With the coming of Amtrak 40 years ago last week, many of the nation's fabled passenger trains, including the Baltimore & Ohio's premier Capitol Limited, which sailed daily between Washington and Chicago for nearly 50 years, began their final runs April 30, 1971.
The clock inextricably ticked toward midnight when at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, May 1, 1971, the National Railroad Passenger Corp. — better known as Amtrak — would assume operation of 182 passenger trains with 21 intercity routes that served 314 American cities and towns.
Another 178 were doomed to extinction, as rail fans across the nation watched, many with cameras to record their passing, bidding them godspeed as they rolled off the timetables and into memory.
At 12:01, the B&O, which had sold the nation's first passenger ticket when the original line between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills opened with horse cars on May 24, 1830, would find itself bereft of passenger trains for the first time in 141 years.
As unimaginable as it seemed, its entire fleet of long-distance trains would be stricken. None of the B&O's passenger trains would make the transition to Amtrak. The only B&O trains that did survive and were not Amtrak-operated were its commuter trains into Washington and Pittsburgh.
Always acutely aware of its historic place in American railroading, the B&O — the nation's first common carrier railroad when it was chartered in 1827 — was exiting the passenger business as the class act it always was.
The centerpiece for its farewell was the Capitol Limited — in railroad parlance No. 5 westbound and No. 6 eastbound — in a round trip that would end at Baltimore's Camden Station on the morning of May 1, 1971.
When the train, which was the brainchild of B&O President Daniel Willard and also known as "The Cap," made its debut on May 13, 1923, The Sun heralded it as a "train that will give Baltimore a 20-hour service to Chicago" and will be "equal in appointments and running time with the Twentieth Century Limited of the New York Central and the Broadway Limited of the Pennsylvania Railroad."
The newspaper boasted that the new train would prove popular with government officials and businessmen traveling to Chicago and with Western passengers heading to Washington and New York.
"It will be a solid Pullman train, with no extra fare, and will have a club car, compartments and drawing room sleepers and an observation lounge car; the latter of which contains sleeping accommodations and a lounge with moveable chairs in addition to the observation platform," according to the newspaper.
Passengers aboard the Capitol were exposed to the same sybaritic and convenient pleasures found on its rivals, the Broadway Limited and the Twentieth Century Limited.
They could step into shower baths. A barber offered a shave for 25 cents and doubled the price for a haircut. Train maids charged 75 cents for a manicure.
For busy executives, an on-board male train secretary took dictation and dispatched Western Union telegrams. A cure for wrinkled suits was provided by valets who happily pressed them. Helpful porters offered lap robes for those who braved the breezes, dirt and cinders of the observation platform as the train made its way along the Potomac River Valley.
Passengers dined on legendary cuisine aboard one of its elegant Martha Washington series of Colonial dining cars, with their distinctive leaded-glass windows, dark woodwork, shaded table lamps and sconces.
The new train shaved two hours off the 991-mile journey of the former New York-Chicago Limited, which it replaced. At the time of its unveiling, a letter writer to The Sun was furious that the new train was named the Capitol Limited and wondered why the railroad went to Washington "to find a name for it" in the first place. Why not call it "Baltimore's Own" or "The Baltimorean," he suggested. But the Capitol Limited name stuck.
For three years, the Capitol Limited departed from the PRR's Pennsylvania Station in New York City. After 1926, it operated out of the Central Railroad of New Jersey's Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City until 1958, when the B&O ended passenger service north of Baltimore on its Royal Blue Route.
In 1938, steam power was withdrawn when the train became the first modern diesel streamliner in the East, with its distinctive blue, gray and yellow cars.
As a result of the 1958 service elimination, trains departed from Washington, requiring passengers taking the Capitol to board an afternoon Budd car connecting train at Camden Station for Union Station, where they boarded.
William F. Howes Jr., the last director of passenger services for the B&O Railroad and Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, serving from 1969 to the birth of Amtrak, had ridden the Capitol Limited by his own estimation at least 115 times during his lengthy railroad career.
For the final run, the railroad assembled a commemorative 10-car Capitol Limited, restoring such former mainstays as the "Help Yourself Salad Bowl," a special menu, commemorative tickets and bottled water from the B&O's Deer Park springs in Western Maryland. For the last round trip, the Capitol returned to Camden Station, and on April 29, Howes boarded the sleeping car Allegheny in "a rather melancholy mood."
"The inspiration for the commemorative train came from Bob Robel, who commuted to Loyola High School and later Loyola College, from Laurel on a B&O shuttle," Howes said in a recent telephone interview.
"Bob was well known in the passenger department because he was always coming up, getting timetables and buying dining car linens. He wanted to know if we were going to do something special," Howes recalled.
"We were so busy with the impending arrival of Amtrak, I said, 'You put it together, talk to me, and I'll see what we can do.' He did it, and much of the inspiration and ideas for the final run came from Bob," said Howes, a nationally known rail historian and writer who is now retired from CSX and lives in Jacksonville, Fla.
In an added fine touch that recalled past glories, Robel loaned a light box from his collection that read "Capitol Limited," and was installed on the rear of the train's observation car.
Howes said the final eastbound run began at 3:50 p.m. Central time April 30 from the B&O's now-demolished Grand Central Station in Chicago.
There was uncertainty in the air, Howes said, because of 11th-hour efforts by the National Association of Railroad Passengers and railroad unions in federal court to block Amtrak's takeover.
Lumbering eastward through the night, the Capitol was near Youngstown, Ohio, at the midnight hour, when the B&O's passenger service technically ended and was in the hands of Amtrak.
"The first that we got confirmation that Amtrak was a go was when we pulled into Martinsburg, W.Va., early the next morning, and we saw from a newspaper that the courts had thrown out the injunction," Howes said.
For dining car and sleeping car crews, their careers were over. Other onboard train personnel were able to go into freight service or retired.
"This was it. It was not a gleeful celebration on the B&O," he said. "To me, this was a very significant moment."
The train was due in Washington at 10 a.m., and after uncoupling the baggage and dining cars, it traveled on to Camden Station, where trainman Gilbert Goegel removed the Capitol Limited tail sign for the last time.
Amtrak revived the Capitol Limited in 1982, giving it new numbers, 440 and 441. Today, its designation is 29 and 30, and it operates daily between Washington and Chicago.