Amtrak Floridian Southbound

Two northbound Amtrak trains leave Miami everyday. Two southbound Amtrak trains arrive in Miami everyday. The Amtrak Silver Meteor 98 passes close to my neighborhood at 1005 am. The Amtrak Floridian 40 passes close to my neighborhood at 1:00pm. The southbound trains Silver Meteor 97 and Floridian 41 usually come by my neighborhood between 5:00pm to 6:00pm.

I like to catch them on video as they go by. I think I enjoy this so much because when I was 5 years old until I was 8 years old I lived in an apartment complex in Woodside Queens called Boulevard Gardens. Boulevard Gardens has a playground adjacent to 57th street. The Northeast Regional Amtrak service leaves Penn Station heads east into Queens and then turns north in Woodside Queens. Those tracks are elevated and parallel to 57th street. The trains are easily seen from the Boulevard Gardens playground. The same playground I spent much time in between the ages of 5 and 8, before we moved to the suburbs of Long Island. Back when I was watching those trains from the playground they were not Amtrak trains. They were New Haven and Hartford Railroad trains, and then became Penn Central Railroad trains.

The speed limit for the train is 79MPH, and usually that is how fast they are going. Sometimes in hot weather they go 64MPH because of "heat" speed restrictions. There is only one track and it must be shared with freight trains. So sometimes the trains slow down to pass a freight train in a siding. Or sometimes they slow down and pull into a siding to allow the freight trains to pass. I mostly video where the train crosses roads. Most of the crossing have gates. But one place that I get videos does not have a gate, so extreme caution must be used when crossing and catching videos at that location.

The trains usually have two locomotives. For many years the P42DC has been the locomotives Amtrak uses. Amtrak has recently been replacing the older P42DC locomotives with new ALC 42 chargers. It is always interesting to see what two engines are being used on a given day. Some locomotives still have "heritage" paint schemes and these really standout. Railfans like to keep track of the where all the different engines are as they travel around the country. Sometimes there is only one engine, sometimes there are three engines. The trains with unusual configurations are always considered a "good catch".