This timetable shows Amtrak operated seven trains a day from New York City to Albany, four of which went on to Buffalo. One of those trains connected with a train to Toronto. The overnight New York-Buffalo train took 8 hours and 5 minutes while the other three took 8 hours and 10 minutes.

Click image to download a 979-KB PDF of this pocket timetable.

Service has slightly improved since then. My 2018 Amtrak timetable shows 12 trains a day from New York to Albany, but still only four went to Buffalo. One of the Buffalo trains went on to Toronto, apparently relieving travelers of the need to change trains. New York-Buffalo trains took over 9 hours in 2018. According to Amtrak’s web site, times are back down to around 8 hours today, and the fastest train takes only 7 hours and 53 minutes.

According to this timetable, 1971 fares from New York to Albany were $7.50 (about $57 in today’s money) and New York to Buffalo were $22.75 ($172 today). Amtrak fares today are a comparative bargain, as the fare to Albany starts at $45 and the fare to Buffalo starts at $68. Of course, the operating subsidies that Congress and New York routinely give to Amtrak today were non-existent in 1971, when politicians expected Amtrak to operate out of its own revenues.

New York is the Empire state, and New York Central began calling its New York City-Buffalo trains “empire service” in 1967. Amtrak adopted this name, though it appears on this timetable only on the back page.

The term “empire service” has a dark history. New York Central’s Empire Service scheme was actually a huge downgrading of passenger trains that would have eliminated dining and sleeping cars and required New York-Buffalo passengers to change trains twice (in Albany and Syracuse) and New York-Chicago passengers to change trains five times (Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo). The railroad dropped this proposal partly because it feared that negative publicity would threaten its proposed merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad.