Texas Eagle 21 - Today's (May 1) delay

Does anyone know what happened to create that delay?

It was late from the beginning, but then:

St. Louis, MO - Gateway Station
April 30, 2019
Arrived
9:20 pm CT
1 hr 57 min late

Arcadia, MO
April 30, 2019
Arrived
3:23 am CT
5 hr 23 min late

I was scheduled to be in it today but seeing how late it would likely get into Austin I decided to change to tomorrow's train (and hope for better luck). Plus I get a better bedroom (B vs A) and get a voucher for a little over $50.

I feel bad if there are people stuck in the Marshall train station (where I get on)!

From the Amtrak Twitter feed:

Thank you, I was curious.

I feel sorry for the people on the train but because of the delay it passed my area in the daylight. It is usually in the wee hours. This is a rare opportunity for spotting in my area. This picture is in Atlanta, Texas about 1:00pm. It was FLYING when it came through!

Looks like today’s train (5/2) didn’t do too much better. Tracker shows a 2205 arrival, almost 4 hours late.

And some wonder why ridership numbers are flat or down a little. Don't know if this is a temporary situation with peak traffic from freight trains or the new norm. Adding two hours of padding is not the answer.

One doesn't want to loose the traffic from Arkansas and east Texas, but how much better would Texas be served of the Eagle followed the Texas Chief route and merged with the SWC.

frequentflyer said:

And some wonder why ridership numbers are flat or down a little. Don't know if this is a temporary situation with peak traffic from freight trains or the new norm. Adding two hours of padding is not the answer.

One doesn't want to loose the traffic from Arkansas and east Texas, but how much better would Texas be served of the Eagle followed the Texas Chief route and merged with the SWC.

Click to expand...

Good question. The thing is lately (after winter season) most of the Eagles have been relatively on-time, as is todays southbound train (NB is late due to a late SL connection). As for re-routing and merging with the SWC, I just don’t see it. It might be able to make somewhat better OTP’s on the BNSF, but a fairly significant population would lose service all together, including Dallas and Little Rock. But I also agree that massive padding in the schedule doesn’t work either. I guess this is just a problem of a very healthy economy.