Spokane is another stop that has bad timing. There is some talk about reviving service over the NP Stampede Pass route that would restore service to former Amtrak stops Yakima, Ellensburg, and East Auburn, and that would run between Seattle and Spokane and give Spokane daylight service. I will believe it when I see it and not until then.
Yep, Spokane does have bad timing too. At least theoretically one could board and sleep on the train, just before the process occurs where both parts of the train are connected or disconnected. Depending on the direction of the train you're boarding. There are stations that have it a little worse though, such as of course Fargo.
Little Rock going south/westbound is rough too, when it's scheduled to arrive at 3:10am. It isn't as bad heading north/eastbound towards Saint Louis and Chicago(midnight-ish, give or take), though.
Service at the wee hours, has always been the bane of train stations at certain longitudes, where their location suffers account their distance from the origins of the trains....back when trains ran at multiple times on a route, it was not as big a problem, but most of the 'fleet' of limiteds passed these points at wee hours, and an all-stops 'accommodation' train served the daylight patrons....
As for Cleveland, it seems to me that they should run Train 49 about three hours later, which would improve things somewhat...(and try to cut that long dwell at ALB)...
You're inevitably right, when it comes to train travel. Some states/cities/towns will always inevitably have a late as heck or ridiculously early in the morning stop(3-5am), due to being far away from where the train originates. And since this problem is compounded more, by the fact there's only 1 long distance train(vs. more than 1 train pre-Amtrak) serving a lot of these cities. I.e. Nebraska stops on the California Zephyr, Kansas stops on the Southwest Chief, eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota stops on the Empire Builder, and western Arizona/eastern California stops on the Sunset Limited. Sadly for the latter, that problem is compounded by the fact it only runs 3 days a week, which probably won't change anytime soon.
Though I wish it would get upgraded to daily service, along with the Cardinal.
Service at the wee hours, has always been the bane of train stations at certain longitudes, where their location suffers account their distance from the origins of the trains....back when trains ran at multiple times on a route, it was not as big a problem, but most of the 'fleet' of limiteds passed these points at wee hours, and an all-stops 'accommodation' train served the daylight patrons....
As for Cleveland, it seems to me that they should run Train 49 about three hours later, which would improve things somewhat...(and try to cut that long dwell at ALB)...
I just looked at the 49's schedule now, and yeah that would help things. Don't know if scheduling issues(i.e. time slots for Amtrak trains to run, balancing Amtrak with freight train traffic) would make it tough for Amtrak to have the westbound LSL run a little bit later. But it'd certainly help Cleveland and all the stops west of it have a less brutal arrival time, to adjust the schedule by as little as 1-2 hours. Of course if 49 had a 1-3 hour later arrival at all stations west of Albany, they'd risk annoying the western NY riders(particularly Rochester and Buffalo). 11/2 hours later for all westbound 49 scheduled stop times might be a fair compromise, so that Rochester and Buffalo don't have too late of an arrival time(12:39am and 1:25am). And Cleveland would see a 4:57am arrival time(and 5:15am departure), which would be an improvement. Ditto with all the Ohio and Indiana stops, west of Cleveland.
Like another poster said, if you change the arrival time to make it better for certain cities, you make it worse for others(i.e. Erie, PA). I guess that's just the way long distance train scheduling is, that some city or town always gets screwed with a really bad time. It's too bad it isn't like the pre-Amtrak days, where there is a variety of arrival times in different parts of the day for those middle of the US stops.