The Way It Was: Amtrak's Northeast Corridor in 1987 05 28 

False 1979 to 2016

@@bobbybrisk643 The reason why it wasn’t as soon as it came into service or as soon as service with the toaster ended is beacuse that when AEM-7 were the main loco on NEC

So it was from 81 to 2014

@@Trainrider1 1979 900 was tested at pueblo and they ran it for miles and miles around the circuit track first A7 to hit the corridor was 901 ( May 1980! ), 917/927/942/46 were the last runners primarily in the spring of 2016 until the farewell run took place The “ baby “ Acelas were retired after the many shipments of the city sprinters were shipped to Southhampton yard and Ivy City. I rode in 917s cab for the last time ( March 2016 ) guess how many miles for a small engine… 5 million miles! So as I stated before 1979 to 2016.

They lasted as long as the GG1s. Something to think about.

Let me take a stab at this. I was an Amtrak Washington, DC-based cafe attendant in this time period. On most trains where you would see the cafe at the far end were probably trains going to or from south of Washington, where cars would be either subtracted at DC going south or added going north. On those trains the cafe would be in the section going through. Usually the extra cars between NY and DC were on the rear of the train for removal at DC during the change to Diesel, and on the front going North, added with the AEM7 at DC. Sometimes on a busy day there might be two working cafes on a particularly busy train going all the way from/to Boston, not just the usual cafe/club car (another reason the cafe car would be at the very end of the train - to isolate the Club passengers). You'd have to see the markings on the car to know what it was. And sometimes things just got so hectic that they stuck the cafe car in the consist wherever they could. They also would occasionally use a cafe car just as an unattended coach if they were short on equipment at the time. I'm not sure exactly which train you were referring to, so I couldn't tell you for sure what was going on, but they usually tried to put the working cafe somewhere close to the middle if that worked out. And during the holidays all bets were off and anything with wheels and seats would be thrown onto a train.

lol damn, good call.