By April of 1971 the bankrupt Penn Central was just going through the motions and the Broadway Limited was only a shadow of its former self. Still, it boasted sleeping car and dining car service all the way...most Penn Central trains had been reduced to "Snack Bar Coaches" for food service if in fact they carried any food service at all. The sleeping cars were company-owned and operated now...the Pullman Company had been placed in liquidation after the end of 1968. Traveler's reports of the period indicate that the equipment was filthy, the service slovenly, the equipment unreliable, schedule keeping a bad joke, and the employees almost uniformly surly. 

Basically, the Broadway Limited of 1971 had nowhere to go but up. Amtrak would retain it as their primary service between New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago. The Heritage equipment would be rebuilt and modernized in the late 1970s and early 1980s and some new equipment would arrive in the form of the Amfleet coaches and cafe/lounges. Amtrak would eventually cease using the North Philadelphia station with its direct connection to the west, opting instead to pull the train "backwards" from New York past Zoo Interlocking to Philadelphia 30th Street Station, where locomotives would change from one end of the train to the other and then pull the train to the north and back through Zoo again where it would be sent towards Harrisburg and the west. This was the state of affairs when I had my one and only chance to ride the Broadway in 1985...between the modernized equipment and competent management of the Claytor presidency, it was a pleasant trip. The grilled red snapper filet I had for dinner in the diner while rounding Horseshoe Curve still stands out as the best single piece of fish that I can remember. However, Penn Central and later Conrail let the route's track continue to deteriorate, forcing a reroute onto the former Baltimore & Ohio west of Pittsburgh in 1990. To reduce losses, the Broadway Limited would be axed in 1995.