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The Cardinal operates between Washington and Chicago via Manassas, Charlottesville, Charleston (W.Va.), Cincinnati and Indianapolis. It is named for the state bird of all six states through which the train runs.
The Cardinal departs and arrives Washington on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Yes, the train runs only three days a week. VRE passengers with 10-trip or monthly tickets can ride the train anywhere between Washington and Manassas. The Cardinal thus provides a modest supplement to the VRE service.
Its main role in Virginia, however, is to serve the towns and cities farther from Washington: Culpeper, Charlottesville, Staunton, Clifton Forge.
The Cardinal's main sin is that it doesn't run every day. Beyond Charlottesville and all the way to Chicago, it is the only train on the route. This means that travelers to and from Charleston, Cincinnati and Indianapolis and the towns along the way have very slim choices about when to depart and when to return.
The Cardinal's other big sin is that it is often late--very late. When my son James and I rode the Cardinal to Chicago this winter, we passed the eastbound Cardinal somewhere in West Virginia, and I estimated that the train was four hours late. "How does a train become four hours late unless there is a derailment or a detour somewhere?" I wondered.
We soon found out. We lost hours switching cars (mostly waiting to switch cars) at Indianapolis. In northern Indiana, the CSX signals were out of order and we had to proceed at 30 mph for a long way. By the time we reached the suburbs of Chicago, we were more than four hours late. Coming home, we were an hour and a half late.
This unpredictability makes the Cardinal just about useless for local travel. You can take the train to Charlottesville for the afternoon, but who knows when you'll get home?
The Cardinal, I've heard, is a political train--a bone tossed to the politicians of West Virginia and other states so that their constituents have some train service. The pols, it seems, don't have enough clout, or don't care enough, to get some good train service for their people--like a train that runs every day and on time.
The Cardinal may be infrequent and often late, but for all that, it does carry a good number of passengers. I've been on board when it was sold out. On my trips this winter, there were a lot of people in coach, and the sleeping car was sold out. Maybe if you live in Clifton Forge, Huntington, W.Va., or Hamilton, Ohio, there aren't a lot of other choices. But there were a lot of people taking the train to Indianapolis, too, even though the train stops there in the wee hours.
The Cardinal does have its virtues, especially the scenery. It crosses the Blue Ridge from the Piedmont to the Shenandoah Valley. On any Sunday afternoon, you'll see people boarding the Cardinal in Charlottesville for a ride over the mountains to Staunton and back. It follows the New River Gorge in West Virginia--a place of amazing beauty, where a historical society runs special trains just for people to see the gorge.
The train also makes connections at the ends of the trip for points beyond. On the days I rode, a lot of the Hoosiers and Ohioans and Kentuckians and West Virginians were traveling not just to Chicago or Washington but to Minneapolis or St. Louis or Philadelphia or New York.
The Cardinal may be at risk because it's hopelessly uneconomic. No matter how many people ride, it can't pay for big-city stations that don't even have a train every day. I think the answer--economically and to provide real transportation service to a lot more people--is to run the train every day and on time.
And even the way it is now, even if it runs late, you might find a trip on the Cardinal an enjoyable way to travel. The schedule and fares (and sometimes Rail Sale reduced fares) are on the Amtrak Web site at amtrak.com.
STEVE DUNHAM of Spotsylvania County chairs the board of directors of the Virginia Association of Railway Patrons. Write him c/o Commuter Crossroads, The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401. Or e-mail literalman@aol.com.