"To the 1980s: You made me what I am today." — Amtrak

No, it's not a quote from an Amtrak press release, but Amtrak could be singing this old song in several ways just a month past its 45th anniversary.

The 1970s was baby Amtrak's decade of transition, of getting a footing and keeping it in an environment — both physical and political — where everyone thought Amtrak would be gone in under 10 years. But the 1980s saw beginnings that have become part and parcel of our national passenger network.

Not the least of these was the Superliner, the current public profile of Amtrak in the West and Southeast.

The Superliner concept really started with the Hi-Level cars of the Santa Fe first fielded on the El Capitan in 1954. Eventually equipping all of Santa Fe's premier trains, these Budd-built wonders went to Amtrak on Day 1.

Amtrak chose to double down with a 1975 order of 284 cars built by Pullman-Standard. The cars actually started to come on line in the late 1970s, but did not impact the long-distance routes until the second decade, eventually bumping the Budd cars to crew dormitory status and filling out the routes throughout the '80s. The only thing that kept the two-level concept from the Northeast was the clearance plate for most routes.

Another double-down came in the 1990s with the Superliner IIs, but the look and presence of the cars kept trains looking the same as they do today (with cosmetic changes).

An offshoot of the Superliner is Head End Power, or HEP. Today, with our electronically dependent society, we think of this as normal. Today's Amtrak passenger under 30 does not recall when long-distance passenger cars were heated and cooled by steam from the locomotive.

No, Amtrak didn't ever run scheduled trains behind steam engines. The steam-to-diesel transition — 15 or more years before Amtrak — had most passenger diesels built with steam generators to keep the passenger cars supplied.

The HEP concept substituted a diesel generator, independent of the engine that moved the wheels of the locomotive, in place of the steam generator in those older locomotives. Newer ones were built with HEP. The constant roar of the diesel we hear today, providing electricity to the passenger cars even when stopped in a station, is a legacy of the HEP transition of the '80s.

Another current characteristic of today's Amtrak — with which many passengers have a love-hate relationship — is the concept of revenue yield management, which came online in computerized form in 1988. This is the basic system that virtually assures you paid a different price for your ticket than the person sitting next to you, sometimes even if you bought the tickets at virtually the same time.

Though the computer algorithms have changed over the years, the basic concept is that you will pay less if you book and pay a long time ahead, and you will pay more if you book at the last minute or at the station. You will pay still more if the train is going to be full.

However, a full train doesn't mean a full train. As the politicians say, it depends on what your definition of "full" is. Revenue yield management dictates a certain number of seats be kept available right up to boarding time for the highest ticket price, instead of selling out those seats too far in advance for a lower price.

Since the '80s, Amtrak has tinkered with fare flexibility and refunds, peaking with the 2014 decision to make certain no-shows completely forfeit the fare, rather than securing a discounted voucher for future travel. It took more than 25 years, but Amtrak finally discovered you can't really control yield if your refund policies are too lenient.

Finally, before Amtrak finished its second decade, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For passenger railroading, this meant a following decade of new accessibility standards that still shape the human and financial heart and soul of Amtrak today.

Though history shows Amtrak has from its start made a good faith effort to lower or eliminate all barriers to passengers of differing abilities — the Superliners have low-level boarding — the ADA codified the push for public accommodation as such. With codes comes compliance, and with compliance comes cost.

All station projects and all passenger cars offered for boarding at said stations had to comply with ADA, and those projects already on the drawing board had to be reviewed before going online. This was particularly true of the future Viewliner series of cars, which would not go on line until the '90s, but which had their prototype debut in 1986.

Today's Amtrak is still growing, still changing. Good ideas are not always popular, and popular ones are not always good.

Whatever is in store for the second half of Amtrak's fifth decade, I'm sure it will be interesting. But I'm equally sure it will continue to include the high-level, long-distance passenger car and HEP to help you power all the electronics you care to bring aboard. It will also include some form of yield management for tickets, and it will put forth the best ADA compliant effort around to accommodate all who want to ride the train.