California Zephyr re-routing around Wendover?

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jshell

Train Attendant
Joined
Sep 16, 2013
Messages
54
Location
SLC
I've got a short hop planned for tomorrow (Sat, Jul 7) from SLC to Grand Junction. So when just checking to see how things were moving today, I saw the California Zephyr is way off schedule in Salt Lake City. On Amtrak's "track your train" map, the 6 is shown off route and is near a town called "Montello" near the Utah/Nevada border.

The westbound 5 appears to still be in SLC, but its last status update was 4:28am MT (a little over 3 hours ago). Amtrak says it departed at 5:21am after getting here shortly after 1am.

I couldn't find any reports of derailments. Maybe wildfires are affecting things? Has anyone heard anything about this disruption? Funny thing is Amtrak still lists these as big five hour delays and hasn't gone into "service disruption" mode.

Hoping today's 6 out of Emeryville fares better..
 
Wondering the same thing myself - I'm getting on in Green River tomorrow - can't find anything out about why today is so late.
 
Just saw this in a Facebook group:

Live from the eastbound Zephyr! We just pulled into Salt Lake City 8.5 hours late. Overnight we lost an engine in Winnemucca, NV. (Shown here: 147, who got us to Utah safely on her own!) We later had to go back and move the abandoned engine for some reason. We also got rerouted around wildfires south of the lake. Then we had to stop in the salt flats and wait for a crew change to come meet us. It has been something of an adventure.
 
So passenger's are getting some "rare mileage" across the Lake, and then Ogden down to SLC...neat for fans, but not for those delayed...
 
Sounds like quite the adventure for sure. I wouldn't mind seeing that route someday out of curiosity but yikes.

Are the engines just struggling in the heat? Something similar happened last year when I was coming home to Salt Lake on the Zephyr. We crawled slowly across the Utah desert and had to get a UP engine in Helper. It didn't delay us too bad - no abandoned engine or wildfire re-routing.

Here's hoping for better fortunes for the train behind it!
 
Just saw this in a Facebook group:

Live from the eastbound Zephyr! We just pulled into Salt Lake City 8.5 hours late. Overnight we lost an engine in Winnemucca, NV. (Shown here: 147, who got us to Utah safely on her own!) We later had to go back and move the abandoned engine for some reason. We also got rerouted around wildfires south of the lake. Then we had to stop in the salt flats and wait for a crew change to come meet us. It has been something of an adventure.
So assuming that the salt flats are less likely to burn. And is the rerouting thru the salt flats long-term?
 
Sounds like quite the adventure for sure. I wouldn't mind seeing that route someday out of curiosity but yikes.

Are the engines just struggling in the heat? Something similar happened last year when I was coming home to Salt Lake on the Zephyr. We crawled slowly across the Utah desert and had to get a UP engine in Helper. It didn't delay us too bad - no abandoned engine or wildfire re-routing.

Here's hoping for better fortunes for the train behind it!

I'd just enjoy the adventure. Seldom do I make important plans for connecting cities.
 
I’m actually more curious about the statement “we later had to go back and move the abandoned engine for some reason” than I am about a small detour around a blocked route.

Does this mean they set out a locomotive, proceeded along the route (for some unknown time and distance), and then had to make a reverse move for that entire distance (or, possibly but I figure less likely, unless the railroad layout permitted, wyed the train twice), just so the crew could reposition the locomotive? That just seems unlikely, especially if “later” was anything more than a few minutes.

That, or the person who wrote that is just confused about what he heard the crew explain about the situation (especially if the failure was overnight, he probably would have been asleep and only hearing about it afterwards and not seeing it happening first hand; and even if the latter, just “seeing” what’s happening from a passenger window doesn’t come close to giving a good explanation of things for unplanned events).
 
Perhaps they set out the locomotive that went bad in Winnemucca, somewhere east of Wells for some reason, and then when they were blocked by the fire, and had to get back to Wells to do the reroute, they had to move it out of the way....?

Don't know...also just speculating...
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The person reporting on Facebook corrected his reason for the detour from fire to the detour was due to a trespasser death on the original line -- no detours for wildfire.

Unfortunately this is the same train that had the failed single engine leaving Fort Morgan today and is still is service disruption. What an experience.
 
YouTube user Mike Jensen 80701 filmed Amtrak #6(05) backing up to the Fort Morgan station and the passengers waiting there.

 
FB post says they're still in Fort Morgan waiting for a BNSF crew. Current estimate is 21 hours late into CHI. Amtrak provided dinner for everyone.
 
21 hours late...that is unheard of.
Unheard of on the CZ or on Amtrak in general? Because I've experienced a 20 hour delay before, and plenty of other members have as well. It's certainly not common, but I wouldn't really say that it's unheard of.
Back in the Sunset "East" days, 24 hour delays were considered the Norm for the only Coast to Coast LD Train ever run in the US.
As was said, lots of us have experienced such delays during our Rail trips. Not always pleasant, but an Adventure for sure. We sometimes called such trips "The Trip from Hell!"
 
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21 hours late...that is unheard of.
Unheard of on the CZ or on Amtrak in general? Because I've experienced a 20 hour delay before, and plenty of other members have as well. It's certainly not common, but I wouldn't really say that it's unheard of.
Back in the Sunset "East" days, 24 hour delays were considered the Norm for the only Coast to Coast LD Train ever run in the US.
As was said, lots of us have experienced such delays during our Rail trips. Not always pleasant, but an Adventure for sure. We sometimes called such trips "The Trip from Hell!"
And I'm sure that R.C. Sproul's train (the ill-fated Sunset Ltd that crashed in the Alabama bayou) was many hours late without a doubt.
 
I was 24 hours late arriving Chicago on #6 back in 2004. Made it to Omaha 2 hours down. Tracks washed out ahead of us. Had to take a detour through Iowa. Later that night, there was a huge electrical storm, and a freight derailed in front of us. I fell asleep at some point and woke up the next day. Limped into CHI exactly 24hrs late.
 
Wander how many of those pax are “never Amtrak” again pax? That is the real threat to LD trains, not just “Anderson”.
 
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