7 1/2 Hour Late #6

[AlanB]

I haven’t been to the Chicago car shops in the past few years to see how they do it lately, but I doubt the EB trainsets are sitting there with the cars lashed up ready for the road. In fact, due to the stub train consists, they likely have had the EB trainsets broken up for several weeks. I know there are people out there that have recorded info on the consists for the normal and stub runs of the EB, and that info could tell us a bit about how equipment is being moved through the system, if at all, during the disruption.

Normally, without a service disruption, the EB consist would be sitting in the yard intact during cleaning and waiting for it's return to the station to start the next run. And execpt for a bad ordered car or a car needing an inspection, they wouldn't break up the consist normally.

But you are right, they probably did have to cut off the Portland sleeper to pull out the Portland coaches and lounge car to provide the stub service to/from Minn-St. Paul. And that would preclude using the EB consists for a replacement CZ, as they wouldn't have enough coaches or a cafe car anyhow.

Which brings us right back to just doing what the yard would do normally even if they didn't have EB consists sitting around, build a consist out the spares sitting in the yard.