will increase the net subsidy by $2 million to $3 million per year. There is now a federal program that's been authorized but not yet funded by Congress to pay for cost-effective expansions such as the daily Cardinal. We at All Aboard Ohio are working to get funding for that program, called Restoration & Enhancement grants (Sec. 11104), which was authorized at up to $20 million per year. Early legislation is for $15 million per year for the ENTIRE country. That's too small. We need AT LEAST $20 million per year. Contact your Congressperson!

That's great news!

Nice pics, Jake. This has always been West Virginia's train to access its remote towns, tourism sites (Greenbrier) and active sports destinations (New River Gorge). But if we can use its presence to attract investment into the Chicago-Cincinnati portion to speed it up and ultimately get more trains there, this will be worthwhile.

 

Are all of the tracks used at the Baltimore station? That canopy looks horrible.

 

The Cardinal is doing something right, carrying a record number of passengers and having record revenue year after year. Its costs could be lowered if they were daily trips, as the crew members are given "away pay" for the days the train isn't running. One of the biggest obstacles to daily trips is in Virginia, where CSX uses the Buckingham Branch Railroad that is single tracked. Funding to add sidings has always been a problem, and it really needs to be double tracked.

 

I was looking at the station passenger numbers a while back and most are steady, some are increasing and a few are declining - the latter not by much.

 

Virginia DOT is putting nearly $50 million into the Buckingham Branch railroad, including new or lengthened passing sidings, continuous welded rail and even Positive Train Control signals on the Amtrak-used portion. That plus reduced coal traffic is freeing up capacity on that and other parts of the Cardinal route that will make daily service possible. Amtrak predicts that ridership will increase 96 percent by running the Cardinal daily. And while the average subsidy per passenger will decrease by running the train daily it will increase the net subsidy by $2 million to $3 million per year. There is now a federal program that's been authorized but not yet funded by Congress to pay for cost-effective expansions such as the daily Cardinal. We at All Aboard Ohio are working to get funding for that program, called Restoration & Enhancement grants (Sec. 11104), which was authorized at up to $20 million per year. Early legislation is for $15 million per year for the ENTIRE country. That's too small. We need AT LEAST $20 million per year. Contact your Congressperson!

 

Yes I saw that Buckingham Branch equipment on sidings that we passed.  I didn't have any idea what it was.  I do remember that in that area, on the return trip, The Cardinal stopped on a siding of some kind, then backed back onto the mainline.  It didn't take long -- the stop was maybe 5 minutes, and the backup maneuver less than that -- but nevertheless it seemed like a pretty primitive situation. 

 

It appeared to me that perhaps 1/4-1/2 of the Cardinal's entire route was double-tracked.  There weren't any significant delays on either of the trips and the train was mostly going over 60mph.  Again, the problem with this route for Cincinnatians traveling to the east coast is that the route is so far out of the way and that the departure and arrival times are completely ridiculous.  But if they could do 2 trains in each direction every day, we might see this thing really take off. 

 

Also, what keeps Amtrak from throwing one more passenger coach on each train other than a shortage of equipment?  If they did that, then more people could sit by themselves, which obviously would improve ride quality.  Sitting next to some of these idiots was a little tough.  I'm used to it from Greyhound, but on this train, they're next to you for much longer periods of time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^ To illustrate Jake's point about Howard Street. It's pretty astounding.

 

 

 

 

There is a freight railroad tunnel under this street, which prevented light rail from being a subway on that corridor.  Baltimore has several very long freight railroad tunnels, and there is a lot of talk about rebuilding one or more of them, and there is speculation that a new tunnel for the Howard St. freight line would permit the old tunnel to be used by the light rail line. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is the Superliner equipment used on the Cardinal anymore?

^ To illustrate Jake's point about Howard Street. It's pretty astounding.

 

 

 

 

There is a freight railroad tunnel under this street, which prevented light rail from being a subway on that corridor.  Baltimore has several very long freight railroad tunnels, and there is a lot of talk about rebuilding one or more of them, and there is speculation that a new tunnel for the Howard St. freight line would permit the old tunnel to be used by the light rail line. 

 

 

That Penn Station LRT spur was poorly executed as it merely skims the edge of Baltimore's downtown and thus is not convenient for most business travelers who usually end up taking cabs to the CBD (I've been one of them).  The Light Rail in general is an example of a powerful pol -- Baltimore's late former mayor-then- MD Gov. William Donald Schaefer -- who wanted it so badly he built it on the cheap.  To most effectively serve the City it should have been built several blocks to the East and underneath Charles Street to serve the spine of the city... had this been done, they wouldn't have even needed the spur because the LRT would have directly served Penn Station.  It's all very weird since Baltimore somehow found the money, a few years prior to the LRT, to build a full, 15-mile HRT (Metro) elevated-subway line through the center of downtown, but with no direct LRT connection.

Also, what keeps Amtrak from throwing one more passenger coach on each train other than a shortage of equipment?  If they did that, then more people could sit by themselves, which obviously would improve ride quality.  Sitting next to some of these idiots was a little tough.  I'm used to it from Greyhound, but on this train, they're next to you for much longer periods of time. 

 

Amtrak has the equipment but running more cars means lower load factors and higher maintenance/depreciation costs. Besides, this train will need another set of equipment for it to go daily. The existing Cardinal equipment turns allow Amtrak to run the train five days per week but not daily. As the rest of the Viewliner II cars are delivered, Amtrak should have enough for a daily Cardinal.

 

Is the Superliner equipment used on the Cardinal anymore?

 

No, they can't run the Superliners north of Washington DC because some of the tunnels are too low for the 16-foot-high cars. The commuter bilevels used on the NEC are shorter. The Cardinal has run with Superliners in the past but the trains didn't go north of DC.

That Penn Station LRT spur was poorly executed as it merely skims the edge of Baltimore's downtown and thus is not convenient for most business travelers who usually end up taking cabs to the CBD (I've been one of them).  The Light Rail in general is an example of a powerful pol -- Baltimore's late former mayor-then- MD Gov. William Donald Schaefer -- who wanted it so badly he built it on the cheap.  To most effectively serve the City it should have been built several blocks to the East and underneath Charles Street to serve the spine of the city... had this been done, they wouldn't have even needed the spur because the LRT would have directly served Penn Station.  It's all very weird since Baltimore somehow found the money, a few years prior to the LRT, to build a full, 15-mile HRT (Metro) elevated-subway line through the center of downtown, but with no direct LRT connection.

 

I don't think there's anything keeping them from doing that in the future.  They could simply scrap the Howard St. section of the line and possibly redo all of the stations so that the old light rail line could become compatible with the proposed red line light rail. 

 

But the big problem I sense in DT Baltimore is that because they were successful in blocking an interstate from being built through the downtown area, traffic planners felt it necessary to build some wide streets and to make seemingly everything a 1-way.  A surface modern streetcar like what Cincinnati now has would probably work really well east/west around the Inner Harbor area and over to Fells Point.  That would be in addition to the red line light rail subway that has been proposed for several years. 

 

i've rode amtrak back and forth to cleveland and from toledo, so this was very interesting to see. of course this one has the same liabilities the other ohio amtrak services do, being they are all active at the most inconvenient times.

 

Thanks for the tour. I've always wondered about the Cardinal, but have never been on it.