AMTK F40PHR 284Kansas City MO Kansas City

Noticed all the material handling cars on the head end of Southwest Chief. Most of those former Amtrak cars now reside around Alamosa, CO, on the San Luis

For a while, Amtrak hauled priority freight on those head-end cars, until the freight railroads on whose tracks Amtrak operated began to complain about how they had to give Amtrak dispatching priority over their own priority traffic in order for Amtrak to maintain its passenger schedule. Eventually the complaints succeeded and Amtrak was no longer able to add such cars to its trains.