best ways for Amtrak to cut its operating losses?

[George Harris]

Anything into Asheville would be for the sightseer tourist crowd only as the lines into Asheville, whether from North Carolina or Tennessee are both very slow, and the line up from the south through Spartanburg is out of service.

"Very slow" is a bit of an exaggeration. Both are mainline railroads in excellent condition. Just some curvy turrain. Slower than 79 for sure... But plenty of 40-50 running. Similar to the Crescent in Alabama.

I don't have a passenger train schedule for when they ran them at my fingertips, but if I recall correctly the average speed worked out to be about 30 mmph. "Plenty of 40 to 50 mph running" does not get you a 40 to 50 mph average speed. If you ahve plenty of 40 to 50 mph running, you might be able have something on the order of a 35 mph average speed end to end, but not much more.

 

[George Harris]

Amtrak probably pays more to the Class Is for track access than a freight shortline or regional would pay to run their own trains using track access.

I would suspect that this is not a true statement, but without real numbers, there is no way for either of us to know.

 

[Anderson]

Anything into Asheville would be for the sightseer tourist crowd only as the lines into Asheville, whether from North Carolina or Tennessee are both very slow, and the line up from the south through Spartanburg is out of service.

"Very slow" is a bit of an exaggeration. Both are mainline railroads in excellent condition. Just some curvy turrain. Slower than 79 for sure... But plenty of 40-50 running. Similar to the Crescent in Alabama.

I don't have a passenger train schedule for when they ran them at my fingertips, but if I recall correctly the average speed worked out to be about 30 mmph. "Plenty of 40 to 50 mph running" does not get you a 40 to 50 mph average speed. If you ahve plenty of 40 to 50 mph running, you might be able have something on the order of a 35 mph average speed end to end, but not much more.

I, however, do have a timetable from 1972 courtesy of Bill Haithcoat. The line covered 138.9 miles (Salisbury, NC to Asheville, NC) in four hours even, for an average speed of around 35 MPH. Of note, there were six non-flag stops and eight flag stops, so it might have been possible to drop a few minutes without all of those stops, depending on how Southern was with runtime calculations and padding.

 

[VentureForth]

Anything into Asheville would be for the sightseer tourist crowd only as the lines into Asheville, whether from North Carolina or Tennessee are both very slow, and the line up from the south through Spartanburg is out of service.

"Very slow" is a bit of an exaggeration. Both are mainline railroads in excellent condition. Just some curvy turrain. Slower than 79 for sure... But plenty of 40-50 running. Similar to the Crescent in Alabama.

I don't have a passenger train schedule for when they ran them at my fingertips, but if I recall correctly the average speed worked out to be about 30 mmph. "Plenty of 40 to 50 mph running" does not get you a 40 to 50 mph average speed. If you ahve plenty of 40 to 50 mph running, you might be able have something on the order of a 35 mph average speed end to end, but not much more.

I, however, do have a timetable from 1972 courtesy of Bill Haithcoat. The line covered 138.9 miles (Salisbury, NC to Asheville, NC) in four hours even, for an average speed of around 35 MPH. Of note, there were six non-flag stops and eight flag stops, so it might have been possible to drop a few minutes without all of those stops, depending on how Southern was with runtime calculations and padding.

And, unfortunately, I-40 can accomodate the rubber-wheeled competition in close to 2 hours...

 

[George Harris]

Anything into Asheville would be for the sightseer tourist crowd only as the lines into Asheville, whether from North Carolina or Tennessee are both very slow, and the line up from the south through Spartanburg is out of service.

"Very slow" is a bit of an exaggeration. Both are mainline railroads in excellent condition. Just some curvy turrain. Slower than 79 for sure... But plenty of 40-50 running. Similar to the Crescent in Alabama.

I don't have a passenger train schedule for when they ran them at my fingertips, but if I recall correctly the average speed worked out to be about 30 mmph. "Plenty of 40 to 50 mph running" does not get you a 40 to 50 mph average speed. If you ahve plenty of 40 to 50 mph running, you might be able have something on the order of a 35 mph average speed end to end, but not much more.

I, however, do have a timetable from 1972 courtesy of Bill Haithcoat. The line covered 138.9 miles (Salisbury, NC to Asheville, NC) in four hours even, for an average speed of around 35 MPH. Of note, there were six non-flag stops and eight flag stops, so it might have been possible to drop a few minutes without all of those stops, depending on how Southern was with runtime calculations and padding.

And, unfortunately, I-40 can accomodate the rubber-wheeled competition in close to 2 hours...

Southern schedulesdid not have much padding. I was a regular rider of the Tennessean in the mid 60's, in fact up to near its discontinuance. Rode some of their other trains in the same time frame, and also on the Southern Crescent in the early 70's and generally there was little making up of time on any of these once behind. When ther was it was usually by fudging the speed limits.