Floridian (train)

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Floridian

The Floridian at Winter Park in 1973.
Overview
Service type	Inter-city rail
Status	Discontinued
Locale	Eastern United States
Predecessor	South Wind
First service	November 14, 1971
Last service	October 9, 1979
Former operator(s)	Amtrak
Route
Termini	Chicago, Illinois St. Petersburg, Florida Miami, Florida
Stops	32
Distance travelled	1,597 miles (2,570 km) (Miami) 1,481 miles (2,383 km) (St. Petersburg)
Average journey time	38 hours 40 minutes (Miami) 38 hours 33 minutes (St. Petersburg)
Service frequency	Daily
Train number(s)	56, 57
On-board services
Class(es)	Sleeping cars and reserved coach
Catering facilities	Dining car and café-lounge car
Observation facilities	Dome cars
Baggage facilities	Baggage car
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Track owner(s)	Louisville and Nashville Railroad Seaboard Coast Line Railroad
Route map Legend 0 mi Chicago Chicago–Central Station Pre-1972 route Homewood Kankakee Illinois Indiana Pre-1975 route Logansport 118 mi 190 km Lafayette Indianapolis 221 mi 356 km Bloomington Indiana Kentucky Louisville Union Station 330 mi 531 km Louisville Auto-Train 438 mi 705 km Bowling Green Kentucky Tennessee 511 mi 822 km Nashville Tennessee Alabama 629 mi 1012 km Decatur 713 mi 1147 km Birmingham 810 mi 1304 km Montgomery 928 mi 1493 km Dothan Alabama Georgia 1020 mi 1642 km Thomasville 1062 mi 1709 km Valdosta 1122 mi 1806 km Waycross Georgia Florida 1193 mi 1920 km Jacksonville 1251 mi 2013 km Waldo 1297 mi 2087 km Ocala 1323 mi 2129 km Wildwood 1303 mi 2097 km DeLand 1319 mi 2123 km Sanford 1336 mi 2150 km Winter Park 1341 mi 2158 km Orlando 1359 mi 2187 km Kissimmee Poinciana 1974–1975 Pre-1973 divide at Orlando 1402 mi 2256 km Lakeland 1433 mi 2306 km Tampa 1456 mi 2343 km Clearwater 1480 mi 2382 km St. Petersburg 1388 mi 2234 km Winter Haven 1429 mi 2300 km Sebring 1531 mi 2464 km West Palm Beach 1549 mi 2493 km Delray Beach 1560 mi 2511 km Deerfield Beach 1574 mi 2533 km Fort Lauderdale 1581 mi 2544 km Hollywood 1601 mi 2577 km Miami Miami (SAL) until 1978 This diagram: view talk edit

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.

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.