Amtrak Floridian service provided direct service between Florida and the Midwest for almost a decade. The train was first known as the South Wind, a name inherited from predecessors Pennsylvania Railroad, Louisville & Nashville, and Seaboard Coast Line. With the issuance of Amtrak’s first in-house timetable on Nov. 14, 1971, the name was changed to Floridian.
The train provided the only Amtrak service to such cities as Louisville, Ky.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Montgomery, Ala., in its time.
Prior to Jan. 23, 1972, the train served Chicago’s Central Station on the lakefront, owing to its routing on the IC north of Kankakee. After that date, the train switched to a former Pennsylvania Railroad route via Logansport, Ind., and began serving Chicago Union Station with much of the rest of Amtrak’s fleet.
Due to the deteriorating condition of Penn Central’s track, the train saw various routings in Indiana that at times included PC, Louisville & Nashville (ex-Chicago & Eastern Illinois), and L&N (ex-Monon). On Aug. 1, 1974, the train moved to the L&N (ex-C&EI) via Evansville and Danville, Ill., bypassing both Louisville and Indianapolis. On April 27, 1975, it moved to the L&N (ex-Monon) via Lafayette, still bypassing Indianapolis. This would remain the Amtrak Floridianservice routing until the train came off in October 1979.
The track woes led to multiple schedule changes through the years. When Amtrak inherited the train, it operated on a two-day, one-night schedule. However, that would change to a two-night, one day schedule to better accommodate connections in Chicago.
At the Florida end, the train saw the operation of two sections, one to Tampa/St. Petersburg and the other to Miami. To access St. Petersburg, the train had to navigate street trackage at Clearwater. At various times in the 1970s, Amtrak Floridian service operated combined with the Silver Star south of Jacksonville.
One oddity in the train’s operation is its combination with the Auto-Train Corp. service to Louisville in November 1976. With it, the Floridian shifted its Louisville service to the Auto-Train’s facility there. The joint operation south of Louisville ended in September 1977. (Amtrak would later recycle the Floridian’s numbers, 52-53, for its own Auto Trainoperation between Lorton, Va., and Sanford, Fla., beginning in the 1980s.)
For its entire existence, the Floridian operated with steam-heated Amtrak heritage equipment. In the early years, power came from secondhand E units until Amtrak’s own problem-plagued EMD SDP40F diesels took over. Later operations saw use of new EMD F40PH diesel locomotives, but always with a steam-generator car or E unit for steam heat.
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