Silver Meteor
The Silver Meteor is a passenger train operated by Amtrak between New York City and Miami, Florida. The first diesel-powered streamliner between New York and Florida, since being introduced by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL) in 1939, it remains in operation now. The train is part of Amtrak's Silver Service along with the Silver Star, another former SAL streamliner.
History
The SAL introduced the Silver Meteor on February 2, 1939. The name was selected via contest, with 30 people among 76,000 entrants proposing the winning name. It was the first diesel-powered streamliner to Florida, and its introduction prompted competitor Atlantic Coast Line Railroad to introduce the Champion in December 1939. The SAL emphasized the train's modernness, referring to it as the "Train of Tomorrow" and having its first trip to Florida begin not from Pennsylvania Station, but from the Long Island Rail Road station at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The train used seven new cars manufactured by the Budd Company. The original schedule took 25 hours. The train ran between New York, NY, and Washington, DC on the Pennsylvania Railroad under a haulage agreement. Between Washington and Richmond it used the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, jointly owned by the SAL and five other railroads. From Richmond south SAL's own track was used via Raleigh, North Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Jacksonville, Florida and Ocala, Florida. Until the late 1960s the Silver Meteor split at Wildwood, Florida, with one section continuing to Miami, Florida, and the other to St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Venice on Florida's west coast.
