A pair of GG-1's at Harrisburg, PA on a frosty morning in February 1974. This is a larger version of our fourth masthead image. (GG1HAR.JPG; 72Kb)

First new power for Amtrak were 150 brawny SDP40F's, adapted from a freight design so they could be sold off if the system collapsed. That never happened, but suspicion that the SD's did not track properly at passenger-train speeds shortened their careers considerably. Here a pair leads the eastbound Sunset Limited into Houston, Texas in March '77. (ATK_555.JPG; 67Kb)

Passengers on Amtrak's eastbound Sunset Limited get a good look at Englewood Yard as they leave Houston for New Orleans. Their train, behind a pair of imposing but little-loved GE 'pooches' (P30CH diesels) kicks up the dust on a grungy April 6, 1986. ATK_708.JPG ; 60Kb

The enormous, empty trainshed of St. Louis Union Station, haunted by the ghosts of trains past, echos to the sound of an E8's twin powerplants as the National Limited prepares to flee for New York in early March 1977. (ATK_439.JPG; 61Kb)

Despite the weeds, we are on the main line of the Illinois Central Gulf, as an Amtrak train to St. Louis (probably the Ann Rutledge) tiptoes across the C & IM crossing at Springfield, Illinois in June, 1987. (ATK_317.JPG; 69Kb.

AEM7 915, from the first batch of 30 delivered to Amtrak in 1979-81, hustles a Metroliner Service northbound near Baltimore, MD in August 1987. (ATK_915.JPG; 138Kb)

It's raining buckets on the morning of 17 May 1995, but the eastbound Capitol Limited is unfazed as it accelerates out of Cumberland, Maryland. (ATK_399.JPG; 98Kb)