By J. Bruce Richardson, Corridor Rail Development Corporation; January 27, 2021
Part Four
Amtrak is 50 years old this May. That’s a half century of train operations. Many of us are not aware of the number of Amtrak trains that have come and gone in those decades. Some contributors of Wikipedia have done yeoman’s work compiling lists of past and present Amtrak trains with a plethora of information about each route. Below is an abbreviated part of that work, focusing on Amtrak trains serving the Midwest – West:
California Zephyr
Chicago – Oakland
May 1971 to November 1971
July 1983 to October 1997
Chicago – Emeryville
October 1997 to Present
Chief
Chicago – Los Angeles
June 1972 to September 1972
City of San Francisco
Chicago – Oakland
November 1971 to June 1972
Denver Zephyr
Chicago – Denver
May 1971 to June 1973
Empire Builder
Chicago – Seattle
May1971 to October 1981
Chicago – Portland/Seattle
October 1981 to Present
National Chief
Washington, D.C. – Los Angeles
Announced in1996, but never implemented
North Coast Hiawatha
Chicago – Seattle
June 1971 to October 1979
San Francisco Zephyr
Chicago – Oakland
June 1972 to July 1983
Southwest Chief
Chicago – Los Angeles
October 1984 to Present
Southwest Limited
Chicago – Los Angeles
May 1974 to October 1984
Sunset Limited
New Orleans – Los Angeles
May 1971 to April 1993
Miami – Los Angeles
April 1993 to November 1996
Sanford – Los Angeles
November 1996 to October 1997
Orlando – Los Angeles
October 1997 to August 2005
San Antonio – Los Angeles
August 2005 to October 2005
New Orleans – Los Angeles
October 2005 to Present
Super Chief
Chicago – Los Angeles
April 1973 to May 1974
Super Chief/El Capitan
Chicago – Los Angeles
May 1971 to April 1973
Many people do not focus on one of the main (but, certainly not “only”) reasons that Amtrak is so expensive to operate as a corporation is the high cost of its headquarters functions.
Remember, when Amtrak was created a half a century ago, the original plan was to have a relatively small headquarters operation which handled marketing, reservations, planning, legal and other similar functions. Train operations remained by contract with the host railroads which had turned their trains and equipment over to the new Amtrak.
The now-host railroads sent many of their passenger department employees to the new Amtrak; mostly white collar workers. They attempted to blend managers and employees from different railroads all over the country into a new organization that was supposed to run passenger trains under one umbrella. Suddenly, people who had for decades been reporting to their bosses in Chicago, New York, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Paul and elsewhere were now reporting to a new structure in Washington.
Amtrak’s new managers did not waste much time creating new mini-empires within the company, marking their territories, defending their budgets and protecting their turf against all comers.
In the process of all of this, in the best fashion of early 20th Century railroading, the company grew and grew because there had to be vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, assistant to the assistant vice presidents, bureau managers, bureau assistant managers, supervisors, and on and on.
There was a need for planners. There was a need for accountants and bookkeepers in those early computer-age times. There was a need for personnel managers (this was before the newer need for “human resources” existed), there was a need for a payroll department, benefits managers, and legions of assistants and clerks to back up all of these people.
It did not take long before Amtrak’s new corporate structure was as bloated and overbearing as any railroad structure that had been in place for decades.
Here, half a century later, some of that bloat has been weeded out at great expense, but some will still argue Amtrak is too top-heavy.
That is often what happens when a company is more dependent and focused on an annual federal budget subsidy than it is on creating its own revenue stream from the sale of its product.