Frailey: "Amtrak has a Chicago problem"

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CHamilton

CHamilton

Engineer
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
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Jul 13, 2011
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Amtrak has a Chicago problem. I don’t know why. Possibly a combination of leadership, staffing levels, and tools to do the job. There was a Fourteenth Street Coach Yard 45 years ago, a primitive slum of a place compared to today’s palatial infrastructure. Yet Penn Central’s demoralized workforce still got the trains out on time, in all seasons. And don’t tell me it’s cold. It’s always cold in Chicago this time of year. Friday, there was no snow or gusty winds, and the temperature reached the mid-teens. This week for me was a repeat of last week, when Amtrak sent the Cardinal out of Chicago almost four hours late yet without a functional sleeping car. It was my bad luck to be in that sleeping car....

This is an indictment of Amtrak. You cannot blame Amtrak for all the late arrivals (yes, almost all trains were late arriving) but you can hold it accountable for late initial departures, and this is pathetic. You can’t just blame the weather. It has been a cold, wet winter on the Northeast Corridor, too, and the NEC may have bent at times, but it never broke. And you can’t say the freight railroads aren’t running well, either, because the freight railroads don’t run Fourteenth Street Coach Yard.

One other thing: Screw me once, and I may say it’s happenstance. Screw me twice, and I smell a rat. The last operating switcher died on Thursday? Use the road power to couple the Pullman cars. Stuck valve on Friday? I don’t think the people at Fourteenth Street give a damn. Pullman Rail Journeys is a customer. Pullman should matter....
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Chicago has a lot of issues. I'll grant some of the equipment cycling issues...say what you will about the Penn Central, but one thing they did not lack for was extra equipment towards the end thanks to all of the train-offs. Amtrak has been pressed on that front for a while. I can even grant some issues with conductor shortages, though out of CHI one would think they'd have enough folks on the boards to cover at least some more of the delays. But Chicago has a number of other chronic issues, ranging from the Met Lounge to (more obviously now) yard issues.

I do wonder, were this one of the better-run private roads from the 50s, how quick they could manage the turnarounds.
 
It is unfortunate that you can't get anywhere without going through Chicago. A hub in St. Louis or further south would surely take the pressure off.
 
While I agree with you on the idea of another hub, the biggest issue is that you'd need a lot of additional sections to make anything meaningful work. For KCY/STL, you'd probably, at a minimum, need a section of the Cardinal running daily to either STL or running through to KCY. Then you'd need a section off the Zephyr to at least get to KCY. That would at least link the Chief, Zephyr, and Eagle with a train to the east coast...but unlike CHI, there would be no "clear-up" train to deal with any delays coming from the west. To achieve that, you'd need something akin to a National Limited brought back.
 
To D. J. Statler's credit, he recognizes that Chicago operations are a mess. Presumably Amtrak is working seriously on this.

Chicago's got a number of different departments operating out of it. As far as I can tell, the dispatchers (or whatever they call them now) seem to do a pretty good job. The mechanical department, and other departments responsible for "turning around" the cars between trips... not so much. It sounds like the 14th Street Yard needs big management changes.
 
Anderson said:
While I agree with you on the idea of another hub, the biggest issue is that you'd need a lot of additional sections to make anything meaningful work. For KCY/STL, you'd probably, at a minimum, need a section of the Cardinal running daily to either STL or running through to KCY. Then you'd need a section off the Zephyr to at least get to KCY. That would at least link the Chief, Zephyr, and Eagle with a train to the east coast...but unlike CHI, there would be no "clear-up" train to deal with any delays coming from the west. To achieve that, you'd need something akin to a National Limited brought back.
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I would take another National Limited any day. The Chief passengers could connect KCY to STL and then points east. Also, the Eagle passengers connecting at STL would result in considerable time savings to New York or other points on the East Coast. I am sure someone here can correct my logic.
 
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RichardK said:
Anderson said:
While I agree with you on the idea of another hub, the biggest issue is that you'd need a lot of additional sections to make anything meaningful work. For KCY/STL, you'd probably, at a minimum, need a section of the Cardinal running daily to either STL or running through to KCY. Then you'd need a section off the Zephyr to at least get to KCY. That would at least link the Chief, Zephyr, and Eagle with a train to the east coast...but unlike CHI, there would be no "clear-up" train to deal with any delays coming from the west. To achieve that, you'd need something akin to a National Limited brought back.
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I would take another National Limited any day. The Chief passengers connecting KCY to STL and then points east. Also, the Eagle passengers connecting at STL, which seems like quite a time savings into New York. I am sure someone here can correct my logic.
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Only problems are:

(1) the deterioration of track speeds on the routes from St. Louis to NY

(2) hostility to new passenger train running from CSX, which controls all of those routes (good old American monopolies). I can just about patch together a St. Louis - Charlotte route on NS, but nothing plausible for St. Louis to NY.
 
Today was not much better either. 7 didn't leave until almost six. When I arrived CUS at 550ish for my Metra train home they we're making the final boarding call.
 
Take a look at the status maps. Lots of red this evening. One EB is arriving into SEA almost 14 hours late. Looks like they have a spare set though in SEA because #8 is near on time. But the #8 in front of that somehow lost 8 hours between Ephrata and Spokane. So I can see how Amtrak can have a hard time turning trains when they all arrive hours late. Usually there is something that needs fixing, which involves thawing out, extra man power that isn't available, etc, I can see things breaking down.
 
Up until the mid 1960s, the Memphis gateway was a great alternative to Chicago, St. Louis or New Orleans. You had through Sleeping Car Service to and from many cities in the east including New York and to and from many cities in the west including Los Angeles. I remember changing trains at Memphis Union Station from Hot Springs, AR where we lived to places like Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga and New York. The MoPac train pulled in a 7PM (sometimes a few minutes early). On the next track was Southern's Tennessean boarding for its 7:15PM departure to Washington with through Sleepers to New York. On 1 more track over was L&N's Memphis section of the Hummingbird which also left at 7:15PM for Louisville and Cincinnati. The overnight NC&SL local left to Nashville at 10:30PM. If we wanted to connect to Kansas City, Birmingham, Atlanta or New Orleans, we would take the shuttle over to Central Station which was just 5 minutes away. I remember this being very convenient and the longest we had to wait was the 10:30PM departure to Nashville. The same train from Hot Springs that went to Memphis also had a through coach to St. Louis and a through Sleeper to Chicago so even as late as 1963 we had a 1 seat ride to the Memphis, St. Louis or Chicago gateway, but we used Memphis most. Unfortunately today, the rail lines wouldn't exist from Amtrak to have a Memphis gateway similar to what once existed.
 
Amtrak's Chicago yard needs to be reformed badly.

The yards that work on the Acela use a program called "Reliability-Centered Maintenance". Long story short... crews are taught to anticipate problems before they happen (by looking at history of problems with the trainsets) and the workers are held accountable. It has been a huge success with maintenance problems being sharply reduced on the Acela and more trainsets available for usage. I also understand that they use many of these same principals for maintaining the Northeast Regional trains at the same yards.

But as I understand it... when it was suggested that "Reliability-Centered Maintenance" be implemented in Chicago... the workers (and their union) fought it tooth and claw.

Also, reading between the lines you can also see that the Los Angeles yard is not happy with the work being done in Chicago. During the creation of the 2012 Performance Improvement Plan for the Coast Starlight they pushed to get a dedicated pool of P42 locomotives assigned to LA for use on the Coast Starlight. Right now, the locomotives used on those trains are assigned to Chicago and need to be sent east on the Southwest Chief for "periodic maintenance" (maintenance that's not supposed to be done in LA, but too small to be done at Beech Grove.)

One other thing I've noticed about the Coast Starlight is that trains frequently use the older P32-8WH locomotives. As I understand it, these locomotives are assigned to LA for all their periodic maintenance. That means that a locomotive that 25 years old (10 years older than some of the P42's) is being used on Amtrak's flagship long distance route. I think that's a huge vote of confidence in the maintenance work that's being done in LA... and a huge mark against the maintenance work that's being done in Chicago.

As I see it, the problem with the Chicago yard isn't it's physical location, it's not with the late incoming trains, it's not with the P42's... at the end of the day the problems at the Chicago yard seem to be with the people working there (both the front line employees and management).

Unfortunately, that could be the hardest problem of all to fix...
 
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Its easy to pick on the staff, and managers in the field. No so easy to work outside with higher than normal work load, in extreme cold weather.

D. J. Statler is the one that is failing in Chicago.

Chicago management know it issues, but as our tour guild last year stated the sheds (to park the equipment during servicing) were not in the cards.

If D. J. Statler does not invest in plant and people than the system falls apart in winter. Ever winter.

So lets stop acting surprised, and let fix this problem.

D. J. Statler get out of your office and spend a week working outside in the Chicago yard. If you don't freeze to death, I am sure you be sending more funds to Chicago.
 
rickycourtney said:
Amtrak's Chicago yard needs to be reformed badly.

The yards that work on the Acela use a program called "Reliability-Centered Maintenance". Long story short... crews are taught to anticipate problems before they happen (by looking at history of problems with the trainsets) and the workers are held accountable. It has been a huge success with maintenance problems being sharply reduced on the Acela and more trainsets available for usage. I also understand that they use many of these same principals for maintaining the Northeast Regional trains at the same yards.

But as I understand it... when it was suggested that "Reliability-Centered Maintenance" be implemented in Chicago... the workers (and their union) fought it tooth and claw.

Also, reading between the lines you can also see that the Los Angeles yard is not happy with the work being done in Chicago. During the creation of the 2012 Performance Improvement Plan for the Coast Starlight they pushed to get a dedicated pool of P42 locomotives assigned to LA for use on the Coast Starlight. Right now, the locomotives used on those trains are assigned to Chicago and need to be sent east on the Southwest Chief for "periodic maintenance" (maintenance that's not supposed to be done in LA, but too small to be done at Beech Grove.)

One other thing I've noticed about the Coast Starlight is that trains frequently use the older P32-8WH locomotives. As I understand it, these locomotives are assigned to LA for all their periodic maintenance. That means that a locomotive that 25 years old (10 years older than some of the P42's) is being used on Amtrak's flagship long distance route. I think that's a huge vote of confidence in the maintenance work that's being done in LA... and a huge mark against the maintenance work that's being done in Chicago.

As I see it, the problem with the Chicago yard isn't it's physical location, it's not with the late incoming trains, it's not with the P42's... at the end of the day the problems at the Chicago yard seem to be with the people working there (both the front line employees and management).

Unfortunately, that could be the hardest problem of all to fix...
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This thought came to mind last night, but my connection went down. Basically...why not try to move as much out of Chicago as possible? I'm fairly certain there's a decent maintenance base in EMY and one at LAX, so you could move at least some operations out of CHI. SEA is the question mark, since I don't know what's available there that isn't geared to Talgos. This wouldn't save the Midwest corridor-based routes (or the CONO), but it would at least save a few of the LD routes from some of the mishandling, and the Chief+the Sunset+the Starlight would make for a decent-sized pool. too.

You could probably do something like this and then reverse the cycle later to force some people out at CHI who aren't doing their jobs. Short of that, I'm not sure what to do about Chicago...but it certainly sounds to me like you've got a bunch of union workers who don't want to go out in the cold at the heart of the matter.
 
There is a morale problem in that yard. I saw an article about a noose being hung someplace in the faculty. I'll try to find the article and post a link.

If you have that kind of tension no one is going to be productive. Management has a lot of work to do to clean up the mess in Chicago.
 
I don't know exactly what the problem is in Chicago, but I observe that whatever it is, is not localized to winter. It is an year round problem. It is just less visible when the system is not under the extra stress put on it by severe winter weather.
 
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Really too bad this mess is going on. I often think of the guy who gave us the tour of the shop on our AU Gathering in CHI last fall, whom took forever to get things together for our tour as time wasn't an issue!

I've heard from a member who I asked if they knew what was the deal with the CHI yard, and said it's a #$#*^ mess, and the shop is doing the delay on purpose.
 
IMHO the idea to implement the same kind of preventive maintenance program that is used on nec sounds like an unfunded mandate. Management wants improved accountability without providing the necessary resources such as improved facilities and newer equipment.
 
Steve4031 said:
IMHO the idea to implement the same kind of preventive maintenance program that is used on nec sounds like an unfunded mandate. Management wants improved accountability without providing the necessary resources such as improved facilities and newer equipment.
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The thing is that from what I'm hearing, there are major issues underlying the delays, and it's really hard to actually find where the problems are without an accountability system of some sort so you can deploy resources in a meaningful way to deal with the problems.
 
Accountability is a culture issue more than a resource issue IMHO. It does not take resources to hold people accountable. It does take resources to facilitate meeting the goals set for organizations and people. Accountability starts at the top. If goals set for the top guy are not met then s/he needs to be held accountable. If s/he does not feel s/he has the resources to deliver on what s/he is accountable for s/he needs to deal with it at peer level, before pointing fingers at others down below. This holds true for each level of the organizational hierarchy.

From my cursory observation of how things work at Chicago, it appears that accountability of any sort is not particularly part of the culture there at any level. But as I said, it is based on cursory observation and this impression could be wrong. but it does explain a lot of the visible outcome from Chicago year round.
 
That's roughly what I'm thinking. The problem is that if you've got an accountability system in place, you can show that teams in Chicago are obviously working more slowly than other locations (say, Los Angeles or Seattle)...and if you can show sufficiently bad results, you can start sacking people with cause, as you'll have evidence that they're clearly not doing their jobs.

Edit: To clarify, I'm thinking that there's a cultural issue at CHI that's leading to a lot of slow-on-purpose handling. I base this on a couple of assessments here, notably Jis's, and frankly on the fight against an accountability system

Edit 2: Ok, to clarify further...the bit from Railroad Dave came to mind, but I couldn't place it. Someone else referred to it as well...but that came up after I posted this and then this was temporarily hidden.
 
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It seems that establishing another cross-country hub of sorts, as an alternative to Chicago, would be far more expensive than acknowledging the issues/problems that plague Chicago and working to correct them. And, I think that performance over the years, not just this winter, suggests that there are problems that need to be addressed. Severe winter weather certainly exacerbates these problems, but they still occur during the warmer months and in milder winters as well.
 
Interesting discussion of the same subject on trainorders linked to below:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3319779,page=1

So does anyone have any insights as to what caused the introduction of RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) for P-42s to get completely blocked in Chicago. Refusal of staff to cooperate? If so why is said staff still there?

RCM has had exceptional results on the NEC for Acelas, which have some of the highest availability ever achieved on Amtrak. Now there is additional costs involved of course. You never get reliability for free.

So was it the lack of desire on part of Amtrak to commit the additional resources or was it staff resistance, or a bit of both? I don;t know, and would really like to get any insight at all on this.

It also puzzles me that RCM has not been extended to Wilmington Shops for the NEC electric fleet yet. There is something fishy somewhere, but I can;t quite figure out which fish and where.
 
jis said:
Interesting discussion of the same subject on trainorders linked to below:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3319779,page=1

So does anyone have any insights as to what caused the introduction of RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) for P-42s to get completely blocked in Chicago. Refusal of staff to cooperate? If so why is said staff still there?

RCM has had exceptional results on the NEC for Acelas, which have some of the highest availability ever achieved on Amtrak. Now there is additional costs involved of course. You never get reliability for free.

So was it the lack of desire on part of Amtrak to commit the additional resources or was it staff resistance, or a bit of both? I don;t know, and would really like to get any insight at all on this.

It also puzzles me that RCM has not been extended to Wilmington Shops for the NEC electric fleet yet. There is something fishy somewhere, but I can;t quite figure out which fish and where.
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Well, the Wilmington Shops are near the Delaware River. :giggle:
 
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