Wolverine Performance

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Joined
Jan 4, 2019
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Can anyone provide commentary on on-time wolverine eastbound performance from Chicago to Ann Arbor?  From what I've seen it's horrible that vast improvements were expected in 2018.
 
I take this train every Thursday but only to New Buffalo, so not very far at all.  I have to say it is definitely consistently late.  By how much varies.  Sometimes delays occur 10 minutes out of the Chicago station because of freight traffic.  There are stretches I believe that are high speed but honestly I'm not sure how much that helps make up time.  I think they are expecting more stretches of high speed track so maybe that's delayed?  Certainly frustrating that they can never seem to run on time.
 
The Wolverine is hampered by NS and CN, and further constrained by all of the single track segments on the Michigan Line.

It’s always a crapshoot whether you’ll get from 21st Street (just south of Union Station) to Porter (where NS hands the train over to Amtrak) unscathed.  Then there’s Battle Creek, where the trains operate on CN for just a couple of miles but are still frequently delayed.  Then there’s the mess east of Dearborn, again on CN.

If the trains can somehow manage to make it through the freight-owned segments okay, the schedule is designed for the meets to work on the single-track segments of the Amtrak and Michigan-owned track. However, that all goes out the window when a train is not in its slot, because most of the sidings are pretty short and the dispatcher has to decide whether to further delay one train, or keep it moving at the expense of another train (each of which can have follow-on effects for meets further down the route).

It also depends on which train you’re taking.  Back in the day, trains 350 and 355 were scheduled to have lower priority vs the other trains they meet (meaning, they’d show up at the siding early, and sit and wait for 10-15 minutes for the opposing train).  Train 351 was supposed to be the hottest train, since it had no passenger stops west of Kalamazoo and, in theory, would meet 350 somewhere around Niles. But if those trains can’t make it to the Amtrak-controlled portion on time, then there’s no telling what will happen to them.
 
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