Missed Connection - Amtrak's, not UP's, Fault

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Bill Kimley

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Missed Connection - Amtrak's Fault

On June 12th train 11 from Seattle to Sacramento was held up by the operations manager in Portland Oregon for over one hour, mostly without air conditioning, to attach a rather shabby private car. This car had some problems which should have been fixed before #11 arrived. Alternately, it could have been repaired and attached to the next train.

So, over 500 folks sat in the heat for over an hour and many, including us, missed our connections.

Note: UP treated us quite well and we made up part of the lost hour. But not enough to meet our connections.

TOTALLY INEXCUSABLE!

:angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:
 
OK, so the Portland manager fouled up. He shouldn't have held the train. Have your ticket stubs handy so you can make sure they know exactly when and where it happened, and call Amtrak and complain.

But if I understand you correctly, you were expecting to make a connection from a medium-distance Amtrak train that runs over UP tracks, with less than one hour of connect window? I would NEVER have scheduled myself to try to do that, and would have been frankly AMAZED if I made the connection, with or without some PV being attached to the train. And if there were 500 of you in the same boat (sorry to mix the metaphors), y'all must have been attending the international Optimists convention. Sorry, but that just doesn't make ANY sense to try to do.
 
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I know it is frustrating, but there could be lots of fault points here:

Unfit Private Car represented as track ready

Delay taken because there was already a UP delay.

Repairs underway before arrival which delayed arrival

Repairs not anticipated until #11 arrived.

Whether the Private Car has already been delayed

Again, likely lots more going on than you assume.

I also wonder how close that connection was.
 
So, over 500 folks sat in the heat for over an hour and many, including us, missed our connections.
Note: UP treated us quite well and we made up part of the lost hour. But not enough to meet our connections.
Amtrak does not guarantee any connections that are less than one hour, so if you were only a half hour late into SAC, then you picked a connection that you should not have picked. Especially for a train that is often 3 to 4 hours, if not more, late.
 
Missed Connection - Amtrak's Fault
So, over 500 folks sat in

TOTALLY INEXCUSABLE!

:angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:
How many cars for 500? I observed the opposite loosing a car in Nov. around 11:00pm, in Denver, Why they didn't let the passengers off and on before fixing the problem.
 
I know it is frustrating, but there could be lots of fault points here:
Unfit Private Car represented as track ready

Delay taken because there was already a UP delay.

Repairs underway before arrival which delayed arrival

Repairs not anticipated until #11 arrived.

Whether the Private Car has already been delayed

Again, likely lots more going on than you assume.

I also wonder how close that connection was.
Daveyb99

We made up a half an hour so we arrived 30 minutes late, pretty good for #11. But the bus to my Stockton connection left a few minutes before we arrived.

I didn't tell the whole story. I jumped off #11 and paid a taxi drive, Zubar, a hundred bucks to get me to Stockton ASAP. He finally arrived at Stockton Amtrak station (believe it or not, there are TWO train stations in Stockton!) five minutes late. However the train was 6 minutes late and I just got on. I had to drive an hour and a half a few days later to Bakerfield to get my bag.

I ride Amtrak often and my feeling is the later they are the more train ride I get for my money. But this guy in Portland made me, and a lot of other folks including onboard Amtrak staff, pretty angry.

Bill Kimley
 
So, over 500 folks sat in the heat for over an hour and many, including us, missed our connections.

Note: UP treated us quite well and we made up part of the lost hour. But not enough to meet our connections.
Amtrak does not guarantee any connections that are less than one hour, so if you were only a half hour late into SAC, then you picked a connection that you should not have picked. Especially for a train that is often 3 to 4 hours, if not more, late.

Alan B

The attendent told me there is a two hour window at Sacramento so actually we were two hours and 30 minutes late. The point is we missed our connection because of the Portland hold up, which should not have occured.

Bill Kimley
 
We made up a half an hour so we arrived 30 minutes late, pretty good for #11. But the bus to my Stockton connection left a few minutes before we arrived.
I didn't tell the whole story. I jumped off #11 and paid a taxi drive, Zubar, a hundred bucks to get me to Stockton ASAP. He finally arrived at Stockton Amtrak station (believe it or not, there are TWO train stations in Stockton!) five minutes late. However the train was 6 minutes late and I just got on. I had to drive an hour and a half a few days later to Bakerfield to get my bag.

I ride Amtrak often and my feeling is the later they are the more train ride I get for my money. But this guy in Portland made me, and a lot of other folks including onboard Amtrak staff, pretty angry.

Bill Kimley
Bill,

Now I'm even more confused by this entire event. The guaranted connection from the CS to Stokcton is the Thruway bus that leaves SAC at 8:00 AM, the CS is scheduled to arrive at 6:15 AM. So even if the train was a half an hour late, that would have been more than sufficient time to connect to the bus.

Next, failing to make that connection, Amtrak would have simply put you on the 10:25 AM bus to Stockton. I see no thruway buses that leave before.

So either you booked a non-Amtrak bus, in which case Amtrak has no liability at all, or there is something missing here. And if you did book a non-Amtrak connection that left less than one hour from the scheduled arrival, then you really were pushing your luck. Even Amtrak won't guarantee a connection of less than 1 hour, and they usually try to make it closer to two hours.
 
Alan B
The attendent told me there is a two hour window at Sacramento so actually we were two hours and 30 minutes late. The point is we missed our connection because of the Portland hold up, which should not have occured.

Bill Kimley
I see that we were posting at the same time, so you have now answered the first part of my post above.

At that point however, as I mentioned further down, Amtrak should have simply put you on the 10:25 bus to Stockton.
 
Alan B

The attendent told me there is a two hour window at Sacramento so actually we were two hours and 30 minutes late. The point is we missed our connection because of the Portland hold up, which should not have occured.

Bill Kimley
I see that we were posting at the same time, so you have now answered the first part of my post above.

At that point however, as I mentioned further down, Amtrak should have simply put you on the 10:25 bus to Stockton.
#11 arrived at Sacramento about 8:45, San Joaquin 712 leaves stockton at 9:20. Amtrak asked all San Joaquin #712 passengers to stay aboard and connect with a later train, 714, at Martiinez. The taxi ride to Stockton to catch 712 was "E Ticket" all the way.
 
#11 arrived at Sacramento about 8:45, San Joaquin 712 leaves stockton at 9:20. Amtrak asked all San Joaquin #712 passengers to stay aboard and connect with a later train, 714, at Martiinez. The taxi ride to Stockton to catch 712 was "E Ticket" all the way.

The decision by Portland was fixed by AMTRAK but you did something different?

AMTRAK told you that because of the delay in Portland, stay on till Martinez, then transfer to 714.

Sounds like a reasonable accommodation to me.

SO... why didn't you stay with the AMTRAK plan.
 
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#11 arrived at Sacramento about 8:45, San Joaquin 712 leaves stockton at 9:20. Amtrak asked all San Joaquin #712 passengers to stay aboard and connect with a later train, 714, at Martiinez. The taxi ride to Stockton to catch 712 was "E Ticket" all the way.

The decision by Portland was fixed by AMTRAK but you did something different?

AMTRAK told you that because of the delay in Portland, stay on till Martinez, then transfer to 714.

Sounds like a reasonable accommodation to me.

SO... why didn't you stay with the AMTRAK plan.
Because that would have put me in Bakersfield, where my sister was waiting, at least 4 hours later meaning I would miss a dinner party with family members, a 90 minute drive away, that I wanted to make.

I've ridden trains every chance I get since my first train ride from Binghamton to Tunnel NY on the D&H in 1940. I now live in China and, besides riding China RR's, including the last two years of steam passenger service on the Jing Ping line, I always prefer to ride Amtrak when traveling in the U.S. rather than flying. I understand and accept host RR problems, weather and accidents, and I really believe that Amtrak does its best - except in this case.

Face it guys, the Portland operation manager's decision to favor one person, who didn't maintain his private car properly, over a whole train load of passengers, many with connections to make, was WRONG :excl:

Bill Kimley
 
#11 arrived at Sacramento about 8:45, San Joaquin 712 leaves stockton at 9:20. Amtrak asked all San Joaquin #712 passengers to stay aboard and connect with a later train, 714, at Martiinez. The taxi ride to Stockton to catch 712 was "E Ticket" all the way.

The decision by Portland was fixed by AMTRAK but you did something different?

AMTRAK told you that because of the delay in Portland, stay on till Martinez, then transfer to 714.

Sounds like a reasonable accommodation to me.

SO... why didn't you stay with the AMTRAK plan.
Because that would have put me in Bakersfield, where my sister was waiting, at least 4 hours later meaning I would miss a dinner party with family members, a 90 minute drive away, that I wanted to make.
And I can understand that. :)

I've ridden trains every chance I get since my first train ride from Binghamton to Tunnel NY on the D&H in 1940. I now live in China and, besides riding China RR's, including the last two years of steam passenger service on the Jing Ping line, I always prefer to ride Amtrak when traveling in the U.S. rather than flying. I understand and accept host RR problems, weather and accidents, and I really believe that Amtrak does its best - except in this case.
Face it guys, the Portland operation manager's decision to favor one person, who didn't maintain his private car properly, over a whole train load of passengers, many with connections to make, was WRONG :excl:
Well since we don't know the story of what was wrong with the PV, only that it had a problem, we can't make that determination. Things may have been perfectly normal until the car was actually hooked up. But regardless of what went wrong, one has to consider two things. First, it may have initially appeared that it was an easy problem to fix. Therefore at that moment, less time would have been wasted by trying to fix the issue, rather than uncoupling the car and removing it from the train.

Second, the owner of that PV was still a paying passenger on Amtrak. Amtrak doesn't haul those cars around for free. Amtrak is under contract to make a best effort to get that PV to its destination on schedule. And if the problem was how the PV was working in conjunction with the Amtrak car ahead of it, then it could well have been that Amtrak had something wrong. Might well have been a problem with FRED.

And I'm not trying to suggest that Amtrak didn't make a mistake here, we simply don't have enough facts. I will say though that the standards demanded by Amtrak for a PV to be eligible for haulage on an Amtrak train are quite high. In fact, I'm not sure that any Amtrak owned car in the fleet could meet the standards imposed on the PV's.

Finally, let’s not forget that regardless of the Portland crew's decision to hold the train for one hour while trying to fix things, UP is still deserving of some blame here too. In fact, they are deserving of more blame than Amtrak. Your train was 2 and a half hours late, Amtrak only contributed to one of those hours, UP caused the greater delay of 1 hour and a half.
 
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