Auto Train is an scheduled daily train service for passengers and their automobiles operated by Amtrak between Lorton, Virginia (near Washington, D.C.), and Sanford, Florida (near Orlando). Auto Train is the only motorail service in the United States. Passengers ride in coach seats or private sleeping car rooms while their vehicles are carried in enclosed automobile-carrying freight cars called autoracks. The train can carry up to 320 vehicles. The train also includes lounge cars and dining cars. Auto Train allows its passengers to avoid driving Interstate 95 in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida while bringing their own vehicles with them. It has the highest revenue of any Amtrak long-distance train. The service operates as train number 52 northbound and number 53 southbound. The train operates non-stop between its Virginia and Florida terminals, except for a brief stop in Florence, South Carolina, for servicing and a crew change of the engineer and conductors. Amtrak's Auto Train is the successor to an earlier, similarly named service operated by the privately-owned Auto-Train Corporation in the 1970s. History Auto-Train Corporation The original Auto-Train operated on Seaboard Coast Line Railroad and Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac tracks. It was operated by Auto-Train Corporation, a privately owned railroad carrier founded by Eugene K. Garfield. Garfield had worked at the U.S. Department of Transportation, which had funded a study of the practicality of an automobile-train service. Garfield resigned and used the study as the blueprint for his enterprise. The company provided a service unique in the country: scheduled rail transportation for passengers and their automobiles between Lorton, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and Sanford, Florida, near Orlando, Florida. The Auto-Train Corporation used its own rolling stock, painted in red, white, and purple. The typical train was equipped with two or three General Electric U36B diesel-electric locomotives; double-deck auto carriers; streamlined passenger cars, including coaches, dining cars, and sleeping cars; and full-dome cars; and a caboose, then an unusual sight on most passenger trains. The engines were freight types, purchased at much lower cost than passenger types. But they lacked steam generators, so heat to the passenger cars was supplied by steam-generator cars. Passengers rode in wide coach seats or private first-class sleeping compartments, and meals were served in dining cars. Their vehicles were carried in enclosed autoracks. The company's first autoracks were acquired used, and started life in the 1950s as an innovation of the Canadian