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A Uniform Retrospective
In the early days, female passenger service representatives could mix and match separates tocreate a unique look.For a corporation with a national scope, branding is essential in creating a unified...
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Unveiling the Future of Amtrak Motive Power
The first of 70 new Amtrak Cities Sprinter locomotives—known as the ACS-64—was unveiled on Thursday, February 6, 2014 at Philadelphia 30th Street Station. During a ceremony held in the historic North...
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Romance on the Rails
Gorgeous scenery is the perfect backdrop to a friendly conversation between strangers.Trains have long held a special place in the imagination, reinforced through novels and movies, as settings for...
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Amtrak to the Slopes
Amtrak advertised package tours in the Northeast and West.Winter has certainly made its presence known across the country—often accompanied by substantial snow in Eastern and Western mountain ranges....
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The Crescent is Born
The fun and frivolity of Mardi Gras inevitably leads to thoughts of New Orleans, where the holiday attracts merrymakers from around the country—and world. The storied city’s reputation for delicious...
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A Closer Look: Traveling the Amtrak Way
In the days when dozens of major railroads were vying with one another to carry people and freight, branding and visual identity were important in setting a company apart in the public mind. Railroads...
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See the Amtrak Archives Up Close
You can try your hand with signals or the engineer's stand.The Amtrak Exhibit Train, which tells the story of Amtrak’s creation and advancement through artifacts, memorabilia and interactive exhibits,...
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A Closer Look: Fine Feathered Friends
Working on an archive involves a fair share of sleuthing, and a memory for detail certainly doesn’t hurt. In the course of sorting through boxes of material, you come across photographs and other items...
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Aboard the "Landmark Express"
May is National Historic Preservation Month, a time to examine and celebrate historic places that tell our collective stories. Experience has demonstrated that historic preservation, when undertaken as...
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A Closer Look: The Roving Depot
The former Amtrak station in Rockville, Maryland, in the late 1970s.I found the photo above in a slim, bright yellow box along with others that appeared to depict the same train at various small...
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Meet Us in St. Louis
The top shelf shows images of the company in its early years.May was an exciting month for the Amtrak History team; in addition to celebrating National Train Day, we were invited to create a display...
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A Closer Look: Patriotic Train Names
With July 4th right around the corner, our thoughts turn to barbeques, neighborhood parades and fireworks displays—events meant to bring us together with friends and family as we celebrate the...
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Amtrak Year-by-Year: 1982
W. Graham Claytor, Jr. took the helm of Amtrak in 1982.In early May 1982, Amtrak President and Chairman Alan S. Boydannounced his resignation. He had spent a little more than four years at the...
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A Closer Look: Seeing Double
As the Sunset Limited makes its tri-weekly journey between New Orleans and Los Angeles, it offers passengers views of ecologically diverse bayou and desert landscapes, the United States-Mexico border...
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Celebrating 40 Years of the Adirondack
Today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Adirondack (New York-Albany-Montreal), which for much of its 381 mile journey follows the broad Hudson River and Lake Champlain’s meandering western...
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A Closer Look: The Ticket Jacket
Part of organizing material donated to the Amtrak Archives simply involves grouping like things together, such as timetables, advertisements and equipment photos. This is a useful exercise because it...
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A Day at Beech Grove
In Fiscal Year 1978, Amtrak began a program to convert cars purchased from the predecessor railroads from steam power to electric head-end power (HEP). Under the older system, a boiler in the...
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A Closer Look: Fall Landscapes
One of a series of Amtrak seasonal images by illustrator Nathan Davies.Although this summer was a little cooler than usual on the East Coast, it’s still hard to believe that autumn is upon us. Whenever...
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Growing the Archives, Piece by Piece
An exciting aspect of working in the Amtrak Archives is the phone calls and emails we receive from readers and visitors to this website. Their insights often help us better understand and categorize...
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A Closer Look: Gaining Amtrak Service
On October 29, 1978, the eastbound Niagara Rainbow (Detroit-Albany-New York) made its scheduled stop in Niagara Falls, N.Y., restoring intercity passenger rail service to the city after a 17 year...
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