Crescent (train)

Today's Crescent is a direct descendant of the Southerner, a streamlined passenger train operated by the Southern Railway from 1941 to 1970. The daily train followed essentially the same route as the modern Crescent, providing sleeper service between New York and New Orleans via Washington, Atlanta, and Birmingham.

Since its inception, the sister train of the Southerner was a second New York–New Orleans sleeper, the Southern Railway's Crescent. The two trains shared generally the same route between New York and Atlanta, but diverged between Atlanta and New Orleans. The Crescent took a more coastal route, operating via Mobile and Montgomery over Atlanta and West Point Railroad, Western Railway of Alabama, and Louisville & Nashville Railroad trackage. The Southerner stayed inland to run exclusively on Southern Railway trackage through Birmingham.

Southern Railway's Southern Crescent at Peachtree station on January 21, 1971

In 1970, amid a push by its partners to discontinue passenger operations, the Southern Railway merged the Southerner and the Crescent into one service: the Southern Crescent. The new train used the route of the Southerner, operating via Birmingham instead of Mobile. Although the Birmingham route was slightly longer, it was fully owned by the Southern Railway and therefore more reliable. The Southern Crescent was numbered 1 southbound and 2 northbound. Penn Central carried it between Washington and New York along the Northeast Corridor, inheriting the longstanding haulage agreement from the Pennsylvania Railroad.

For most of the 1970s, the Southern Crescent was supplemented by the Piedmont, a former New York–New Orleans train that had been cut back to a regional Atlanta–Washington (later Charlotte–Washington and Salisbury–Washington) service running along the middle leg of the Southern Crescent route.

Amtrak took over most inter-city passenger trains in the United States on May 1, 1971, but the Southern Railway initially opted out. Amtrak did inherit most of Penn Central's passenger services, including the haulage agreement for the Southern Crescent. For a portion of the mid-1970s, the Southern Crescent only operated tri-weekly between Atlanta and New Orleans, and carried a run-through Amtrak 10-6 sleeper on those days to connect to the Sunset Limited. On occasion, when the Southern deemed an Amtrak car to be short of its standards, it substituted a Southern sleeper in the consist. Additionally, one of the two dome coaches in the Southern car fleet was added for the leg south of Atlanta.

The Southern Crescent was one of the last two privately operated long-distance passenger services in the United States, the other being the Rio Grande Zephyr. However, mounting revenue losses and equipment-replacement expenses forced Southern Railway to leave the passenger business.

The Southern Railway turned over full operation of the Southern Crescent to Amtrak on February 1, 1979. Amtrak simplified the name to the Crescent and renumbered it 19 southbound and 20 northbound, though for several years the Southern assigned it operating numbers 819 and 820.[2][3] The train began using rebuilt Heritage Fleet equipment in 1981.[4]^: 78

The Amtrak Crescent dining car in 2019

On October 28, 1989, Amtrak added a section of the Crescent between Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama, known as the Gulf Breeze. It ran until April 1, 1995, when it was cancelled due to budget issues. A replacement Amtrak Thruway bus ran until October 16, 1997. The Atlanta–New Orleans portion of the Crescent was reduced to tri-weekly operation from April 2, 1995, to November 11, 1996 (quad-weekly from November 1995 to February 1996).[5]

When Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in August 2005, the Crescent was temporarily truncated to Atlanta. Service was restored first as far as Meridian, Mississippi, while Norfolk Southern crews worked to repair the damage to their lines serving the Gulf Coast. Amtrak restored Crescent and City of New Orleans service to New Orleans on October 9, 2005.[6]

From July 10 to September 1, 2017, the train terminated at Washington, D.C. instead of New York City due to track work at Penn Station.[7] Starting October 1, 2019, traditional dining car services were removed and replaced with a reduced menu of 'Flexible Dining' options. As a result, the dining car serves as a lounge car for the exclusive use by sleeping car passengers.[8]

As part of Amtrak's Network Growth Strategy (NGS), adding a section from Meridian, Mississippi to Fort Worth, Texas has been discussed since the early 2000's, with the route having supposed to been up and running by 2002. The plan fell through when Amtrak abandoned the NGS.[9] However, in March 2023, Amtrak announced that it is seeking federal funding to once again study this proposal. Due to Kansas City Southern Railway's (KCS) continued opposition to hosting this train on the Meridian Speedway, the study was dependent on a proposed merger between the KCS and Canadian Pacific Railway being approved by the United States Surface Transportation Board.[10] This merger was approved on March 15, 2023,[11] and officially went into effect on April 14th, 2023, allowing this proposal to move forward.[12][13] In June 2023, Amtrak applied for funding to begin the project to extend service from Mississippi to Texas along the I-20 corridor.[14]