Cardinal seasonal consist

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Tri-weekly trains are never a good idea from a utilization of rolling-stock consist. They happen for any number of political reasons... sort of like that awful year a decade-plus ago when they did things like run the CONO 5 or 6 days a week instead of every day.

The Cardinal requires 2 trainsets now and would need only 3 to run daily - a 133% increase in service for the price of 3 coaches, a diner, and a sleeper is a heck of a deal.

I wonder what would happen if someone leaned on Amtrak to try running four days a week, with the current rolling stock? West SuMoWeFr and eastbound MoTuThSa can be done with the current two sets, if the long maintenance layover is in NYC. If you want the long layover in Chicago you can still get 4-days-a-week service but have to change at least one of the existing dates. (For instance SuTuThSa westbound, MoTuThSa eastbound.)
 
Tri-weekly trains are never a good idea from a utilization of rolling-stock consist. They happen for any number of political reasons... sort of like that awful year a decade-plus ago when they did things like run the CONO 5 or 6 days a week instead of every day.
Actually, it depends and such decisions are not necessarily always political even though it might appear to be so. Often it is due to limited availability of resources, and if done right, can produce extremely good utilization of available resources.

In India it is not unusual for a service that is say 16 hour end to end running time, to be introduced tri-weekly with a single consist, which gives pretty good utilization for 6 days a week and the 7th day is used for maintenance. That way service can be started before one can line up 2+ consists. As more consists become available frequencies are increased.

Similarly, many single day round trip services are introduced 6 days a week, with the 7th days used for consist maintenance. That is how for example the new Vande Bharat EMU expresses are operated. Each service runs 6 days a week and uses a single consist. So such things have their place and are not necessarily political decisions.
 
Actually, it depends and such decisions are not necessarily always political even though it might appear to be so. Often it is due to limited availability of resources, and if done right, can produce extremely good utilization of available resources.

In India it is not unusual for a service that is say 16 hour end to end running time, to be introduced tri-weekly with a single consist, which gives pretty good utilization for 6 days a week and the 7th day is used for maintenance. That way service can be started before one can line up 2+ consists. As more consists become available frequencies are increased.

Similarly, many single day round trip services are introduced 6 days a week, with the 7th days used for consist maintenance. That is how for example the new Vande Bharat EMU expresses are operated. Each service runs 6 days a week and uses a single consist. So such things have their place and are not necessarily political decisions.
Interesting take on less than daily service. However, where there is only one train a day on a route, it’s pretty ineffective. I hazard a guess that in India, there are many frequencies, or local trains so that it’s not that big a deal. In other words, on any given day, you can take the train, maybe just not an express. The Caledonian Sleeper only runs six days a week, but there are plenty of rail options every day between London and Scotland. The C&NW used to run a seasonal bus in place of the Flambeau 400 in the off season in the last few years in northern Wisconsin. I can’t think of a scenario where less than daily service without a daily option would be viable in the US. Surely not the Sunset or Cardinal. It is of course better than nothing. And you’re right; maybe as a way to introduce new routes, it might be an option.
 
Interesting take on less than daily service. However, where there is only one train a day on a route, it’s pretty ineffective. I hazard a guess that in India, there are many frequencies, or local trains so that it’s not that big a deal. In other words, on any given day, you can take the train, maybe just not an express. The Caledonian Sleeper only runs six days a week, but there are plenty of rail options every day between London and Scotland. The C&NW used to run a seasonal bus in place of the Flambeau 400 in the off season in the last few years in northern Wisconsin. I can’t think of a scenario where less than daily service without a daily option would be viable in the US. Surely not the Sunset or Cardinal. It is of course better than nothing. And you’re right; maybe as a way to introduce new routes, it might be an option.
You are arguing a different point. I was merely responding to the equipment utilization angle, and suggesting that using that as an argument against less than daily service is easy to knock down with many examples.

As for less than daily service, such things exist on branch lines even in India and people prefer having such service than no service at all since that is often their only way to connect with the world outside. In a tight resource situation the general philosophy is to provide some service as soon as possible, even if less than daily, rather than waiting for enough resources to materialize to provide gold plated daily service. Of course, usually branch lines are short, so typically it boils down to service six days a week, with one day off for maintenance. But when a very long slow line is brought into service which has a journey time too long to cover a full round trip in a single day, lower frequencies have been used.

The other example of less than daily service occurs in a situation as you suggest, where there are other trains. These are typically on extremely long distance point to point routes, and often they are weekly, twice a week or thrice a week. Often they also are higher tier trains in terms of services provided. Usually these are trains that have a single consist allocated for the service. Historically, for example, the first fully AC train introduced between Howrah (Kolkata) and New Delhi was a twice a week train using a single consist. It was a 22 hour run each way. Eventually it was increased to three times a week using a single consist, and finally additional consists were added to the pool that linked together three trunk routes out of Delhi to create a set of daily trains. That is pretty typical of how new service is introduced, first less than daily, eventually growing to daily.
 
When the Ocean ran 6x/week, I believe that the reason had as much to do with the equipment needing a day a week for possible work as anything else. Bear in mind, also, that Saturday (in particular) or Sunday may have low enough demand that bustituting that day may make more sense if you need work done on equipment (or you need to schedule substantial track work on a continuing basis for some reason).
 
Something else to bear in mind about the Cardinal at present: It covers NYP-CVS (and on into West Virginia) on Friday and Sunday. This isn't an accident...it's doing its best to "snipe" the heaviest travel days.
 
Back
Top