32 Photos included after text.

Amtrak has had a very colorful history to say the least.  From its very beginning, money problems have cursed its growth potential, and yet it prevails.  In its beginning, Amtrak had to use the wornout equipment that it inherited from the former railroads that had passenger trains up to May 1st 1971.  Only a couple of daring railroads didn't join Amtrak in the beginning, and a couple still continue on to this day.

Congress never gave Amtrak the amount of finances needed to run an efficient railroad, but Amtrak used its resources as best it could.  With only a couple of exceptions such as they Northeast Corridor, new equipment was hard to get.  So, when new engines or cars arrived, it was quite a big deal. 

Amtraks first passenger diesels in the early 70's were the EMD SDP40F's followed by the F40PH's of the mid 70's.  In the late 80's Amtrak again purchased from EMD the new F59PH diesel locomotive for use in its growing California market.

General Electric entered the Amtrak market in the early 90's with their beautiful DASH 8-32BWH diesel locomotives and followed those with the DASH 8-40BP diesel named the Genesis locomotives.  (Railfans immediately gave those locos the moniker "Barney" because of their somewhat appearance that immulated Barney the dinosaur in the childrens show.  That was purposly not a compliment.)

In the mid 90's Amtrak stayed loyal to General Electric when they continued to purchase the Genesis series locomotives.  The following model was the P32AC-DM, and the following couple of years the upgraded version, the P42DC. 

The 8-40BP's along with the F40PH's are gone and the remaining Genesis locomotives dominate the long distance trains.  Of course, Amtrak uses other types of locomotives for its electric Northeast Corridor, and since I have no photos of those engines currently, I will not go into their history here.  I will save that information for a later date.

For a long time Amtrak had to use a mixed bag of passenger cars for its trains.  Amtrak did purchase the Superliner type of cars for its western long distance trains which were very similar to the high level cars of the former ATSF El Capitan.  Eastern lines had to continue with the single story cars because of the lower tunnel clearences, but they did recieve new cars in the form of the "Viewliner" and others.  Again, I will discuss those further in the future since I only have a small collection of those cars that I got while I was in Chicago, IL on a couple of occasions.

I do not make any claims that I am a historian of Amtrak, I just offer my simple knowledge of the railroad for your enjoyment.  Since I have no photos of eastern Amtrak lines, I have not included any information either.  I just simply do not know about the eastern part of Amtrak yet, especially the Northeastern Corridor.  If I am wrong about anything, just let me know.  Have fun.