Northeast Regional Inland Route - Boston Via Springfield, MA Through New Haven, CT

My memory keeps telling me that there is, or was, a Northeast Regional Amfleet train that went through Springfield, MA between BOS and NHV. Can anyone update me?

Known as "Bay State", 85/86 later 142/145 and cut sometime after 2002.

Fall/Winter 1996 timetable 85 SB/86 NB

The train was in the 400 series earlier. In spring/summer 1990 it was 447 SB/486 NB.

Note NB 486 in 1990 arrived at South Station 8:05 PM, a full hour after parent train 86 via Providence with trains
split at New Haven.

Champlain Division wrote:My memory keeps telling me that there is, or was, a Northeast Regional Amfleet train that went through Springfield, MA between BOS and NHV. Can anyone update me?

The “Inland Route” to be exact.

I don’t know when the weekday trains were cut, but IIRC there was still weekend WAS/NYP-SPG-BOS service until late October 2004.

The trains did return briefly in June 2008 when the Thames River drawbridge was removed and the current lift span was installed. There were 3 round trips and had 11xx series #s listed in the timetable.

A permanent return with 4 daily round trips between either WAS/NYP or NHV to SPG and BOS is in the cards within the next decade.

Of course, since the last go round, the Hartford Line is much quicker, better patronized and better known - with several new stations. So, other than the saga of Hartford station itself, the CT section is pretty solid (needs wires).

On the MA stretch, improvements have been announced and should tighten journey times a little.

These new services do get conflated with CONNECT, and with Albany/Pittsfield-Boston PR stories - but will likely begin at 2 trains per day, probably extensions of Springfield regionals. Ideally they would have a faster 'Vermonter' style stopping pattern to encourage regional vs local use, which is well covered.

Thanks, guys, for clearing that up for me. It’s been a long time since I posted here.

Amtrak Forever!

They probably won't want to change the engine at New Haven

I wonder about the breakdown of passengers on the inland route trains in the past, and expected in the future, among these categories:
1. Boston to/from NH and points west (eg Boston to NYP)
2. Between NH or Boston and an intermediate station (eg Boston to Hartford, NH to Springfield, Framingham to Hartford)
3. Between some station between NH and Boston, and some station west of NH (eg Worcester to Philadelphia)

I assume category 1 was pretty small, since the inland route was slower and they were combined with/split from trains via Providence at NH, so anyone who could take take the inland route train to/from Boston could just as easily take the matching faster train via Providence?

BandA wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 2:44 pm They probably won't want to change the engine at New Haven

They won't have to. The 32 Airo trainsets ordered for the Northeast Regional, and the 26 for corridor trains operating on the NEC, will operate on catenary or diesel - no more engine switches at New Haven, DC, or Harrisburg.

Or the dual modes in Albany.

The EGE wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 10:07 pm

BandA wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 2:44 pm They probably won't want to change the engine at New Haven

They won't have to. The 32 Airo trainsets ordered for the Northeast Regional, and the 26 for corridor trains operating on the NEC, will operate on catenary or diesel - no more engine switches at New Haven, DC, or Harrisburg.

The Pennsylvanian switches engines in Philadelphia. The point still stands, though: No more engine swapping.

The EGE wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 10:07 pm

BandA wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 2:44 pm They probably won't want to change the engine at New Haven

They won't have to. The 32 Airo trainsets ordered for the Northeast Regional, and the 26 for corridor trains operating on the NEC, will operate on catenary or diesel - no more engine switches at New Haven, DC, or Harrisburg.

Which is great, because the pan can go up again at Back Bay, if they are bothered enough. Separately, if there was a wired MBTA route, Worcester would seem to be the best goal. Long distance, lots of stations, express patterns... with this as a secondary benefit, re having bi-modes have a long run with wires.

And it would incrementally support the business case for New Haven - Springfield - Worcester sections.

https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/09/u ... rvice.html

And there we have it!

A "knothole" in the paywall:

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/inf ... er-service

Fair Use:

SPRINGFIELD – East-west passenger rail – the long-held dream of linking Springfield and Boston with fast, frequent passenger trains – picked up steam this week with major federal funding.

The state of Massachusetts, Amtrak and freight railway CSX received $108 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation to cover track improvements along 53 miles of railroad between Springfield and Worcester.

U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, lobbied the Department of Transportation for the grant. “Everything is proceeding as planned,” Neal said Thursday by phone from Washington. “It’s very good news.”


The money is part of the federal Railroad Administration’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements, or CRISI, program.

Passenger rail would link Boston’s burgeoning economy and employment opportunities with Springfield and surrounding communities where housing is relatively less expensive.

“The housing costs in Boston are astronomical,” Neal said. “This means that somebody can live in Springfield and commute to Boston and vice versa.”

The grant will have a big impact on the region, Neal said.

“And a return, for Springfield, to what it was noted for at one time — and that was as the crossroads of New England,” he said.

Once the rail improvements happen, Amtrak plans to add two new daily train trips between Boston, Worcester and Springfield as a first phase of expanding what’s now inconvenient once-a-day service provided by the Boston-to-Chicago Lake Shore Limited.

That will expand to several trains a day going as far west as Albany, New York.

I'd expect any train west to Albany from Boston, currently at 5 hours and 20 minutes, to be no more than twice a day.

The case for more trains on the Springfield-Albany part might be a little stronger if they were coordinated to make it easy to go from Hartford etc to Albany, too: Maybe a couple of daily trips Boston-Albany and return, timed for easy transfers to and from Springfield-points south trains, and a couple of daily trips Springfield-Albany and return, timed for easy transfers to and from Inland Route trains. Easy enough to make the schedule; harder (more expensive) to get the dispatching to be allowed to stay on time to make the connections.

But a coordinated bus would be faster, and would be a way to bring the bus company-ies on board by replacing lost Boston-Springfield business, if in fact the new trains took away their business.