Bustitution on California Zephyr in June!!!

[Bob Dylan]

trainorders has a Post today discussiing that due to Track Work in the Donner Pass Area June 16-23, #5 and #6 will only Run between Reno and Chicago and Bustitutions will happen between Reno and Emeryville!

Hopefully no AUers or First time Riders have Trips Scheduled during that Time Frame! :unsure:

 

[henryj]

trainorders has a Post today discussiing that due to Track Work in the Donner Pass Area June 16-23, #5 and #6 will only Run between Reno and Chicago and Bustitutions will happen between Reno and Emeryville!
Hopefully no AUers or First time Riders have Trips Scheduled during that Time Frame! :unsure:

Amazing that they chose to schedule this during the summer crunch period. More dissatisfied Amtrak customers.

 

[Steve4031]

I guess running it through feather river Canyon would cause too much of a delay.

 

[Ryan]

trainorders has a Post today discussiing that due to Track Work in the Donner Pass Area June 16-23, #5 and #6 will only Run between Reno and Chicago and Bustitutions will happen between Reno and Emeryville!

Hopefully no AUers or First time Riders have Trips Scheduled during that Time Frame! :unsure:

Amazing that they chose to schedule this during the summer crunch period. More dissatisfied Amtrak customers.

I don't think that the UP really cares much about summer crunch or dissatisfied Amtrak customers.

For some reason I'll bet that they care a bit more about working in Donner pass when the weather is decent.

 

[jis]

trainorders has a Post today discussiing that due to Track Work in the Donner Pass Area June 16-23, #5 and #6 will only Run between Reno and Chicago and Bustitutions will happen between Reno and Emeryville!

Hopefully no AUers or First time Riders have Trips Scheduled during that Time Frame! :unsure:

Amazing that they chose to schedule this during the summer crunch period. More dissatisfied Amtrak customers.

Do you really expect them to do track work in the bitter Donner winter just to keep a single Amtrak train operating for a few days in the summer?
Heck even Amtrak takes a hit on its own NEC track in the summer. Remember they did all those bridge replacements in the summer creating all those dissatisfied Amtrak customers?

 

[fairviewroad]

To Amtrak's credit, if you go on their website right now and try to buy a ticket on the CZ during that time period, you are informed

of the bustitution. So people buying tickets now can either use the bus as warned, or choose a different date. Hopefully Amtrak is

calling passengers already booked to inform them as well.

 

[DET63]

As much as Amtrak passengers may not like being bustituted over the Donner Pass, if track work is to be done there, it just about has to be done during the summer. It's not a place where you want to be outdoors during the winter. If you don't know what I mean, just think about the circumstances that led to its name.

 

[roadman3313]

I checked this morning and it was business as usual with rooms all at various buckets... But as you mentioned now train 6 is "cancelled" and replaced with bus 3006. Arrival into Reno is 5 minutes earlier. While people (especially those already booked in rooms) will certainly be unhappy, track maintenance is a must to keep service running in the future.

 

[henryj]

Do you think the Western Pacific, D&RGW or Burlington EVER bustituted anyone on the CZ to do track maintenance? I think not. Only Amtrak has to put up with this indignity. Do you think the SP ever bustitluted anyone on the City of San Francisco to do track maintenance? Hah.

 

[fairviewroad]

Do you think the Western Pacific, D&RGW or Burlington EVER bustituted anyone on the CZ to do track maintenance? I think not. Only Amtrak has to put up with this indignity. Do you think the SP ever bustitluted anyone on the City of San Francisco to do track maintenance? Hah.

Apples and oranges. Those railroads owned the tracks. If Amtrak ever decides to purchase and/or build a set of railroad tracks between Reno and Sacramento, they are welcome to schedule maintenance in such a way as to avoid bustitution. But still, I wonder what the answer to your question is? Did bustitutions/cancellations not exist prior to Amtrak?

 

[henryj]

Do you think the Western Pacific, D&RGW or Burlington EVER bustituted anyone on the CZ to do track maintenance? I think not. Only Amtrak has to put up with this indignity. Do you think the SP ever bustitluted anyone on the City of San Francisco to do track maintenance? Hah.

Apples and oranges. Those railroads owned the tracks. If Amtrak ever decides to purchase and/or build a set of railroad tracks between Reno and Sacramento, they are welcome to schedule maintenance in such a way as to avoid bustitution. But still, I wonder what the answer to your question is? Did bustitutions/cancellations not exist prior to Amtrak?

Actually, I think the railroads just handled track maintenance differently. Allowances were made for first class trains, etc. To be fair, and I am sure we will be 'advised' of this by the experts on here, railroads now days tend to do track maintenance much differently with complete shut downs to expedite the work and reduce costs. Plus Donner Pass used to be double tracked. I think the SP took up one of the tracks and I guess UP has not restored it. But, we await the 'experts' comments.

 

[Ryan]

You're probably pretty close on that one.

What would you have Amtrak do differently in this situation?

 

[jis]

Specially considering that Amtrak takes similar hits on its own tracks too.

For considerable additional cost things can be done so that tracks remain open, but the work takes much much longer and costs much more. It is a simple matter of tradeoff on cost and benefit.

The Deputy Chief Engineer of the NEC HSR Project told me that when things really get rolling on HSR work, they will on occasions shut down the NEC for many hours overnight, possibly affecting trains like 66/67. He said that they could avoid this but they would not be able to meet the 2017 deadline and the project would land up costing much much more. That is the basis of the conjecture I present above.

 

[henryj]

You're probably pretty close on that one.
What would you have Amtrak do differently in this situation?

Actually Ryan, I don't think Amtrak could do anything differently. The same thing has happened on other LD corridors where there is only one passenger train a day and on the Chi to St Louis corridor where there were many. But on that one they did re-direct the Eagle to another route. But the Eagle has been bustituted on several other occasions. The obviousl option would be to use the old WB Feather River route even if it took longer as the CZ is usually late anyway. They don't tell us what went on with Amtrak and UP. Did Amtrak try for something different or do they just accept whatever they are told. Really what this says is LD trains are not a critical link in the transportation network. No one, Amtrak nor the host railroad, consider them essential or important. Hence the cancellations and bustitutions that we get all the time. This situation contrasts with the 'old days' when the railroads ran their own passenger trains and considered them important and classified them as 'first class' trains and rarely delayed them for anything, least of all track maintenance. And there were some instances where the CZ was detoured over Donner when the WP route was blocked. I don't think I have read of any where the COSF was detoured, but it may have happened. Back then the SP had a double track main over Donner. The COSF did get caught in the snow in 1952 at Yuba Pass. http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Stranded_Streamliner_1952/ It's a great story of just hard the railroads tried to keep routes open and get the trains through.

 

[chakk]

Do you think the Western Pacific, D&RGW or Burlington EVER bustituted anyone on the CZ to do track maintenance? I think not. Only Amtrak has to put up with this indignity. Do you think the SP ever bustitluted anyone on the City of San Francisco to do track maintenance? Hah.

Apples and oranges. Those railroads owned the tracks. If Amtrak ever decides to purchase and/or build a set of railroad tracks between Reno and Sacramento, they are welcome to schedule maintenance in such a way as to avoid bustitution. But still, I wonder what the answer to your question is? Did bustitutions/cancellations not exist prior to Amtrak?

Actually, I think the railroads just handled track maintenance differently. Allowances were made for first class trains, etc. To be fair, and I am sure we will be 'advised' of this by the experts on here, railroads now days tend to do track maintenance much differently with complete shut downs to expedite the work and reduce costs. Plus Donner Pass used to be double tracked. I think the SP took up one of the tracks and I guess UP has not restored it. But, we await the 'experts' comments.

There is quite a bit of single track between Emigrant Pass and Tunnel 41 at the top of Donner Pass. But the rest of the line between Reno and Sacramento is double-track.

There is a lot of freight traffic on the Donner Pass route also, so much of that may have to be rerouted through the Feather River Canyon, which is nearly all single-track-with-passing-sidings. So I bet that the CZ could expect substantial transit delays if it was rerouted via the FRC. Bussing passengers from Reno can likely be done at substantially less muss and fuss for Amtrak, and with faster travel times than the regular train on that route. The view of Donner Lake can be quite nice from the westbound bus on the left side, right side on the eastbound bus.

 

[Blackwolf]

On the premise of why Amtrak was not given a slot to transit the Zephyr via the Feather River Route. Since Donner will be shut down (Union Pacific's main TransCon east/west route into Northern California) all of the freights will be going via Feather River. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that there are no more available slots for Amtrak left, so UP basically told Amtrak to pound salt for the bustitution days. Sounds harsh, but UP is not in the passenger transport business, and has not been for nearly a half-century. Them's the breaks, like it or not. Good thing is, even I-80 is pretty damn scenic along this portion of the road, so you're not missing much.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

My problem with this announcement is that they only announced it NOW, barely a month out. Many of these summer trains sell out months in advance. We're traveling near that time, and chose the EB over the CZ due to the cost. It's now too late to book the EB, the bedrooms are all sold out. If I had a reservation on the CZ months ago, & they just announced the cancellation NOW - when it may be too late to choose alternate routes, I'd be pretty ticked off.

I understand that they can't do the work in the winter. It may be something that just came up, but if not - and they knew about this months ago, and just never bothered to tell Amtrak, then that's a problem.

 

[Anderson]

1) Which NEC HSR work is this? The upgrades between Philly and NYC?

2) This is actually part of the reason the Shins shut down from about midnight to 5 AM in Japan. There's probably a market for a Shoreliner-style HSR service for some city pairs on those lines (remember, the Tokaido is a long run, and there's probably a market that'd take a Slumbercoach equivalent over a capsule hotel, even for more money...after all, the Cassiopeia got new equipment recently), and the original plan was to run stuff at night...but JR decided that it made more sense to shut the lines down for 5-6 hours per night to allow for non-disruptive trackwork schedules.

 

[Texan Eagle]

They don't tell us what went on with Amtrak and UP. Did Amtrak try for something different or do they just accept whatever they are told. Really what this says is LD trains are not a critical link in the transportation network. No one, Amtrak nor the host railroad, consider them essential or important. Hence the cancellations and bustitutions that we get all the time.

In fact, quite the contrary. Amtrak acknowledges the LD trains are an important link in its network and that is why they have arranged alternate means to get passengers to their destinations even when the train will have to be cancelled, and even duly announcing it a month in advance. If Amtrak did not care about the LD trains, they could have just decided to annul CZ at Reno and tell the passengers to suck it up and find their own transportation. But they did not do that, instead they are arranging a way to keep the vital critical link in the transportation network up and running.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I agree with D.P. Roberts that it's the timing of the notice that would probably bother me most. Scheduling vacations is tricky for me, just as I assume it is for most folks. In some cases I can choose to schedule at the last minute and only end up on trains that are still running. However, with Amtrak that often means the sleepers will be high bucket at best or completely sold out at worst. Alternatively I can schedule months in advance and just sit around waiting for Amtrak to eventually let me know that my train has been turned into a bus in order to make way for scheduled maintenance. Props to Jim Hudson though. I'm in the process of planning my summer Amtrak trip this week and the CZ is a route I enjoy, so this information has already proven quite helpful to me.

 

[henryj]

They don't tell us what went on with Amtrak and UP. Did Amtrak try for something different or do they just accept whatever they are told. Really what this says is LD trains are not a critical link in the transportation network. No one, Amtrak nor the host railroad, consider them essential or important. Hence the cancellations and bustitutions that we get all the time.

they could have just decided to annul CZ at Reno and tell the passengers to suck it up and find their own transportation.

Which is exactly what they did with the Crescent last year and is my point. They did not bustitute the Coast Starlight when UP had the big landslide until RailPAC and others raised H... with them. The only reason they bused the CZ was their fear of bad publicity in California again. They could have just truncated it in SLC. They have cancelled the EB on numerous occasions. They even cancelled Auto Train and the Silvers not long ago for track maintenance. The LD trains are just not relevant in today's world in the minds of Amtrak and the railroads. You will never see service annulled or bustituted on the NEC for track maintenance.

 

[Heading North]

Maintenance, likely not. But even in the NEC, bustitutions don't always happen. After the freight derailment near New Haven this March (St. Patrick's Day weekend), there was no NEC service to Boston and no alternate transportation. Train 66 passengers could either stay in New York (at 2 am) or continue on to New Haven (and get there at 5 am).

Bustitutions aren't great. But Amtrak is a transportation provider, and I'd be far happier being moved to a bus to continue my trip (much as I don't enjoy buses) than being told there's no trip at all (like with winter maintenance on the Crescent). It's cancellations without alternate service that bother me.

 

[Ryan]

You will never see service annulled or bustituted on the NEC for track maintenance.

Yes you will. From this very thread:

Specially considering that Amtrak takes similar hits on its own tracks too.
For considerable additional cost things can be done so that tracks remain open, but the work takes much much longer and costs much more. It is a simple matter of tradeoff on cost and benefit.

The Deputy Chief Engineer of the NEC HSR Project told me that when things really get rolling on HSR work, they will on occasions shut down the NEC for many hours overnight, possibly affecting trains like 66/67. He said that they could avoid this but they would not be able to meet the 2017 deadline and the project would land up costing much much more. That is the basis of the conjecture I present above.

Also, Texan Eagle, fix your quotes. I didn't say what you're attributing to me.

 

[DET63]

They don't tell us what went on with Amtrak and UP. Did Amtrak try for something different or do they just accept whatever they are told. Really what this says is LD trains are not a critical link in the transportation network. No one, Amtrak nor the host railroad, consider them essential or important. Hence the cancellations and bustitutions that we get all the time.

In fact, quite the contrary. Amtrak acknowledges the LD trains are an important link in its network and that is why they have arranged alternate means to get passengers to their destinations even when the train will have to be cancelled, and even duly announcing it a month in advance. If Amtrak did not care about the LD trains, they could have just decided to annul CZ at Reno and tell the passengers to suck it up and find their own transportation. But they did not do that, instead they are arranging a way to keep the vital critical link in the transportation network up and running.

My guess would be that the month's advance notice was a result of waiting for UP to announce the exact dates it would be doing its work.

 

[SubwayNut]

The thing I'm confused by is why Amtrak is busing passengers all the way to Emeryville and isn't at least giving people the scheduled option (it would increase travel times) of switching back to a Capital Corridor train for the trip between the Bay Area and Sacramento.

It is nice to see Amtrak using buses, but remember that Amtrak California already runs throughway bus routes all the way to Reno anyway from Sacramento.