The Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, the legislation which created Amtrak, contained a "gotcha". Those railroads which joined Amtrak would pay an up-front fee which was based upon their passenger service losses in previous years, but they would get to shed all of their passenger service and turn those obligations over to Amtrak. If they held out and did not join Amtrak, though, they would not be allowed to discontinue any of their passenger trains for the next five years.

This could have been the tipping point for a number of "on-the-fence" railroads. Santa Fe, for example, had expressed a willingness to continue operating their Chiefs...but the thought of keeping the Grand Canyon going for the next five years may well have been the straw which broke the camel's back. For the Southern Railway, it meant keeping alive the remnants of the Piedmont between Washington and Atlanta, the Asheville Special operating tri-weekly between Salisbury and Asheville, and the Birmingham Special which no longer ran to Birmingham (it had earlier been discontinued west of Bristol). The latter train had operated over Norfolk and Western between Lynchburg and Bristol; as N & W joined Amtrak it meant that their service would disappear and all that would remain would be a stub train between Washington and Lynchburg.

The Southern was willing enough to continue operating the Southern Crescent as a flagship train on their own nickel for a few more years...but that was all. As soon as the five-year waiting period was up, all of the Southern Railway trains on this page would be gone.