jackal

Well, NS dispatchers might inform Amtrak transportation officials/resource management folks, but as AlanB mentioned a few posts ago, that information isn't necessarily transmitted to the train crew.

Even in this "day of communication technology," train crews must be contacted on radio channels that are fairly congested (even in CTC, although that does reduce the verbal workload of train crews and dispatchers). Busy dispatchers on high-traffic lines don't have time to chat up train crews and tell them about every little problem up the line. Additionally, the affected territory might be under the control of another dispatcher, and the dispatcher of the territory the train is currently in might not necessarily be familiar with the track conditions in the other dispatcher's territory (and certainly not up-to-the-minute). He or she only knows what was said over the water cooler or in any notices from the chief dispatcher.

And for the most part, train crews don't care about delays in arrival times. If anything needs to be told to the crews regarding delays, it's not necessarily for the passengers' sake but rather for the purpose of arranging alternate transportation for the crew and/or tying up at a point away from the destination terminal (i.e. a hotel or something) in case the crew's hours of service expire (legally, crews can only be on duty 12 hours).

Train crews *can* contact people other than the train dispatcher, but it requires either changing radio channels or using a radio telephone--and those are all crew-initiated actions. Crews usually call up certain people at designated places along the track: for example, there will be a designated place to call the yardmaster when approaching a yard to figure out which track you're pulling into. The train crews might not even have the contact information for whoever would know about delays ahead on the line. And for railroad officials to contact the train is difficult: either they can break in on the road channel on the radio (possibly interfering with other communications)--if they even have access to that radio channel--or they can pass a message to the dispatcher to tell the crew to call them via radio phone or another radio channel. In order to do this, the situation would have to be of some urgency--and knowing about potential relatively minor delays down the track isn't that urgent (especially since delays are a way of Amtrak life).

Really, the best chance of learning about delays would be to contact the chief dispatcher--but that's (in this case) a Norfolk Southern official who may not have talking to Amtrak high on his priority list.

Having said all of that , it *would* be nice if conductors had little screens (like commercial airline pilots do--an example would be the one shown in the movie United 93 when the dispatcher notifies the pilot of the WTC crashes) that allow two-way text communication between the resource management folks (in the airline industry, it would be the aircraft dispatcher, so whatever the equivalent position in Amtrak would be) so that conductors could get updated info directly from the higher-level folks, but that would require installing lots of expensive equipment--something I doubt Amtrak could do. (Of course, you could use cheaper consumer technologies to simplify it--say, a laptop with an EVDO card and MSN Messenger--but I doubt that would be workable in a production environment, much less in the middle of the Rockies.) If you really think that this needs to happen, then write Amtrak's president or some other high-level official and tell them they need to establish a method for train crews to know about delays--maybe they'll respond if you urge them that it would contribute to good customer service.

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post--I do that when I'm tired...

AlanB

Well first off we don't know when those switches at Sandusky failed. They could have gone down 5 minutes after you spoke with the conductor or 5 hours before you spoke with him.

In the case of the former, then the info he gave you at that time was correct to the best of his knowledge. If the later, he could still have been told that NS would do their best to keep Amtrak on time, which is what they are supposed to do anyhow. Either way on a line that probably sees 50 trains per day, if not more, what might have been a fluid situation would quickly become rush hour on a Cleveland freeway in a matter of hours once those switches failed. I'm also sure that the continuing lake affect snows probably didn't help matters either.

However, even if NS knew long before your departure that things were really bad, it's hard to say whether they told Amtrak or not. And if they did, it's also hard to say what Amtrak did with that info, since again NS management would only interface with Amtrak management, not the conductor.

We just had an example of Amtrak's own failure to properly deal with an ice storm south of Chicago. The host RR did inform Amtrak mangement that they had to shut down the line due to the conditions. Yet somehow those in CNOC (Consolidated National Operations Centre, Amtrak's main control center if you will), never got that info to the dispatcher's in Chicago. Either that or someone in Chicago decided that they didn't care and kept sending out trains.

End result was something like 3 Amtrak trains stuck in the middle of nowhere. Passengers ended up having to be bused to their final destinations, after the local towns came to their rescue.

But again, returning to your case, we don't know when things went from bad to worse. NS did issue a snow emergency warning at 12:01 AM on the 13th, but they didn't stop running trains or ask Amtrak to stop running trains. However it really all comes back to, when did those switches at Sandusky fail?

FLYDCA

Has anyone tried this discount yet for the new College Visit program?

http://www.campusvisit.com/amtrak

jujubees

I love to find secret codes, any chance you could help me with traveling from bwi to stm, 2 people, april 4 return april 6 (easter weekend), I have AAA. It also seems like you know which train # is better. I saw that H644 ends in March. Thanks for your help!

AlanB

You won't find any codes that work for that time period, they will all be blacked out for Easter week. Your best hope is to book right now with the AAA discount, because every day you wait could see the prices go up.

jujubees

I was afraid those dates would be blacked out. Thanks for responding so quickly.

csurugbyhooker

Since it's quite appearant that Alan B and the rest who answer the questions on here are just as or more knowledgeable as Amtrak employees, let me ask yet another question:

Are the delays trains experience directly related to inclement weather along a route? I understand that Amtrak yields to frieght traffic and that will always lead to some sort of delay, but it seems that if it's snowing anywhere along a route, the trains become dramatically more late. My example is the 29 Capitol, which on 2/13 was 58 minutes late into Chicago. Since that date, a good amount of snow has fallen and the train has been no less than 3 and a half hours late (most delays since being 6+ hours) into CHI. Would it be safe to assume that if clear weather prevails over the whole of the route, the train will be more likely to be on time?

Or am I completely off here and if so, is there something going on along the 29 Capitol route that anybody knows of that's causing the greater delays? It seems that the train runs on time from WAS up until Alliance, OH, where it tends to delay into that station and it also tends to delay between CLE and SOB.

I have previously purchased tickets for the 29 that depart CLE at 2:30a tomorrow and I'm debating cancelling them and just taking a bus. I can hadle up to a 1.5 hour delay, but it's very important I be in CHI by noon. The weather forecast looks clear along the whole route tonight... Any info anybody could give me would be much appreciated.

the_traveler

I would say that weather has much to do with some delays - such as those affecting 29. But there may be other "problems" that may cause delays - freight congestion, switch problems, railroad company's indifference toward Amtrak, etc... - also.

As you noted, 29 tends to be near ontime up to Alliance. North of there is where it usually gets the "snow belt" weather. That may be why it loses some time. (As an aside, the LSL #48/49 and all Empire Service trains in NY operate "normally" south of ALB - not in "snow belt" - but run on a limited or non-existant schedule west of ALB - "snow belt" area.)

Also, once Amtrak falls behind their schedule, many railroads give priority to their own freights. Although the "law" states that Amtrak trains have priority, some railroads don't care. (I'm not certain, but NS may be one of these.) Remember, except for the NEC, where Amtrak owns the tracks, all other Amtrak trains run on tracks owned by other railroads.

If your ticket is in coach, it's up to you if you want to cancel. If you have a sleeper, you'll lose the sleeper fare. But remember, the train (even if delayed) may get to CHI before the bus! The bus may run into a traffic jam somewhere, and the train may be faster. But YMMV.

AlanB

Without a doubt weather, of any type, can have an affect on train movements in general and Amtrak specifically. Snow can be especially troubling, depending on just how much fell, how fast it fell, how wet or dry it is. But a hot sunny day can also cause problems too, since it forces the rails to expand and potentially cause sun kinks.

But part of the equation is also the management of any given freight company. The Empire Builder runs through some of the coldest and snowiest parts of the US. Despite that, it is rare that the EB runs more than 4 or 5 hours late, and that’s over a two night/three day run. Whereas the Capitol Limited is only a one night run/ 16 hour run.

The tracks that the EB uses however are owned and operated by BNSF, a company that works very hard to keep Amtrak on time. The Southwest Chief and the EB, which run almost exclusively on BNSF are number #2 (73.0%) and #3 (60.1%) respectively on the list with the best on time performance, behind only the City of New Orleans (84.4%) which runs on CN tracks. On the other hand, the Capitol Limited was only on time 11.4% of the time during fiscal 2006. Note: A long distance train is considered on time if it arrives within 30 minutes of its scheduled time.

So we can’t just blame the Capitol’s poor OTP (On Time Performance) on the snows from last year. The NS line between Chicago and Cleveland has some of the highest traffic levels in the country, something like 50+ trains each way each day. So that has a lot to do with the problems too. Moving that much freight is tough enough, but throw in a bit weather or some other problem and things meltdown pretty quickly.

In contrast the BNSF line that the EB uses sees far less traffic. So weather has a little less impact. More importantly, if the line does get shut down for a short period of time, recovery is faster, since less trains get backed up. Just like Jet Blue is still trying to recover here in NY at JFK from the recent storm 5 days ago, the NS line is I’m sure still trying to recover. And possible lake effect snows are probably not helping things either.

But the bottom line in all of this, comes back to how bad was the weather or problem, and where does the host RR put Amtrak in the pecking order. BNSF just seems to do a better job than NS and a few other hosts, although UP remains the worst host around.

As an interesting side note, I was part of those BNSF stats last June. I was riding on the Southwest Chief from Chicago to LA. BNSF had a freight train derail just west of Albuquerque, a major derailment that closed their main east/west line that sees 100 trains a day. This forced Amtrak to stop my train in Albuquerque, as well as the east bound train in Gallup NM. Amtrak then swapped the passengers between those two cities by bus, causing a delay of over 4 hours.

Despite the ordeal of moving some 250 passengers off the train, onto buses, then back onto the train, and despite dozens of freight trains just stopped on the tracks going nowhere, BNSF somehow managed to find enough holes for our train out of Gallup, as we were only 52 minutes late into LA the next day. Subtract the 30 minute window, and technically we were only 22 minutes late. Not bad IMHO. Had that happened on UP tracks, I would have expected to either be a day late or having been bussed the whole way.

soundwave

Hello,
I am planning a trip from Chicago to Emeryville (actually San Francisco but that part seems to be free on the bus) leaving Chicago on March 9th, 2 Adults with AAA membership, so I am planning on using the H644 deal that would save me 50% on companion and 25% on a superliner roomette.

The standard rail fair is $284 for 2 adults, and the roomette is $435.

Am I right in stating my final price should be $517.95 for this trip with the discount? Just wanted to be sure I knew what I was talking about before I called Amtrak.

Thanks for the great forum!
-Chad

carebear78

Hey I was thinking about going to DC from NY Penn this friday. Are there any codes available for that route?

thanks
CB

AlanB

Hmm, well you seem to be in the ballpark, but I get $539.25 for the total price.

If I'm understanding your numbers right, then here's how I see things breaking down.

$142.00 First adult fare
$ 71.00 Second adult fare
$326.25 Roomette
$539.25 Grand Total

soundwave

When reading the flyer it said I still get the regular AAA 10% off too, right? Thats how I got my amount:

$127.80 First adult fare
$ 63.90 Companion
$326.25 Roomette (Unless I get an additional 10% off?)
517.95 Total

Again I am new at this AAA discount, so just making sure I am reading it right before I call.

Thanks,
Chad

AlanB

Chad,

I'm not sure about whether you'll get the normal 10%, although you probably are right. However, you definately won't get another 10% off on the companion ticket. And there won't be another 10% off of the roomette either.

So in that case, assuming that you get 10%, then the total would come to $525.05

FLYDCA

So no one has tried this in 2007? This was such a widely used promo last year.