Amtrak Cardinal (in coach!) - Apparently a Trip Report 

1:57 When she said "TO THE ELEVATOR!!" I spit out my Mountain Dew

"This Amshack is the most depressing thing ever". You clearly never saw the St. Louis Amshack before it was replaced with the not quite as depressing current transit center. That it sat in the shadow of the beautiful Union Station was that much more depressing.

The Cardinal means a lot to me, and it was surreal seeing Prince, WV again in your video. Back in 2012 I took the Cardinal from Charlottesville to Chicago as part of a month-long solo trip to the US (my first), and was stuck in Prince, WV due to a storm as the evening drew in. I slept on the train, woke up in the morning to find we were still in the same place. Multiple trees had come down along the line and CSX was sending a train out to fix it, but the damage was extensive. It became clear we were going nowhere. And basically no one had phone service, apart from a few people who had contracts with more local cell phone companies. Even the Amtrak phone within the station building was broken by the storm! Our train had a bit of tree embedded in the front causing some cosmetic damage! They weren't sure they'd be able to get buses in to take us instead, but they eventually managed to squeeze them down the local roads and take us onwards (overnight, again) to Chicago. I still remember watching a storm roll across the distant landscape during a rest stop, and later stopping at a McDonald's in the middle of endless cornfields somewhere in Illinois (I assume?). We arrived exactly 24 hours late. I got interviewed by local radio and by NBC, and went to the NBC studios to give them footage from my camcorder. They didn't run the story in the end, but the NBC reporter wanted to thank me for my time and offered me a visit to the NBC studio in London when I got home (I'm from the UK). I emailed him when back in the UK and realised what he meant was the Olympic Park studio! I never did actually get to see the studio, but I got to use his Friends & Family tickets to go in the Olympic Park and take in the atmosphere (though not to go any sports!). I'd passed the Park for years travelling to and from London as it had been built, but had been unsuccessful in balloting to get tickets, so I was well chuffed! Definitely one of the weirdest set of coincidences I've ever had, and an experience I won't forget. (And I say this as someone who got stuck in Iceland during the 2010 eruption.)

Miles in transit is making me consider moving to Philadelphia, especially since it's still cheap

Fun fact: The current Charlottesville station building is actually the old baggage hall. The old main station building (which is right next to the current one) is now a Buffalo Wild Wings. EDIT: A quick Google maps search reveals that it is no longer a BWW... But the building is still definitely there lol

The Commonwealth of Virginia just bought the Buckingham Branch so they can run a future train from Newport News to Christiansburg called the Commonwealth Corridor. Virginia only has trains that go North/South. With that, much of the Buckingham branch from Doswell to Clifton Forge is either in terrible condition (as you experienced) or abandoned altogether. There are plans to update the tracks and make it more usable, but time will tell how long that will take. I hope sooner than later because it would hit nearly every college town in the state, likely increasing ridership astronomically.

Brings back memories of my Cardinal trip in 2009, also Chicago to Philadelphia. Looks like Culpepper, VA station got an upgrade since then! I chatted with a passenger in the dining car who had ridden from the west coast and he said the most scenic rail in America was between Chicago and the Pacific.

Thanks for posting - it brings back memories of my own journey on the Cardinal several decades ago. I definitely agree that the Appalachian section is the most scenic Amtrak route east of the Rockies. Also, I'm now getting a lot of YT adverts for "Philadelphia" cheese spread (yes, this is a thing in the UK too), and I'm not sure this is just coincidental...

The Cardinal is actually descended from the James Whitcomb Riley and the George Washington. The George Washington went from Newport News/Washington DC to Cincinatti. the Riley went from Cincinatti to Chicago.

you know you need to eat something when you're craving Amtrak cafe car food

This video was very helpful and educational. Thanks so much. Very nervous about taking this route to Philadelphia 😂

Just took Cardinal 50 from Baltimore to Chicago on August 28th. 26 hours in coach. Absolutely loved every bit of it. We also were the weekly hospital train picking up superliners and baggage cars in Indianapolis.

Sleeper trains honestly look really nice, I’ve never ridden Amtrak as I’m from the UK but even here I’ve never really experienced a long distance sleeper train before because for me I usually just ride trains as a quick way to and from London, which is just an hour each way for me. This train looks like a good experience, big wide seats, comfy pillows, great views, and your footage of a storm on the train looked really nice in w weird way. I would like to ride this train someday if I ever go to America.

Your narration was very good! It would be nice to show the travel speed on a GPS smartphone app occasionally. You might switch to kph for non United States viewers occasionally. I think the most unacceptable section of this trip is the six hours it takes to between Chicago and Indianapolis. The host railroad down graded the tracks for lower cost operation so passenger train speeds are far below the normal maximum of 79 mph. If the railroad network between Chicago and Indianapolis could be upgrade to 79 mph - 110 mph service with something similar between Alexandria VA and Clifton Forge VA, the Cardinal could be 3 - 5 hours faster and a lot smoother. On its own Amtrak's Cardinal doesn't have the political will to make those changes, but both sections would open up new fast regional passenger trains. I'm impressed with the CSX coal tracks through WV from this video. That Amfleet II chassis and the CSX tracks through WV are much better combination than when I rode the Cardinal in the mid 1980s between N.Va. and WV Tech, Montgomery WV. The heritage fleet cars were rough and rattled over the CSX coal tracks and beat me up. I'd move to the Amfleet lounge car that took the punch out of the rough ride of the heritage fleet cars. The Amfleet lounge car was better for talking and seeing the scenery anyway. I seldom remember smooth running over the CSX coal tracks except where three miles just east of Montgomery WV where CSX had replaced the rail bed and installed new concrete ties. That was SILENT smooth. It was better than most sections of the NEC, although we were probably only going a bit over 60 mph. All the concrete ties I can see from Google aerial photos have been replaced with wood. The problem with concrete ties is if a wheel comes off the rail and drags along the concrete ties is can fracture hundreds of them where a wood tie will just show a scare. The Buckingham Branch track for sometime only had the Cardinal as a regularly scheduled train on it. It was so rough it was hard to believe the train would stay on the track. It has been greatly improved as the new business owner has reinstated regular freight service and is working with the state of Virginia. The state is talking about granting the money to replace the old sectioned rail with continuously welded rail. Virginia would like to have fast passenger train service on the Buckingham Branch. I hope that includes replacing the rail bed sub ballast and fixing any soft spots. That is what provides a stable ride. That sub ballast may have never been replaced. I dug up some sub ballast when working on the Pennsy trail rail bed around Indianapolis. There wasn't any stone that had not had its edges ground round. It was oblong smoothed stone and grindings. A train would have sunk into It especially when water logged which it would be with all the grindings clogging up the ballast. There is talk of running state supported regional passenger trains down the Virginia valley and possibly making them fast trains. There is some tighter curvature, but with super elevation much of the line could likely be able to handle speeds to 110 mph. Thank you for the video. It didn't look like there were many other people in the coach. It sure is nice to not have anybody in the seat next to you.

The Staples Mill Amshack in Richmond (Not Main St) is also pretty dismal. And it's the most popular station in VA!

Thanks for this video! That Huntington Amshack is my home station, and I take this line as much as I can (I just today got back from a California Zephyr through-trip from Huntington.). That thrice-weekly schedule is absolutely brutal to work around. Going west, I can take the train overnight on a 26-hour round trip to Chicago, giving me roughly 8 hours to explore the city before heading back, and I’ve had some fun doing that one, but every other station to the west is either too early or too late for me to reasonably visit. If I want more than 8 hours in Chicago, I need to wait at least 2 more days off work for the next train, and that is hard to afford on my part-time wages. Going east, the only viable day trips are hiking at Thurmond or Prince-Beckley in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, which are spectacular places to visit, or spending the day in the town of Hinton, a pretty charming town. If I go any shorter distance, there is way too much time to kill than can usually be justified in Charleston or Montgomery, and if I go any farther, I need two nights in a hotel before the next train. I had fun taking it to DC, but that’s way too expensive for me to do more regularly. Plus, the additional fare from DC-NYC is ridiculously expensive. Amtrak just applied for a grant to make the Cardinal daily, which would make everything SO much easier to plan around and giving me so many more options. I love the Cardinal with all my heart, and I almost always give passengers chilling in the cafe tours of the Gorge as we pass through, but yeah, the service is super inconvenient, even by Amtrak standards.

2:17 I think I remember passing that bridge when I took the cardinal going west a couple years ago, if it’s the same bridge I remember it has a whole RGB package that flashes fancy colors at night

The best Amtrak rails in VA are on the NS from Norfolk to Petersburg. You saw the new style station in NFK in an earlier video. The NPN station on CSX opening next year will be a step beyond that in style - and a step behind as far as reaching downtown goes, for Newport News and Hampton, the oldest city in the original US by the way, with some hidden gem beaches. New wye too at NPN. Virginia spends a lot in negotiations with NS and CSX, and in this case lost some trackage near a busy port. Blacksburg is a key expansion already rail-banked. (Va.Tech is Amazon's partner in the Crystal City HQ2.) Not to mention expensive investments in the far and away busiest corridor, between Richmond and DC. The glaring lack of east-west has been rail-banked, but it's a janky route. The state also supports three north-south daily bus routes, from the NC border to DC. There's been some talk of rerouting a short section of the Norfolk to Petersburg route, in exurban Suffolk, which lacks an active station. Three rail companies operate in that busy corridor before and after the Dismal Swamp. More exciting are medium-range plans to re-open the S-line from Petersburg to Raleigh, saving a lot of miles, at near-HSR, and it's already rail-banked. North Carolina is a supporter of Amtrak of course, unlike GA/SC/TN, though GA/SC/NC have at least made long-range plans for near-HSR between Atlanta and Charlotte. Georgia is an interesting case, as it is almost purple politically; Atlanta is a semi-liberal megapolis; and any number of routes in question would do well from ATL: Charlotte, Savannah, Chattanooga, Florida. I'd rank them in that order for likelihood of funding. SAV, despite its immense appeal for passenger service, has the second busiest freight port on the East Coast, with more grants to expand.

Great video, I took the Cardinal back in Nov. 2022 from DC to Chicago. Very scenic through the Appalachian mts of Virginia. I enjoyed the jointed rail segment on the Buckingham branch. It brings kind of a nostalgic feel to the train. Theres only one other Amtrak route that has jointed rail which is the Southwest Chief going thru Raton, New Mexico. I have a recording of the Cardinal on the Buckingham branch near Staunton, VA on my channel. Thanks for the video!

Fascinating! Having now seen both this and your waterpark series, I'm wondering how anyone booked to board at Thurmond WV would find out which side of the river to wait \m/

I have ridden the Cardinal several times from Philadelphia to either Chicago or Indianapolis. I agree it is slow but I did enjoy the scenery both east and west bound. I do feel Amtrak needs to change the schedule to improve service to Cincinnati. This is a major city with poor arrival times for this train in both directions. I feel this train would have higher ridership if they tried to serve Cincinnati and Indianapolis as overnight destinations and don’t worry about trying to make west coast long distance trains connections. East cost passengers can use either the Capitol Ltd. or the Lake Shore Ltd. as trains to connect with western long distance trains. Obviously additional days of service even with the existing schedule would also help get more riders.

The cardinal was the very first train I ever took (out of Maysville, sadly the nearest stop to Lexington, KY). Very nostalgic about this route. It was always a nice affordable alternative to get to Chicago overnight, if you can tolerate the very bad arrival time back home. Planning a few trips this year to Prince to go camping across the river at Grandview Sandbar. Hoping with new federal money we can get day service in the area with additional runs.

Amazing video Miles In Transit

I genuinely didn't know THAT was why the Cardinal runs so infrequently. American railroading at its finest...smh

Taking your useful service concept, I also give the Greyhound bus service between Philadelphia and Ocean City MD, a D grade but more like a D-. You’ll definitely need more than 10 extra hours when riding this bus route.

Boarding the Cardinal the other direction out of Ashland, KY on Fri. Doing some homework, haha, thanks for the video.

"To the elevator!" 🤣 after a bad day I needed that random line to make me happy.

I'm surprised the Buckingham Branch has that much power that they can make Amtrak limit their train lengths. I remember when they were just a little railroad that ran between Dillwyn and the CSX line at New Canton (Buckingham County, VA, hence the name). They've really expanded.

1. You forgot the Huntington CSX locomotive shops foamer shot! 2. The Ethan Allen Express runs on a short line railway from Albany- Burlington

Another awesome video. This is a very scenic route. I’m sorry that you didn’t have a great experience. The Cardinal is more of a sightseeing route than a route to get from point A to point B. The only caveat is that the food is mediocre and overpriced. And the “smoke breaks” aren’t long enough to head to town and get a decent meal.

Awesome video! Were we on the same train? I rode the Cardinal from Chicago to Philadelphia 5/10-5/11. I also remember someone getting on the Cardinal train and we stopped the train to let them switch in Virginia. Should be done with my USA rail pass video soon.

Seeing the new river gorge bridge in the fog is insane. It felt like watching the halo ring peek out of the clouds.

I took 51 from CVS to CHI with my daughter last June. Scenic, cozy, punctual and the crew was quite nice. I didn't find the Buckingham Branch to be bumpier than the route of the City of New Orleans. We're taking it from Philly to Chicago next June in a roomette because it's only $20ish more than the Pennsylvanian/Capitol Limited and includes three more meals - albeit probably flex dining

Great video! You did get lucky that you filmed this when you did, Amtrak is suspending most of not long distance service (including the cardinal) this week due to the potential rail strike.

I literally and recently rode Amtrak’s Acela from New Haven - Route 128/University Park and then vice versa with Northeast Regional, but I did get COVID from my stay in Massachusetts.

Indiana resident here: your first impulse was right! That alcohol announcement may have very much been a state thing! Indiana as a state only started allowing alcohol sales on a Sunday AT ALL in 2018, and even then with the restriction of only being able to sell from noon to 8pm on a Sunday. It's likely the train crew played it safe by saying 1 p.m. since the time zone changes so close to Indianapolis and I'm sure a lot of them are mentally in Eastern time with so little of the trip being in Central. Several other states get reputations for being weirdly Christian in their legal makeup but Indiana is quietly ALSO one of those, with strict vice laws. The rules on gambling are so old they had a loophole in banning casinos that allowed riverboat gambling, so in the 90s/2000s a company built a land casino on a giant barge that was TECHNICALLY floating but always in a pond on the property. The goofiest technicality.

Some of the best stops on that run, small towns and real cities, are in the small hours so kind of irrelevant for the tourist, except those that like checking into a hotel after midnight.

Actually that Amtrak bathroom sink is different than the one I was on on the Southwest Chief. Mine had two handles and you had to press down on the handles for water to come out, making it impossible to wash both your hands at the same time.

my fav amtrak train will forever be the vermonter, towards the northern part of the line the train is almost always empty and it's just such a vibe, like two people in an amfleet with you, and pretty vermont going by.

Okay but I just got a roomette from Chicago to Cincinnati and the vegetarian options are not ideal (one dish for mushroom lovers) and I would honestly love a cheese pizza instead lol. I love that this route goes to New River Gorge though and may need to consider that for a future train trip!

Re sleeping before tickets are scanned at 0:51, back in heydey of QuickTrak machines before the Amtrak App, on an Amfleet, I would just stick my ticket up above where the seatcheck goes, and then you could nod off without worrying about it. I suppose you probably didn’t bring a paper ticket printout. But if you plan on being tired… Ah, the locomotive swap. Used to be we had those at New Haven for every trip before NHV/BOS was electrified. Those were the days (or something).

i love your videos

That intro is hilarious 🤣🤣

"Out of West Virginia, and into regular Virginia" 🤣🤣🤣

I’m from Huntington, the station is so poor and small most people don’t even know there’s an Amtrak station in the city. None the less still grateful to have a station and easy access to a lot of cities from it.

3:08 it took a WHILE on our trip to develop a method for getting that cream cheese out of the packet

8:44 "Is it worth? It?" rivals "now I'm in Lancaster. Pennsylvania." in my MIT all timers list

OK. I worked in OBS for Amtrak in the '80s and '90s, not on the Cardinal, but the Cap and the corridor, and also am a railfan who's ridden the New River Gorge route (once in the cab of NKP 765!), as well as chased excursions there ('91 NRHS convention, '93 New River train), so I know something about the train and the route. The high bridge briefly shown out the window is the "Big 19" bridge, carrying US Rt. 19 over the New River Gorge on the highest single-span arch bridge east of the Mississippi, about 800' up. They have an annual Bridge Day every October and allow BASE and bungy jumping off of it. The C&O main line splits at Hawks Nest State Park, with one track on either side of the river for about 10 miles. Usually the Cardinal takes the north side of the river. The curve at the east end of the bridge over the New River has the slowest speed limit on the main (I believe 10 mph, maybe 20?) for that subdivision. The John Sayles movie about the coal labor wars, "Matewan", was filmed mostly in and around Thurmond in the late 1980s, using NKP 765 as the steam locomotive in the movie. Great flick. Alderson's claim to fame is being home to FCI (Federal Correctional Institution) Alderson, a women's minimum security facility that was home to Martha Stewart about 20 years ago for her stock manipulation transgressions. The old railroad cars you saw some of at Clifton Forge are part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Historical Society's museum there. Staunton, VA was the birthplace of President Woodrow Wilson. And no, the Buckingham Branch does not decide how often the Cardinal runs, blame that one on Congress and Amtrak management for keeping it tri-weekly. It's too bad you couldn't get off in Prince and show the station there, it was one of the last ones built by the C&O in the late 1940s, a very stylish structure. It also is at the east end of the only tunnel on the New River sub, Stretcher's Neck. I wish you had shown good footage of the private car on the rear, I could have probably told you something about it if I had gotten a good look at it.

The Cardinal I was on from DC to NYC hit 109 mph.

I should also mention that the BB is a 60mph line, which, compared to many line segments is not terrible. For example the Lake Shore between Boston and Albany is mostly a 60mph train. However the short segment from Gordon, VA to Orange, VA (called the Washington Sub) was 40mph max speed. OMG that one stupid part took forever. I think it's been upgraded to 60mph. Even if the BB is taken out of the equation, I don't see anything faster than 60 due to all the curves. It feels like a long trip because Virginia is larger than you think. A bigger issue is the former Monon RR route in Indiana between Dyre and Crawfordsville was 80mph until about 2008 when CSX downgraded it to 60 and added a good 30 min to the runtime. It's straight and fast, but CSX didn't want to pay for Class 4 maintenance.

Miles, Amtrak must’ve changed this between when you shot this video and now. I’m sending my folks on a big Amtrak circle across American next month on a multi city ticket and I can bid on rooms with it. They’re going from Minnesota Chicago to Buffalo, New York and over to Toronto. A day trip in the sleeper from Minnesota to Chicago was almost $300. I put in a poor bid at $100. Now I’m just waiting till we get closer to the departure day to see if I can win it. I have to fly from Minnesota to Toronto, but that’s because I have Delta credit. I’m gonna lose. All three of us are riding the Canadian across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. Were they will take the train on from Vancouver to Seattle onto Whitefish and then back to Minnesota. Where I will stay behind in Vancouver, and I’m flying off to Australia for a month to ride trains all across that continent

2:51 Nice to see the return of the "menu shot" song... By the way, what changes have been made to the café menu? I haven't heard anything about such a change.

I love the cream cheese packets!

On the strength of this video chose the Cardinal for my first overnight train trip (Chicago to DC) later this year.

Can we put Miles in charge of Amtrak plz?

Slight correction, you didn't eat cafe car food, you ate in the cafe car, but a special sleeping car menu that is on the same tier as what Amtrak downgraded all the east coast stuff to. The Cardinal's version of the microwave specials was actually really good because at the time the service staff took special effort to prepare it and make it nice. It might have also been at a higher price point than the current dishes. You'd also get a fresh served roll and salad.

3:05 my work around is to slice the entire sachet open longways and then you can apply it right on to the $3 bagel in one shot!

Gorgeous scenery. And holy crap the e-bell on the ACS sounds like garbage compared to the Genesis!

Nice. Do you still need people for the race to germantown?

I'm kinda surprised that they don't scan tickets as you bored, to prevent hich hikers. Be a pain during winter, lines may be long, but you know everyone who is supposed to be on there is on there.

2:40 you missed the chance to observe the clock that’s been broken for 6 years

I live right near Manassas, cool to the man himself in my neck of the woods.

The pronunciation of "Staunton" is indeed "STAN-tun" whether referring to the city or the river also known as the Roanoke.

When did you do this video?

Pronouncing 'Staunton' with a short e is a far more acceptable error than what most folks do, which is either a short o like "Stonton" or a German au like "Stownton." I can totally imagine a southwestern Virginian short a sounding like a New England short e, especially over a grainy Amfleet II intercom. However you pronounce it, Staunton's dope. Really needs daily service, or ideally twice-daily so folks in C'ville or NoVA could take the train there for day trips. The Blackfriars Playhouse alone could generate enough ridership to fill a Northeast Regional.

6:08 Wow, Amtrak being slow? Imagine that

What do they actually heat the pizza up in? Is it a microwave or an actual toaster oven of some sort? Get a shot of that puppy when you get a chance.

That ugly station is called an AmShack

He sleeps right through Cincinnati.

Amshack ® © A Miles in Transit branding!

DiGiornos doesn’t sound *that* bad lol. Then again I never rode Amtrak when they had the DiGiornos on the menu, so… 🤷‍♂️

I think the Cardinal should just terminate in DC, the loco switch is just kind of dumb, but I guess since there is only one direct route to NY from CHI (the Lake Shore, of which half goes to Boston) as the next best is the Capital Limited to the Pennsylvanian in PIT or switching to a corridor/Acela in DC