Empire Builder's Troubles continue into the Fall

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A freight railroad has daily and weekly regularly scheduled departures just like Amtrak does for passengers.

It's really no different, they just have a lot more departures.

If Amtrak gets outside of it's regular run time slot, well, then there is no slot. It's running amongst traffic and with dispatchers not accustomed to running with Amtrak.
 
wife and i took the eb spk-sea yesterday. 6 hours late out of spk(a good part of which was a dol crew just out of sandpoint. my understanding is that they drove a new crew up from spk but the van driver had trouble finding the train) and a bit over 7 hours late into sea. nice trip but i had my first experience with the dinty moore over rice. i am not particular about food but neither i nor anyone in the vicinity who had a plate slung their way was too impressed with our emergency rations.
 
yarrow said:
wife and i took the eb spk-sea yesterday. 6 hours late out of spk(a good part of which was a dol crew just out of sandpoint. my understanding is that they drove a new crew up from spk but the van driver had trouble finding the train) and a bit over 7 hours late into sea. nice trip but i had my first experience with the dinty moore over rice. i am not particular about food but neither i nor anyone in the vicinity who had a plate slung their way was too impressed with our emergency rations.
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You are now officially a true Amtrak LD veteran.
 
EB_OBS said:
A freight railroad has daily and weekly regularly scheduled departures just like Amtrak does for passengers.
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Actually, they kind of don't. They do in Europe and Russia, but not in the US. Yes, even in the US the freight train departures are "scheduled", but in the US it's pretty well documented that they are super super sloppy with their scheduling -- 15 minutes late starting, several hours late starting, the attitude seems to be "whatever". CN even made this claim outright in their STB filings, saying that their advertisement to freight shippers of a "scheduled" railroad didn't mean scheduled down to the *minute*, just down to the nearest three or four hours.
This is arguably the major source of inability to keep time on the US "freight" railroads. They've gotten completely out of the habit of running their freight trains to the minute. I'm not quite sure when this happened, but it was probably sometime in the era when slow bulk commodities were the only major source of income.
 
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neroden said:
This is arguably the major source of inability to keep time on the US "freight" railroads. They've gotten completely out of the habit of running their freight trains to the minute. I'm not quite sure when this happened, but it was probably sometime in the era when slow bulk commodities were the only major source of income.
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Or even back when they ran passenger trains. More incentive to have an actual schedule. Now that they don't do passengers because Amtrak does where's the incentive to have actual schedules?
 
Grayewolf said:
neroden said:
This is arguably the major source of inability to keep time on the US "freight" railroads. They've gotten completely out of the habit of running their freight trains to the minute. I'm not quite sure when this happened, but it was probably sometime in the era when slow bulk commodities were the only major source of income.
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Or even back when they ran passenger trains. More incentive to have an actual schedule. Now that they don't do passengers because Amtrak does where's the incentive to have actual schedules?
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Well, apart from Amtrak and the commuter services, both the refrigerated-products clients and the "fast parcel" intermodal clients (UPS/FedEx/etc) care, but the mentality of the Class Is still doesn't seem to be focused on those business lines. Due to the Hi-Line delays, BNSF just lost a major refrigerated-service client and has been bleeding intermodal business.

I can sort of understand it, since the bread-and-butter of many of these lines is still coal. (But the coal business is going to die in the next few years, so they should actually be sidelining coal in favor of growing business lines.)
 
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neroden said:
Due to the Hi-Line delays, BNSF just lost a major refrigerated-service client and has been bleeding intermodal business.
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That's very interesting. "Money talks, and....."

Perhaps that's why BNSF is so eager to build new right-of-way. Nothing to do with Amtrak.
 
neroden said:
Well, apart from Amtrak and the commuter services, both the refrigerated-products clients and the "fast parcel" intermodal clients (UPS/FedEx/etc) care, but the mentality of the Class Is still doesn't seem to be focused on those business lines. Due to the Hi-Line delays, BNSF just lost a major refrigerated-service client and has been bleeding intermodal business.

I can sort of understand it, since the bread-and-butter of many of these lines is still coal. (But the coal business is going to die in the next few years, so they should actually be sidelining coal in favor of growing business lines.)
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Ah, this one? http://www.joc.com/rail-intermodal/intermodal-shipping/cold-train-ends-intermodal-service-citing-poor-bnsf-performance_20140807.html
 
When an Empire Builder is running very, very late, 4 hours or more, what happens at the smaller-size stations along the route?

Do they open at their normal hours and then stay open until the train really does get there? Or do they close at some point and kick everyone outside to continue waiting for the extremely late train?
 
Steve Manfred said:
When an Empire Builder is running very, very late, 4 hours or more, what happens at the smaller-size stations along the route?

Do they open at their normal hours and then stay open until the train really does get there? Or do they close at some point and kick everyone outside to continue waiting for the extremely late train?
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For one thing, many of the staffed stations have waiting rooms that are basically open 24/7, they're just not staffed unless a train is arriving shortly.

From my experience, though, the staff - Amtrak, rental car agencies, etc. - are usually pretty well informed about the train's status, and are open for a "window" around the train's actual arrival, rather than its scheduled arrival.
 
RyanS said:
MikefromCrete said:
Of course, Amtrak adds nothing to the bottom lines of the Class I's.
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Of course they do. If it wasn't for the creation of Amtrak, they'd still be bleeding money running passenger service.

OK, technically that's not "adding to the bottom line", but "preventing subtraction from the bottom line". Same difference.
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As far as that goes, Ryan, you're right.

But...

If Class 1s saw their bottom line running into the red, or not increasing as much as they wished, do you think that they would continue passenger service?

Without outside (government) pressure to do so, of course they wouldn't. They'd drop it faster than a Chicago Cubs outfielder.

If there's no money in it, they would get rid of it. Follow the Benjamins,
 
Yes, but that's the point. There was a government mandate to provide passenger service - the only way they were able to get rid of passenger service was by turning it over to Amtrak.

If it wasn't for the creation of Amtrak, they would have been forced to continue operating passenger service and losing money.
 
George K said:
Right.

And without a government mandate, most of passenger service, particularly long-distance, would have gone away.
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And without the government mandate for passenger service, most of the railroads would never have been given charters or permission to construct their lines in the first place -- and they certainly wouldn't have gotten land grants or eminent domain powers.

*sigh* The history goes back a long way here. The railroads need the government, and they need popular support -- so they need to accept the requirements which the government, and the people, place on them. Such as passenger service.
 
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Just received a call from Amtrak, informing me that my connect with the CS at PDX is no longer valid, and I therefore will have to stay in a hotel (at my own expense) and catch the next day's train.

It makes sense, obviously, given the EB's OT performance. I'm glad that I booked a refundable hotel reservation in LA, haha.
 
William W. said:
Just received a call from Amtrak, informing me that my connect with the CS at PDX is no longer valid, and I therefore will have to stay in a hotel (at my own expense) and catch the next day's train.

It makes sense, obviously, given the EB's OT performance. I'm glad that I booked a refundable hotel reservation in LA, haha.
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Wait a minute - haven't the EB's connections to the CS been broken since last year?
 
I made the reservation a few months ago, when the schedule had reverted back to the normal times. Under that schedule, the connection at PDX is valid. Under the modified schedule, it is not.
 
I've got a trip just like this booked for early February. When will I get the dreaded call?

I wonder if I should change my plans now. Another way I could do it is head east to Milwaukee or Chicago, spend a night there, then get to L.A. (my ultimate destination) on the Southwest Chief. I'm already doing the reverse for my return trip.
 
If you want to experience different routes ( the SWC is a good route)consider doing Chicago to Sacramento, Davis or Emeryville on the Zephyr ( you have to spend the night on your dime to make the connection to the Coast Starlight to LAX), then the CS to LAX.

You could also ride the Texas Eagle/Sunset Ltd.from CHI or LAX via San Antonio, 3 nights on the Train ( only runs 3 days a week) for more Train time, but the Zephyr and Starlight have the best scenery!
 
We have a trip planned from Toledo to San Luis Obispo in June. We wanted to take the EB for extra train time. I made the reservation in August when the EB-CS connection was allowable, but their timekeeping was hardly ideal and we didn't want to be downgraded to coach on the next days CS if no sleeper space was available. After spending 30 minutes on the phone with an AGR agent(we're using points. Otherwise we could never afford it)she said we could overnight on our own dime in Portland. If somebody wanted to do that same routing would they allow an overnight in Portland?. The itinerary is no longer available,so I doubt you could book that anymore.

We're also returning taking another long route..The CS to The Texas Eagle and Lake Shore Limited. Had to get the best bang for the buck using points.
 
jimhudson said:
If you want to experience different routes ( the SWC is a good route)consider doing Chicago to Sacramento, Davis or Emeryville on the Zephyr ( you have to spend the night on your dime to make the connection to the Coast Starlight to LAX), then the CS to LAX.

You could also ride the Texas Eagle/Sunset Ltd.from CHI or LAX via San Antonio, 3 nights on the Train ( only runs 3 days a week) for more Train time, but the Zephyr and Starlight have the best scenery!
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The plan is to leave from Red Wing, MN on the Empire Builder, connect to the Coast Starlight, and get to Los Angeles. About a 72-hour trip, all paid for as a two-zone AGR. For the return trip (which I'm paying for with the voucher I've got after I had to cancel last year's Empire Builder trip) I'm on the Southwest Chief (which I've rode before) to Chicago, then I head up to Milwaukee on one of the commuter trains, spend a night in downtown Milwaukee on my own dime, then get back to Red Wing on the next day's Empire Builder. I have roomettes the whole way except the last bit from Milwaukee to Red Wing.

I do have a day built into the schedule in case of a missed connection in Portland. I just wish they'd honor the guaranteed connection they said they'd have when I booked it. (and they haven't told me personally yet that they won't)
 
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