THROW IN A STOP-OVER OR TWO.

Amtrak's Floridian returns, sort of.  "Chicago-area residents looking for some fun in the sun later this fall will have the chance to take an Amtrak train directly to Florida, but only for a limited time."  The first through train will run Sunday, November 10.

It's temporary, and Amtrak officialdom is putting the best possible spin on it.

The new Floridian trains will run daily from Chicago to Miami, stopping along the way in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Service begins Nov. 10.

The route marks a combination of two existing routes — the Capitol Limited between Chicago and Washington, and the Silver Star between Miami and New York — as Amtrak plans to rehabilitate an aging tunnel under the East River in New York. The construction will force one tube of the tunnel to close at a time and Amtrak needed to limit the number of trains that are fueled, cleaned and serviced in New York City, so the agency sought options elsewhere, spokesman Marc Magliari said.

Amtrak doesn’t have an end date for the new Chicago route, but Magliari said it would likely last at least until construction on the East River tunnel ends.

“This provides a service that has been long sought in the Midwest,” Magliari said.

That's misleading.  There was a Chicago to Florida service that ran initially as the South Wind and ultimately as the Floridian.

The train trip between Chicago and Miami takes about two days, online schedules show. A coach-class ticket cost $113 on the Amtrak website Tuesday, while private-room prices began at $734. Magliari said the new service would include Amtrak’s newest model of sleeping cars.

Amtrak once operated Floridian trains between Chicago and Miami, but the service ended in 1979 as track conditions deteriorated and made the train so unreliable that it drove away passengers, Magliari said. During a federal review of Amtrak routes’ performance, the service was deemed not to be a high-performing route.

But the similarities between the original Floridian route and the new route are few. The new train will also begin in Chicago and serve the same Florida stations, but it will make different stops between the two destinations. The original Floridian passed through Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, while included along the new route are Toledo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, which never had direct Amtrak service to Florida, Magliari said.

Mr Magliari, who used to read the news for the local public radio station, had to qualify that "direct Amtrak service" as Toledo once had direct train service to Florida in the form of the Detroit to Florida destinations Royal Palm by way of Toledo, Cincinnati, and Atlanta.  Today is not the day to get into the legal machinations by which the Southern Railway truncated it at the Georgia border.  In Amtrak days, the South Wind used an old Pennsylvania Railroad routing as far as Louisville, and track conditions in Indiana contributed to several reroutings of the Floridian through Indiana.

But the spinning ... in the same way that the Jarrett regency hopes to convince us that all is well, the Passenger Rail advocates are hailing this emergency measure.

“Our members have had a long-standing dream of restoring a one-seat ride from the Midwest to Florida, and we’re thrilled that a new generation of American passengers will be able to experience this service for themselves,” said Jim Mathews, president and CEO of the Rail Passengers Association, in a statement provided by Amtrak. “This move will free up badly needed equipment while taking pressure off Northeast Corridor infrastructure during the renovation of the ERT Project.”

There will also be fewer sleeping cars running between New York and Florida, as only the Silver Meteor, which does not serve Tampa, will offer the New York - Florida service.

The spinning, though, goes on and on.

“The Floridian offers customers an exceptional and sustainable journey to great destinations between Chicago and Miami, providing the amenities and delicious food our guests enjoy when traveling with us,” Amtrak Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eliot Hamlisch says.

The new Floridian service will carry train Nos. 40 and 41. It will offer Traditional Dining service in the Dining Car, a complimentary amenity for customers traveling in First Class private rooms.

Exceptional? Sustainable? If you can book a sleeper, that is.

In response to Trains News Wire inquiries about specific operating details, Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods says the new Floridian will be assigned four Amfleet II coaches and continue with only two Viewliner sleeping cars, as the New York-Miami Silver Star now has. This will result in a significant decrease in bedroom capacity on the Chicago-Washington, D.C. portion of the route — from 10 to 4 bedrooms on each train, since each of the two Superliners that currently operate on the Capitol Limited has 5 bedrooms and each Viewliner has 2. Both Superliners and Viewliners have one accessible bedroom, but Viewliners do not have a family bedroom that sleeps two adults plus two small children.

Roomette revenue capacity will also be reduced slightly from the 13 salable rooms in a Superliner to 11 (Viewliner II) or 12 (Viewliner I). The dining car, café, and coach attendant onboard service crew also must be accommodated with the fewer number of roomettes.

A big plus is that traditional dining will expand once again to the Chicago-Washington route after being jettisoned for flex meals in 2018.

Sounds more like etiolated than exceptional.  What none of the stories report is that those two-day journeys between Chicago and somewhere in Florida include lengthy layovers in Washington, and that the Star backtracks from Tampa before continuing to Miami.  (I wonder, when Brightline extend service to Tampa, what sort of schedule changes we might see.)

I have ridden the Chicago to Miami legs of this service, with the Capitol to the Federal Capital, a day of sightseeing, and the Meteor to Fort Lauderdale.  That's a logical place to break what is otherwise a long ride on a short train.