21-11-28 PHOTOS: Amtrak Extra

In past decades, the Sunday after thanksgiving was Amtrak's biggest travel day with thousands of holiday travelers returning home in order to be at work on Monday morning. Amtrak would pull out all the stops with extra trains, some even using leased commuter rail equipment, and almost all of them selling out. Unfortunately in recent years Amtrak has abandoned their commitment to getting people off of I-95 with the leased trains cut along with most of the extras. Part of this was institutional, with the executive in charge of assembling the program retiring. Part of it was due to the COVID pandemic reducing general holiday travel for a second straight year. However much of the new mindset was from a focus on managing demand through pricing. Moving extra riders wasn't worth the cost of running extra trains when it was easier to sell the regular trains out with higher fares. This brings us to Thanksgiving Sunday, 2001 where the sole component of Amtrak's special holiday schedule was a single extra Regional round trip. Since I needed content I made the drive over to the Halethorpe MARC station to catch it and whatever other trains might be in the vicinity. You can find the full set of photos here ( mirror ).

Normally I would build up to the climactic arrival of Regional Extra #1164, but that day it was actually the first train I caught passing through Halethorpe. The northbound train had 10 Amfleets and was propelled by ACS-86 #623.

This was soon followed by the the standard Train 164 with ACS-86 #656 leading.

As luck would have it, Train 164 arrived just in time to meet southbound Cardinal Train #51 with ACS-86 #605 leading three Amfleet II coaches, a Viewlier Sleeper and a new Viewlier II bag-dorm.

Without any additional trains of note running I decided to bail out and go home. Fortunately, later on that week I found myself near the Savage MARC station to see a man about a truck. While there I found CSX ES44AC #3117 on the main line shifting autoracks at the Jessup terminal. Over the last decade CSX built a dedicating track to keep these autorack movements off the main tracks, but I guess being able to work on the main is just so much more prestigious.

Fallen Flag autoracks at Savage.

The Savage station area is home to thw B&O Historical Society and their caboose, C-2946.

Well that's all the photos and video I have for today. Join me next time as I head to Chicago to ride the METRA Milwaukee North Line.