page_title: Hartford Line (Amtrak)
section_title: Mail service
hierarchical_section_title: Hartford Line (Amtrak) / History / Mail service
caption_attribution_description: English: Amtrak Material handling cars on Springfield Shuttle Train 490 at Meriden bound for the postal sorting facility in Springfield, MA in 2002.
context_page_description: Amtrak's Hartford Line—known prior to September 2019 as the New Haven–Springfield Shuttle, or simply, the Shuttle—is a train service run by Amtrak primarily between Springfield, Massachusetts, and New Haven, Connecticut, along Amtrak's New Haven–Springfield Line. As part of a new pilot program, two daily round trip trains continue north of Springfield to Greenfield, Massachusetts on the Connecticut River Line under the Valley Flyer designation, other trains on the line carry the Hartford Line designation. Hartford Line and Valley Flyer trains connect with Northeast Regional and Acela Express services at New Haven's Union Station, usually via a cross-platform transfer. The Hartford Line program also includes a single Northeast Regional round trip through train between Washington, DC and Springfield daily and additional through trains on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
  During fiscal year 2016, the Shuttle service carried 270,353 passengers, a decrease of 23.0% from FY2015. The service had a total revenue of $9,504,113 in FY2016, an 18.0% decrease from FY2015.
context_section_description: Until Amtrak discontinued all mail-hauling operations in 2005, the postal distribution center in Springfield, MA, was a significant customer. Up until about the year 2000, Springfield was served by a dedicated mail train which would run overnight up the Inland Route to Springfield. After this train was canceled, mail cars were instead added to the early morning Train 190, to make pickups at large cities along the Northeast Corridor. At New Haven these mail cars would be removed from the rear of Train 190 and added to Shuttle Train 490, sometimes sandwiching the locomotive in the middle of the train.
caption: Mail cars on Shuttle Train 490 at Meriden in 2002
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