Fall Back

How does Amtrak handle “fall back?” Is the extra hour just used as padding for the schedule or do they alter the schedule for fall back night? What about “spring forward?” It does seem like it screws up the train tracking - on transit docs there’s a big gap last night in every LD train I looked at around the time the 2 AM hour repeats.

I suppose one hour deviation from the schedule is par for the course in Spring. In fall they just follow the usual rule of not departing from a scheduled stop before the scheduled departure time. AFAIK, unlike the airlines, Amtrak does not issue special timetable for that one or two day anomaly.

I was on the Capitol Limited last night. First post 2AM stop was Cleveland. They just stopped for an hour at the station until time caught up. They were actually on time in Toledo at 5,but lost an hour getting into Chicago. Thats not bad considering 29 is routinely 2 hours or more late into Chicago

Here’s how it works according to Amtrak’s System Timetable.

For the spring time change, the way it was quoted from the Amtrak page is always how it worked - until this year.  The problem has always been what to do with a scheduled stop which occurred between 2.01 a.m. and 3.01 a.m.  The problem was that to ARROW, that stop simply did not exist because that time simply did not exist.  This year was the first time they adjusted the times in the reservations system - in effect publishing a different schedule for that one day.  These new schedules showed the trains running 1 hour later than normal after the time change, but on schedule, rather than being an hour late.

For an example of this see:

http://dixielandsoftware.net/cgi-bin/gettrain.pl?seltrain=91&selyear=2018&selmonth=03&selday=10

and

http://dixielandsoftware.net/cgi-bin/gettrain.pl?seltrain=91&selyear=2018&selmonth=03&selday=11

Time changed at 2.01 a.m. on 3/11/2018.  The first train shows that the times starting with Denmark (DNK) have been adjusted later by an hour.  The second train shows the unaltered schedule.

jb

Since trains can not depart prior to the scheduled time,  trains sit at the station for 1 hour (if necessary) after the time change. Also, if necessary a special train number is assigned (like 1003) if along the route there could be 2 trains at a station on the same day. Example - one at 11:30 pm and one at 12:30 am, both on the same day of the week.