Amtrak meal times on the California Zephyr (OSC - DEN and back)

[PVD]

There are certain SCA who will carry a personal cellular hotspot and post the password. I used to carry one before I changed phones, this one allows tethering, either by usb or wifi and the included data is sufficient. My old mobile hotspot was indeed limited to 8 connections. But the truth is, there are some areas where service varies amongst carriers, and areas where there is none at all.

 

[Aarem]

Btw, looks like, based on delays which have been from between 1-8 hours in arrival, I need not worry. Dinner will be over long before the train arrives. Here's hoping that we are closer to the 1 hour late of the range.

Btw, if a train says that it is 55 minutes late (say), is it safe to assume that it will not depart before 55 minutes after scheduled departure? Or do these trains make up time. In which case, what is the point of an alert?

 

[zephyr17]

Trains mostly "make up time" by consuming schedule padding (officially known as "recovery time"). They don't speed. There is padding only at major stations and it is a known quantity. So the estimates on the website should be fairly accurate, especially as the train gets within 100 or so miles. With that said, late trains will depart as soon as possible and will reduce station dwell time to the minimum necessary to get station work done. So at a major station, if the train has a scheduled dwell of, say, 50 minutes as a Denver, and they can get the work done (deboarding passengers, garbage collection, watering, fueling, inspections, crew change, boarding passengers are typical at major stops) in 25, they'll be out of there in 25. The station dwells are padded, too.

If a train was showing 55 minutes late, personally I would arrive at the station about the time I would have anyway. If it is showing 4 hours, I would keep tracking it, and show up to the station based on the trains progress. I would not try to cut it too close, as they will do everything possible to make up time, though speeding is not one of those possible things.