Southwest Chief #4 Service Disruption

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DesertRat

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
Jan 22, 2008
Messages
266
Location
Barstow, CA
There is a disruption for tonight very probably due to earthquake that hit at about 830 pm. This was a 7.1 out of Ridgecrest.

Barstow felt this one way more than the one on Thursday.

Whoops that was supposed to be #4. Shows how rattled I still am I guess. How do I fix it?
 
I felt it in Parker Dam, which is well south of the SWC route. I'm scheduled to be on the SWC from LAX-CHI starting Sunday night; hopefully it is not impacted by this or the floods in Kansas.
 
LA Bound Coast Starlight #11 was held briefly near Van Nuys last evening by the Metrolink Ventura Sub dispatcher. Same thing happened to #14 on Thursday morning the fourth.
 
They held just outside of Victorville in Hesperia. But AmtrakBlue is correct, if they get an earthquake big enough they’ll stop all traffic and they hold their current position. According to people listening to the DS, they were quickly having to stop trains as far away as Fullerton (outside the inspection zone) due to the quick build up of traffic.
 
And for how long? I will be traveling this next week and this earthquake got me wondering how Amtrak deals with that.

I assume the railroad line that owns the rails has a protocol about checking bridges in particular. I don’t remember hearing about train trestles collapsing but a couple of freeway overpasses came down during two of the larger earthquakes over the past 50 years.
 
I was on the Sunset Limited heading to LA that was the one that was in LA when the earthquake hit. Our car attendant thought they were reconnecting cars as she was getting read for the trip out to NO until she felt a huge jostle. Anyway they were like 8 hours late getting started and didn't pull into NO until 5 AM Monday morning, about 9 hours late. Our return journey was two hours delayed getting started but they bought us all at NO donuts which were delicious. I ate four. Except for a kind of crankier than usual staff on the way back trip was pretty uneventful. We never made up the 2 hour delay but I'd much rather get in to LA at 7:30 AM and sleep a little more than 5:30 AM any day.
 
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