Floridian (train)
The Floridian was a train operated by Amtrak from 1971 to 1979 that ran between Chicago and Florida, with two branches south of Jacksonville terminating at Miami and St. Petersburg. For its Nashville to Montgomery segment, its route followed that of several former Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) passenger trains, including the Pan-American and the Humming Bird (Cincinnati—Louisville—New Orleans). Originating in Chicago, the train served Lafayette and Bloomington, Indiana; Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Decatur, Birmingham, Montgomery and Dothan, Alabama; and Thomasville, Valdosta and Waycross, Georgia.
Overview
Discontinued
November 14, 1971
October 9, 1979
32
1,597 miles (2,570 km) (Miami)
1,481 miles (2,383 km) (St. Petersburg)
38 hours 40 minutes (Miami)
38 hours 33 minutes (St. Petersburg)
Daily
56, 57
Sleeping cars and reserved coach
Dining car and café-lounge car
Dome cars
Baggage car
4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
The Floridian was notorious for lackluster on-time performance, owing to poor track conditions and the poor condition of the equipment it inherited from railroads previously operating on the route. The train used the lines of L&N (including the former Monon Railroad in Indiana, which merged into the L&N shortly after the formation of Amtrak), and Seaboard Coast Line. All are now part of CSX Transportation; some parts of the former route have since been abandoned by CSX.
Amtrak discontinued the Floridian in October 1979, leaving Louisville and Nashville without passenger train service, two of the largest such cities in the nation to have this distinction. (Louisville briefly regained Amtrak service with the Kentucky Cardinal, which operated 1999–2003.) The train was also the very last of a number of long-distance trains that ran between Chicago and Miami for much of the 20th century. Previous trains, on different route configurations between those endpoints, passing through different cities on their respective routes, included City of Miami, Dixie Flagler and South Wind.
