[skyguy79]

Originally Posted by batman911

Maybe the route could include a stop in TV. May be able to make a buck or two with the large population of residents from the NE. Would anyone rather ride the train in comfort rather than drive for two days either way? What would make it nice would be a regular speed auto train. One of the problems with train travel is that the routes do not always get you near to your destination. Try going from Florida to Houston via rail. I believe you need to go all the way to Chicago and then back down.

TV would be way out of the way in an Orlando Tampa route and I don't think you'll ever see that happen in HS. It would be nice though if Amtrak's bus route from St. Petersburg to Jacksonville that currently passes through Wildwood were developed into a rail route instead. That way you'd have regular rail service between the Tampa area to both Orlando and Jacksonville where transfer can happen to a north/south route. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen too because Amtrak has never been adequately funded to develope new routes like that.

As an AutoTrain user I would like to see more of those auto train routes developed. But as I already said, not enough funding for that kind of development. In the future it would at least be nice to see a coast-to-coast run from the central Atlantic coast to the central Pacific coast as well as from LA to Seattle. But even that much is probably wishful dreaming on my part!

As for your comments about getting to Huston... I hear you there. My coast to coast Amtrak travel has been from Albany-Rensselaer NY with one stop in Chicago. Fairly convenient! However, with the elimination of the FL to New Orleans portion of the Sunset Limited, travel from Florida to the west coast would require four days of travel with two layovers... one in Washington DC and the other in Chicago. I'm afraid I'll have to endure that route in the future unless the Sunset Limited is one day restored from Florida all the way through to California.