Taking the Scenic Route: Chicago to Miami on Amtrak’s Floridian

When I posted on Facebook about enjoying Amtrak from Chicago to Miami, one reader decried my two-day odyssey: it was, he wrote, “a complete waste of time traveling way out of the way.” I suppose he was thinking you fly or even drive that in far less time.

Ah, but you see—no one takes long-distance Amtrak to get there fast.

Quite the opposite, actually.

In this case, besides the usual wonders of train-travel—the panoply of sights, the onboard meals and that sense of being totally unplugged—a friend and I were also sampling Amtrak’s newest train.

Meals on Wheels

Temporarily combining two long-distance routes to curb congestion and free up equipment, Amtrak’s Floridian runs daily in both directions between Chicago and Miami.

It joins the former DC-Chicago Capitol to the NYC-Miami Silver Star, creating Trains 40 (northbound) and 41 (south). This new route covers more stops than any other train in the system: 46 stations in 11 states. It’s also the line’s only two-night run east of the Mississippi—and unlike most of those eastern trains, the Floridian has a full-service diner: six meals in each direction.

Room with a View

Besides regular coach seats—roomy but not great overnight—the 47-hour Floridian offers two types of sleeping accommodations: a snug roomette, or the costlier bedroom, which has more space plus a private shower. (Roomette-riders share a single shower at the end of each car.)

Deciding on the southbound run, a fellow-traveler and I took two roomettes—directly across from each other on both sides of the car. Surprisingly, this option can be cheaper than a single bedroom; and it provides privacy, plus elbow room—especially once the beds are down.

With a scheduled 6:40 p.m. departure, we left Chicago right on time one Wednesday in April—destined for a Friday evening arrival in Miami.

I brought several books and a laptop but spent most of my hours gazing out the window; the computer came out only to document all those memorable sights. (Granted, I could’ve caught some of those by car—but I’m usually the driver, and that ain’t the same.)

In any case, let’s save my dizzying visual list for last, and start with observations on this new train:

Creative Cleaning

The Floridian generally runs with two engines, four coaches, a café-lounge, the diner, three sleepers and a baggage car. In our case the sleepers, though clean and comfy, were somewhat the worse for wear: hot showers were available in just one of the three cars—and even there, a clueless bather had somehow detached the nozzle, leaving only an open-ended hose.

My traveling companion, John—an intrepid ex-Navy man who spent much of his career on submarines—managed this gushing mess anyway; perhaps it recalled our grade-school summers—which is actually when the two of us met, more than 50 years ago.

And speaking of washes: My roomette window was fairly grimy. Photographs taken through that can have a painterly patina (not kidding), but I finally got fed up and cleaned it during a station-stop in Orlando. Since that’s a low platform and train-windows are seven or eight feet off the ground, this required bottled water and one of my roomette’s hand-towels—slung over the end of a dried palm-frond I scrounged off the ground.

Just try that on a plane sometime.

Sand Patch PA

The first morning in Southwestern PA was breathtakingly gorgeous as we wound back and forth through rivered valleys in remote mountain regions. I had just noted that we finally stopped climbing and were headed downhill when the train passed a sign declaring “Summit of the Alleghenies, 2258 ft.”—and then plunged into darkness.

Built 1911-1913, the 4800-foot Sand Patch Tunnel is named for this arduous 100-mile stretch, widely recognized as “one of the most technically demanding railroad routes in the United States.”

And at one point that morning, because of the odd geography involved, 41 passes from Maryland into West Virginia, and then back into Maryland again—followed by Washington at 1:05, where we encountered our first Floridian foible.

No Free Lunch

After a tasty breakfast (try the fresh-made cheesy scrambled eggs!), the diner staff offered us lunch at 10:45. But during an earlier February trip, I’d lunched on the Floridian well past 2; so we opted to wait till after our lengthy stop in DC.

However: In contrast to most long-distance Amtraks, the Floridian sometimes makes a mid-run change in sleeping-car and diner crews—probably so that former Capitol staff can retain their original schedule, returning to Chicago from DC on Train 40 that evening.

In any case, we were told that this switch required the departing crew to shut down the diner, and the new chef wouldn’t start it up again till dinner—even though we were leaving DC much earlier than on my February trip.

Half Full

Besides paying more attention to lunch-call, our principal lesson here was that, for all the talk about combining routes, the Floridian still feels like two trains.

A slew of riders got off in Washington, while another gargantuan gaggle got on; and the post-DC food was not as good.

What’s more, a PA announcement from our snappish new conductor sharply insisted that all coach-riders take their assigned seats and stash their luggage—because, she proclaimed, “This train is sold out!”

But it wasn’t.

For one thing, all three sleepers were less than half full. (Indeed, by the time we reached Miami, John and I were the only riders in our entire car.) On top of that, with my long-standing habit of strolling the train from end to end, I passed plenty of empty seats in the leading coaches; and the first of the four was completely closed off—not a rider in sight.

Scoot Over

And on the matter of stops: Another puzzler occurred that evening in Raleigh, when a cheerful disabled woman rode up the platform on a motorized scooter. First the contraption drove into her accessible bedroom; but she and her husband found that too crowded. So he rode it all the way down to the baggage-car at the end of the train—but they wouldn’t take it, and he had to ride back and consult with his wife, who was already seated in the diner for a meal.

All this took about 15 minutes—just one of many Floridian stops where time-at-platform went well beyond the schedule; add those up over multiple stations and it means running further and further behind. In this case, shouldn’t some crew member have known baggage wouldn’t take that scooter?

Like the lunch-fiasco in DC, this sort of one-hand-doesn’t-know nonsense is something Amtrak needs to work on.

On a lighter but related—and less grammatical—note, that same sharp conductor kept urging careful debarkation at stops because, she insisted, “All doors will not open”—which would literally mean: No one gets off. (“Not all doors” is what she meant.)

Three-Point Turn in Tampa

After entering the Sunshine State on its third day, 41 turns sharply west at Jacksonville, trundling all the way over to Tampa on the Gulf, and then returning east for Miami. All told, the Floridian spends 11 hours traversing its namesake.

Because the tracks dead-end in Tampa, this route necessitates a three-point turn—on what railroaders call a “wye” (named for the shape of the trackage). So coming west, the train turns due north till it’s entirely off the main, then backs into Tampa on the other leg of the “Y.”

In this way, it can return east with engines still in front—though this also enables a second Lakeland stop east of Tampa, less than two hours after the first. It’s the only instance in the Amtrak system where the same train stops twice at a single station.

Now about those sights….

America’s Backyard

Unlike flights and highways—both understandably focused on speed—rail-lines plunge into the heart of towns and cities, also rambling over rural regions where the only roads are dirt. With its widely varying climate and topography, the Floridian provides a mesmerizing cross-section of our nation.

I call it “America’s backyard”:

Firepits, gardens, swing sets and classic cars; salt quarries, high schools, automotive graveyards and abandoned factories; thriving clusters of gas stations, strip malls and convenience stores—contrasting once-busy but now-desolate downtowns; vintage steam locomotives and cabooses at trackside; classic depots; houses going up and falling down; forests, fields, ponds, streams, rivers, hills, meadows, mountains and marshes; railyards, churches, livestock, lumberyards, bike paths, solar farms, granaries, golf courses, golden sunsets and salmon dawns.

All Over the Continent

At night, lights glistened over broad, dark rivers; and daytime offered endless wildlife (bald eagles, herons, geese, ducks and turkeys in the North; and then two days later in Florida: ibises, herons, egrets, sandhill cranes and ospreys—I even saw a rare roseate spoonbill, pastel-pink with a spoon-shaped beak).

We watched conifers, cactuses and palm trees roll past; crowded highways and twisting dirt roads; rail-line spurs with their own aging switch-engines; boats, bridges, barges, marinas, tenements, offices, Edward Hopper storefronts and plenty of graffiti—catchy and colorful but linguistically baffling; and all the while on adjacent tracks: rushing, roaring Amtraks, sleek commuter lashups and long, lumbering freights with equipment from all over North America—Canadian National, Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern and even Ferromex.

Many of their hoppers and boxcars sported graffiti so fresh, liberal and artistic that John and I wondered whether the companies have actually started allowing this, perhaps as an added layer of protection against the climatic rigors of rail transport.

View of Toledo

Departing Chicago, I watched an aging Asian man in a shallow-cone hat toting a six-foot bamboo pole across his shoulders—from which were slung four trash-bags bursting with recyclable cans.

At night in Toledo, we passed a suspension bridge with a string of lights coming on and going off sequentially across the span—while also changing colors with each new cycle. (During a dawn stop on our earlier northbound Floridian, a gaggle of white-tail deer stood calmly between two trios of tracks at the Toledo terminal.)

In Virginia there were miles and miles along the broad Potomac, and a trip right through the police and military campuses in Quantico. Later, a scholastic baseball game was in progress as we skirted the grounds of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA.

And somewhere in the rural Carolinas, we passed a large white cabin-cruiser keeled over along a dirt road—with “S.S. Minnow” spray-painted on its side; a short time later, a single ivied smokestack rose alone from a wide flat field, and beside it, a lonely X-shaped RR crossing sign—with nothing anywhere near them but grass.

The Crack of Dawn

The third day I woke as we stopped for a crew-change in Jacksonville; it was 6:47, and my weather app showed sunrise at 6:48—so I hopped onto the platform for a cool and lovely dawn.

Near Haines City, FL, trackside views unfurled a massive salvage-yard of derelict backhoes, Caterpillars and other heavy equipment stretching easily a mile—followed shortly by a fenced-in area featuring roughly 40 food trucks.

And all along the southbound odyssey, lines of cars waited patiently at railroad crossing-gates while we hustled past—and where were they all going, these people whose lives had suddenly intersected with ours for all of 10 seconds?

Honestly, what other form of travel offers anything like this? And does that sound like a waste of time to you?

If so, you’re welcome to wrestle with the interstates or TSA—and even the S.S. Minnow, if your route is over water.

As for me: I’m already planning a three-night run on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited: 62 more hours of gazing out the window.

All aboard!

About the Author

Joseph W. Smith III is a writer, teacher and speaker in Central PA. Published in several websites and periodicals, Joe has also penned books on Hitchcock, the Bible, church life and under-the-radar movies—along with a volume of Great Jokes and Riddles. He plays trumpet in a community band; reads 100 books a year; serves as officer in his local church; struggles to keep cheering for the Buffalo Bills; listens to music whenever not sleeping; and maintains a small collection of unused postcards. He can be reached at robbwhitefan@gmail.com.

All images courtesy of the author.