1.
Capitol Limited (Amtrak train)
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The Capitol Limited is one of two Amtrak trains connecting Washington, D. C. to Chicago, running 764 miles via Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Service began in 1981 and was named after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads Capitol Limited which ended in 1971 upon the formation of Amtrak and it carries the Amtrak train numbers 29 and 30, which were previously assigned to the discontinued National Limited. During fiscal year 2011, the Capitol Limited carried over 225,000 passengers, the train had a total revenue of $20,312,544 in FY2011, a 9. 3% increase from FY2010. On October 1,1981, Amtrak inaugurated its Capitol Limited upon the discontinuance of the Shenendoah and its numbers,440 and 441, were derived from the Broadway Limiteds 40 and 41 and the new train also used Heritage Fleet equipment. The new train replaced the Broadway Limiteds former Washington section which had diverged at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in late 1984, the Capitol Limited re-equipped with new Amfleet II coaches but also lost its full diner east of Pittsburgh. Beginning with the October 26,1986, timetable, Amtrak split up the Capitol Limited, the former received new numbers,29 and 30, and a later schedule. The Capitol Limited continued to operate over the same route, with the change the Capitol Limited regained a full diner east of Pittsburgh, which it had lost in 1984. The Broadway Limited and its successor, the Three Rivers, were re-routed over the B&Os Chicago-Pittsburgh route, in October 1994, Amtrak, with great fanfare, relaunched the Capitol Limited with a new bilevel Superliner II consist. Eleven people died aboard the MARC train in the accident, Three died of injuries suffered in the impact, the rest were killed by smoke and flames. The MARC engineer and two conductors were among the dead, between 1984 and 1986 and again from 1991 to 1993, the Capitol Limited exchanged a Chicago-Miami coach with the New York-Miami Silver Star at Washington, D. C. During 1997 and part of 1998, Amtrak operated the Capitol Limited in conjunction with the Southwest Chief, the two trains used the same Superliner equipment sets, and passengers traveling on both trains could remain aboard during the layover in Chicago. Originally announced in 1996, Amtrak planned to call this through service the National Chief with its own numbers, although the name, Amtrak dropped the practice with the May 1998 timetable. Trains magazine picked up on this in their January 2011 issue, also cited was the consist switch that would take place, an eight-hour layover on Sundays due to the Pennsylvanians 1, 20p departure, and the lack of Viewliner sleepers to accommodate the service. The Capitol Limiteds original routing west of Pittsburgh included stops in Canton, Ohio, Crestline, Ohio, Lima, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Valparaiso, Indiana, Amtrak dropped Gary as a station stop on April 28,1985. On April 27,1986, Amtrak added Warsaw, Indiana, all these cities lost service when Amtrak re-routed the Capitol Limited north through Toledo on November 11,1990. For a year, a bus connection was offered between Fort Wayne and Waterloo, Indiana. Between March 2,1982, and April 7,1991, at the time the Port Authority of Allegheny County operated the PATrain commuter rail between McKeesport and downtown Pittsburgh. The Port Authority ended the service in 1989, citing low ridership, Amtrak followed suit a year later, noting that on average one passenger boarded at McKeesport per trip during the trains final months of service at that station
2.
Washington Union Station
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Washington Union Station is a major train station, transportation hub, and leisure destination in Washington, D. C. Opened in 1907, it is Amtraks headquarters and the railroads second-busiest station with annual ridership of just under 5 million, the station also serves MARC and VRE commuter rail services, the Washington Metro, and buses. At the height of its traffic, during World War II, in 1988, a headhouse wing was added and the original station renovated for use as a shopping mall. Today, Union Station is one of the busiest rail facilities and shopping destinations in the country, when the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced in 1901 that they had agreed to build a new union station together, the city had two reasons to celebrate. The decision meant that railroads would soon remove their trackwork and terminals from the National Mall. Though changes there appeared only gradually, the consolidation of the depots allowed the creation of the Mall as it appears today, the Act authorized the Washington Terminal Company to construct a station “monumental in character” that would cost at least $4 million. This cost was financed by $12 million in first mortgage bonds as well as advances by the owners which were repaid by stock, each carrier also received $1.5 million in government funding to compensate them for the costs of eliminating grade crossings in the city. The only railroad station in the nation specifically authorized by Congress, the building was primarily designed by William Pierce Anderson of the Chicago architectural firm of D. H. Burnham & Company. The first B&O train to arrive with passengers was the Pittsburgh Express which did so at 6,50 a. m. on October 27,1907 while the first PRR train arrived three weeks later on November 17, the main building itself was completed in 1908. Of its 32 station tracks,20 enter from the northeast, the suite was converted in December 1941 to a U. S. O. Canteen, which went on to serve 6.5 million service members during World War II, although closed on May 31,1946, it was reopened in 1951 as a U. S. O. Lounge and dedicated by President Harry Truman as a permanent home away from home for traveling U. S. armed service members, on the morning of January 15,1953, the Pennsylvania Railroads Federal, the overnight train from Boston, crashed into the station. When the engineer tried to apply the trainline brakes two miles out of the platforms, he discovered that he only had engine brakes. A switchman on the approach to the station noticed the train and telephoned a warning to the station. Just then, the floor of the terminal, having never designed to carry the weight of a locomotive, gave way. The 447, 000-pound electric locomotive fell into about the center of what is now the food court, remarkably, no one was killed, and passengers in the rear cars thought that they had only had a rough stop. An investigation revealed that an anglecock on the brakeline had been closed, the accident inspired the finale of the 1976 film Silver Streak. The durable design of the GG1 made its damage repairable, and it was back in service after being hauled away in pieces to the PRRs main shops in Altoona
3.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
4.
Inter-city rail
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Inter-city rail services are express passenger train services that cover longer distances than commuter or regional trains. There is no definition of inter-city rail, its meaning may vary from country to country. Most typically, an inter-city train is a train with limited stops. Inter-city rail sometimes provides international services and this is most prevalent in Europe, due to the close proximity of its 50 countries in a 10,180,000 square kilometre area. Eurostar and EuroCity are examples of this and this use of the term appeared in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and has been widely imitated. The speeds of inter-city rail lines are diverse, ranging from 50 km/h in a mountainous area or on undeveloped tracks to 200–350 km/h on newly constructed or improved tracks. As a result, Inter-city rail may or may not fall into the category of higher-speed rail or high-speed rail, ideally, the average speed of inter-city rail service would be faster than 100 km/h in order to be competitive with car, bus and other methods of transport. 50–100 km The distance of an inter-city rail journey is usually at least 50–100 km, although in large metropolitan areas commuter. 100–500 km A distance of 100–500 km is a common journey distance for inter-city rail in many countries, in many cases, railway travel is most competitive at about 2–3 hours journey time. Inter-city rail can compete with highways and short-haul air travel for journeys of this distance. 500–1,000 km In journeys of 500–1,000 km, development of high-speed rail in some countries increases the share of railway for such longer-distance journeys. The Paris-Marseille TGV and Tokyo-Aomori Shinkansen are examples of type of journey. In conventional non high-speed rail, overnight trains are common for this distance, in many other countries, such long-distance rail journey has been replaced by air travel except for tourism or hobbyist purposes, luxury train journeys, or significant cost benefit. Discount Eurail Pass in Europe, Amtrak in the United States, New high-speed lines from 200–350 km/h operation are constructed, and many conventional lines are also upgraded to 200 km/h operation. Currently there are seven High-Speed Inter-City lines in China, with up to 21 planned and they are operated independently from the often parallel High-Speed-Rail-Lines. Japan has six main regional railway companies, known collectively as Japan Railways Group or simply as JR. Many other cities are covered by a network of JRs limited express inter-city trains on 1,067 mm, narrow gauge, major cities are covered by convenient train services of every one hour or more frequent. In addition to the JR Group, Japan has several major regional carriers such as the Kintetsu, almost every major town and city in South Korea is linked by railway, run by Korail
5.
Eastern United States
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It is geographically diverse, spanning the Northeast and Southeast as well as the eastern part of the Central United States. In 2011 the 26 states east of the Mississippi had an population of 179,948,346 or 58. 28% of the total U. S. population of 308,745,358. The Southern United States constitutes a region in the south-eastern. In the last few decades, the Southern US has been attracting internal and international migrants, the American South is among the fastest-growing areas in the United States. In one of the earliest English settlements in the New World, English Pilgrims from Europe first settled in New England in 1620, New England produced the first examples of American literature and philosophy and was home to the beginnings of free public education. In the 19th century, it played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States and it was the first region of the United States to be transformed by the Industrial Revolution. The Midwestern United States is one of the four regions within the United States that are recognized by the United States Census Bureau. The region consists of seven states in the central and inland northeastern US, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, a 2006 Census Bureau estimate put the population at 66,217,736. Both the geographic center of the contiguous U. S. the United States Census Bureau divides this region into the East North Central States and the West North Central States. Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Indianapolis, chicago has the largest metropolitan statistical area, followed by Detroit, and Minneapolis – Saint Paul. Marie, Michigan is the oldest city in the region, having been founded by French missionaries, the term Midwest has been in common use for over 100 years. Another term sometimes applied to the general region is the heartland. Other designations for the region have fallen into disuse, such as the Northwest or Old Northwest, since the book Middletown appeared in 1929, sociologists have often used Midwestern cities as typical of the entire nation. The region has a higher ratio than the Northeast, the West. Four of the associated with the Midwestern United States are traditionally referred to as belonging to the Great Plains region. However, in recent years they are included in the Midwestern region. The following is a list of the 24 largest cities in the East by population, East Coast of the United States Eastern Canada Territories of the United States on stamps
6.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
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The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland with a line from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac, from there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia. It is now part of the CSX Transportation network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the USA, the B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U. S. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto, Linking 13 Great States with the Nation, the B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. At the end of 1970 B&O operated 5552 miles of road and 10449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit or the Reading and its subsidiaries. The fast-growing port city of Baltimore, Maryland faced economic stagnation unless it opened routes to the western states, as New York had done with the Erie Canal in 1820. In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation and their answer was to build a railroad—one of the first commercial lines in the world. Two men — Philip E. Thomas and George Brown — were the pioneers of the railroad and they spent the year 1826 investigating railway enterprises in England, which were at that time being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their investigation completed, they held a meeting on February 12,1827, including about twenty-five citizens. Thomas was elected as the first president and Brown the treasurer, the capital of the proposed company was fixed at five million dollars, but the B&O was initially capitalized in 1827 with a three million dollar issue of stock. Virtually every citizen of Baltimore owned a share, as the offering was oversubscribed, construction began on July 4,1828, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton did the groundbreaking. The initial tracks were built with granite stringers topped by iron rails. The first section, from Baltimore west to Ellicotts Mills, opened on May 24,1830. Developers decided to follow the Patapsco River to a point near Parrs Ridge, a later compromise allowed the two companies to share the right of way. The State of Maryland granted the B&O a charter to build a line from Baltimore to Washington, D. C. in 1831, and the Washington Branch was opened in 1835. This line joined to the mainline at Relay, Maryland, crossing the Patapsco on the Thomas Viaduct. This line was funded by the state, and was operated separately until the 1870s
7.
Baltimore
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Baltimore is the largest city in the U. S. state of Maryland, and the 29th-most populous city in the country. It was established by the Constitution of Maryland and is not part of any county, thus, it is the largest independent city in the United States, with a population of 621,849 as of 2015. As of 2010, the population of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area was 2.7 million, founded in 1729, Baltimore is the second largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic. Baltimores Inner Harbor was once the leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a city of neighborhoods, in the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner, later the American national anthem, in Baltimore. More than 65,000 properties, or roughly one in three buildings in the city, are listed on the National Register, more than any city in the nation. The city has 289 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives. The city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, of the Irish House of Lords, Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland. Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, in 1608, Captain John Smith traveled 210 miles from Jamestown to the uppermost Chesapeake Bay, leading the first European expedition to the Patapsco River. The name Patapsco is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to backwater or tide covered with froth in Algonquian dialect, a quarter century after John Smiths voyage, English colonists began to settle in Maryland. The area constituting the modern City of Baltimore and its area was first settled by David Jones in 1661. He claimed the area today as Harbor East on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream. In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was populated, if at all. The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, one Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland period archaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period. During the Late Woodland period, the culture that is called the Potomac Creek complex resided in the area from Baltimore to the Rappahannock River in Virginia. It was located on the Bush River on land that in 1773 became part of Harford County, in 1674, the General Assembly passed An Act for erecting a Court-house and Prison in each County within this Province. The site of the house and jail for Baltimore County was evidently Old Baltimore near the Bush River. In 1683, the General Assembly passed An Act for Advancement of Trade to establish towns, ports, one of the towns established by the act in Baltimore County was on Bush River, on Town Land, near the Court-House
8.
Rolling stock
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The term rolling stock originally referred to any vehicles that move on a railway. It has since expanded to include the vehicles used by businesses on roadways. It usually includes both powered and unpowered vehicles, for locomotives, railroad cars, coaches, and wagons. Rolling stock is considered to be an asset, or close to it, since the value of the vehicle can be readily estimated. The term contrasts with fixed stock, which is a term for the track, signals, stations, other buildings, electric wires. In Great Britain, types of rolling stock were given code names and these codes were telegraphese, somewhat analogous to the SMS language of today. List of railway vehicles Great Western Railway telegraphic codes Great Western Railway wagons The dictionary definition of rolling stock at Wiktionary
9.
Strata-Dome
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The Strata-Domes were a fleet of five streamlined dome cars operated by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The term referred both to a pair of dome cars constructed by Pullman-Standard and three Budd Company domes the B&O acquired from the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. They were the first dome cars operated in the Eastern United States, following on the success of the Chicago, Burlington, the cars entered service in 1949 and were all out of regular service by 1981. Pullman-Standard built the two original Strata-Domes, the dome area seated 24, while the lower level contained two lounges and coach seating for 42. To accommodate the lower clearances on railroads in the Eastern United States the dome sat lower on the Strata Dome than on other cars,21 inches instead of the standard 28 inches. These cars were numbered 5550 and 5551 and given the names High Dome, at the front of the car the B&O installed a speedometer, clock, altimeter, and barometer. In December 1950 the B&O acquired three dome-sleepers from the C&O, the Budd Company had built these cars for the Chessie, a Washington, D. C. –Cincinnati, Ohio luxury streamliner which was cancelled before it entered service. Each of these had 24 dome seats, with 3 drawing rooms,5 roomettes,1 bedroom in the lower level, the B&O numbered these 7600–7602, with the names Moonlight Dome, Starlight Dome, and Sunlight Dome. In 1952 the B&O would mount floodlights on the Strata-Domes to enable viewing the scenery at night. The two original Strata-Domes entered service on the new Columbian, which debuted on May 5,1949 and they were the first domes in regular service on the East Coast. The B&O placed the acquired C&O dome-sleepers on the Capitol Limited, contemporary advertising referred to Strata-Dome service on all three services, despite the mixed origin of the equipment. The Atlantic Coast Line used the domes on its Florida Special, although operation was limited to Richmond, Virginia–Miami and they were the first domes to operate on the Florida route. The Seaboard Coast Line, successor to the Atlantic Coast Line, the domes returned to the Florida Special. The B&O modified the two coaches to include a snack bar in one of the lower-level lounges. The two cars operated on other B&O trains such as the Cincinnatian. The High Dome, painted blue and lettered American Railroads 1869–1969, was part of the 1969 Golden Spike Centennial Limited to mark the centennial of the first transcontinental railroad in the U. S. Both cars later ran on the final Capitol Limited run April 30,1971 when the train was discontinued at the start of Amtrak, Amtrak acquired all five domes and operated them on various services in the 1970s. High Dome was wrecked in 1975 and scrapped in 1980, Amtrak retired its last, Starlight Dome, in October 1981
10.
Track gauge
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In rail transport, track gauge is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a network must have running gear that is compatible with the track gauge, as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still frequently used as a descriptor of a route or network. There is a distinction between the gauge and actual gauge at some locality, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, the nominal track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the rails. In current practice, it is specified at a distance below the rail head as the inner faces of the rail head are not necessarily vertical. In some cases in the earliest days of railways, the company saw itself as an infrastructure provider only. Colloquially the wagons might be referred to as four-foot gauge wagons, say and this nominal value does not equate to the flange spacing, as some freedom is allowed for. An infrastructure manager might specify new or replacement track components at a variation from the nominal gauge for pragmatic reasons. Track is defined in old Imperial units or in universally accepted metric units or SI units, Imperial units were established in United Kingdom by The Weights and Measures Act of 1824. In addition, there are constraints, such as the load-carrying capacity of axles. Narrow gauge railways usually cost less to build because they are lighter in construction, using smaller cars and locomotives, as well as smaller bridges, smaller tunnels. Narrow gauge is often used in mountainous terrain, where the savings in civil engineering work can be substantial. Broader gauge railways are generally expensive to build and require wider curves. There is no single perfect gauge, because different environments and economic considerations come into play, a narrow gauge is superior if ones main considerations are economy and tight curvature. For direct, unimpeded routes with high traffic, a broad gauge may be preferable, the Standard, Russian, and 46 gauges are designed to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. In addition to the general trade-off, another important factor is standardization, once a standard has been chosen, and equipment, infrastructure, and training calibrated to that standard, conversion becomes difficult and expensive. This also makes it easier to adopt an existing standard than to invent a new one and this is true of many technologies, including railroad gauges. The reduced cost, greater efficiency, and greater economic opportunity offered by the use of a common standard explains why a number of gauges predominate worldwide
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