#14 late out of Salinas

I see that #14 is now over 5 hours behind coming out of Salinas, and that it took double the normal time to get there from PRB. If anybody knows why, please post. Thanks.

According to a passenger who posted on another board, the train hit a "tractor pulling a trailer" south of Salinas. Not clear if he literally meant a tractor that was towing a trailer behind it or a big rig. The pax will have a gorgeous view of Mt Shasta today as #14 just left Davis running about 8 hours down.

A bit more detail from another source:

Hit a farm tractor with trailers North of King City at old espee Harlem around 1945hrs. 3 minor injuries to passengers. No derailment.

Wow, it's estimated to arrive in SEA at 4:21 tomorrow morning.

I'd hate to be a coach passenger on that one.

Wonder if they'll turn it in PDX instead.

The CS hit some debris on the tracks a few months back, causing enough damage to the lead unit where we had to progress at a much slower speed. There was no damage to motive power, but safety equipment on the front of the lead unit was damaged enough that we had to slow for every crossing. I suspect the same situation might be going on here. They turned the train in PDX and bussed folks to SEA.

The sleeper passengers got all the free wine and food we could want while on the train. Coach got a free snack pack. That was one trip where spending the extra dough for a Superliner Bedroom paid off in spades. We just sat in our room, ate, drank, and enjoyed the scenery. With our own bathroom and shower, we didn’t care if the train took forever to get to PDX. I always keep that experience in mind when I start complaining to myself about the cost of booking a bedroom.

The only problem the crew had was trying to prevent the smokers in Coach from opening doors when we pulled in to a siding. Smokers were getting antsy and downright mean because of the extra time between stations.

I just saw 14 pass through Chico at about an hour ago (3:40 p.m.). The train was supposed to arrive in CIC at 1:55 a.m., so it's running about 13.75 hours late.

I was taking my bike for a ride by the station when I heard the horn sound. I was expecting a freight to go by, but I was shocked to see the silver of an Amtrak train stopping in Chico in daylight. 14 stops in the dead of night and 11 stops in the deader of night — 3:50 a.m.

I took a couple of photos of the consist with my cellphone. Mainly I thought it was interesting that they tied a UP engine to provide power. I didn't know what had happened. I later guessed that something may have happened south of the Bay Area — based on the fact that it appeared that an engineer detrained in Chico (something that would likely only happen if they were about to run out of hours). Now that I'm thinking about it, it would've been horrible if the train crew run out of hours on this trip.

Here's the UP engine up front



https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/DtBl0WBpNXEcm5J-8j70Sp3rp0JleRMaJqRYF7CC-4E?feat=directlink

Here's the lead Amtrak engine. I didn't know about the damage, but you can see a little bit of it toward the edge of the frame.



Anyway, I feel bad for everyone aboard and hope they are making the best out of this situation. I don't know much about the Salinas incident, but hopefully no one was injured there.

Here is a video clip from a local TV station that shows an obliterated John Deere and the AMTK 176 with a nasty nose job.

Wow... What is it with idiot truck drivers?!?! I thought that they were supposed to be "professional drivers".

It was only a year or so ago that there was a similar collision between the CS and a truck full of tomatoes somewhere near this location. I believe that was the 11 though.

The 14 is on-time so far today, thank goodness. I'm needing it to get me to PDX on-time tomorrow to hook me up with the 28.

Cristobal said:

Wow... What is it with idiot truck drivers?!?! I thought that they were supposed to be "professional drivers".

Click to expand...

The Starlight hit a farm tractor, not a truck.

PRR 60 said:

Cristobal said:

Wow... What is it with idiot truck drivers?!?! I thought that they were supposed to be "professional drivers".

Click to expand...

The Starlight hit a farm tractor, not a truck.

Click to expand...

It actually hit the trailer section of a semi truck that had a farm tractor on its low-boy trailer.

Sitting on an early 14 in the PPC using Carmela's (the PPC attendant) 4G connection because she says that the on-board WIFI is pretty sketchy. Life is good so far...

It would be best to just either bus the pax or put them in hotels for next days trains. with it running close to 24 hours behind might as well go on the next days train which will be dogging on its heals soon.

It may be (extremely) late, but 13 hours is not close to 24 hours late.

Trogdor said:

It may be (extremely) late, but 13 hours is not close to 24 hours late.

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Not yet but trains have been known to be that late or later. Once a amtrak train is late the host railroads like to play a game called "how much more can we delay amtrak" probably get there jolly's off of making amtrak even later.

We've heard that host railroads like to play that game, but how often does it happen when the host railroad has one of their engines tied up to an Amtrak consist? At that point, I would think the host railroad probably wants to make sure the consist isn't clogging anything up (but it still might be at the mercy of scheduling hijinks).

When I arrived at PDX on 5/25 surgery of some sort - with an acetylene (?) torch - was being performed on 176's nasty nose job. I'm guessing they were making it possible to haul her back to Beech Grove, but she was still sittng there on 5/27.

befor hitting the truck we had two engines break down which they left on a side track so it left one to get to LA then we hit the truck south of Salinas. it knocked the hood of truck across two lanes. sat for over 3 hours then they feed us out of date snacks then for dinner looked like dog food over rice well got here in san diego 10am coach travel the only way to GO AMTRACK

Just a note, the topic started with an incident a year and a half ago, but the guest post above is referring to 11(28SEP12).

Got me confused there for a sec.

I was confused for a moment there too! I was on the #14 which gave an engine to 11 this past Saturday. It was a long, weird trip to Seattle, but that #11 got in 9 hours late.