The JapaneseShinkansen"bullet trains" had been introduced to the world in 1964. In 1965, withthe passage of the High Speed Ground TransportationAct, the U.S. also put a toe into the world of high speed railroading.A Department of Transportation-backed consortium which included thePennsylvania Railroad and the Budd company as well as Westinghouse andGeneral Electric took on the ambitious task of designing a modernhigh-speed rail service, intended to operate between New York andWashington at speeds up to 160 miles per hour. The new service wasintended to make its debut in 1967—but production delays and othersetbacks pushed the initial introduction of the firstMetrolinerback to January of 1969.

See ascanned copy of the Penn Central'sPC Post with a feature article on the newMetroliners.

TheMetrolinerssuffered from a number of "teething problems". I refer you to thisdiscussion on the Railfan.net forumsfor more thoughts and viewpoints. In brief, while theMetrolinerconcept was sound the execution was flawed. In the first place,although Budd was an experienced builder of standard passenger carsthey hadlimited experience with electric MUs—and the builders who hadconstructed the earlier generation of US multiple-unit electrics, suchas theElectroliners, were by this time out ofthe passenger train business. There were no problems whichcould not have been corrected with a second generation design after aproper test and evaluation period—but with the Penn Central bankrupt,successor Amtrak hanging on by a political thread, and the DOT turningits attention to other priorities, there would be no second generationdesign. Secondly, the track had not been upgraded to match thecapabilities of the trainsets. While some improvements had been made,the final result was spotty at best. As an example, I have heard thatthe Penn Central evaluated its track gangs' productivity by the numberof ties they replaced. So, naturally, the easy-to-change tiesunder main line track were well maintained, while the moredifficult and labor-intensive ties under switches were left to rot.Travelers' reports of the period indicate that crossing an interlockingjunction at 125 mph could be an exciting experience. Furthermore, theMetrolinersshared this trackage with passenger trains of every description,commuter trains, even freight trains—whereas other high-speed trainssuch as theShinkansen operate on a dedicatedright-of-way which is reserved for express trains only.

Despiteall of the foregoing,Metroliner service was asuccess. There was and is a market for fast and reliabledowntown-to-downtown express rail passenger service between the majorcities of the Northeast Corridor. Within three years of the date ofthis timetable,Metroliners would be making 14round trips a day between New York and Washington. The originalmultiple-unit equipment would eventually be replaced by moreconventional locomotive-hauled trains beginning in 1976; the last MUMetrolinerwould be withdrawn and demoted toKeystoneservice between Philadelphia and Harrisburg in 1982.  However,theMetroliner Service name would be continueduntil finally supplanted by the high-speedAcela Express in October2006.

Originaltimetable informationcopyright ©1970 by National Railway Publication Company. It is believedthat the noncommercial use of this out-of-print material to document the history ofthe North American passenger train constitutes Fair Use under U.S.copyrightlaw.

Railroad heralds, logos and trademarksusedwith intentto comply with Fair Use provisions of copyright and trademark law toillustrate the source material in its historical context. Penn Centralherald obtained from Signal Signs.

Allcomments, original material and page design copyright ©2006-2015 byEric H.Bowen. Article link added 2015-01-26.