Chicago is now innovating new ways of screwing up

Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
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.
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Paulus

Conductor
Joined
Jul 13, 2012
Messages
1,469
Per TrainOrders, Lake Shore Limited 48(1) left 1:55 late and then had to stop on the main line an hour later because of hours of service requirements

I honestly do not fathom how you can not just send out a crew with less than an hour to go before they legally can't work, but send it out two hours late and still have a crew with only an hour to go. Was there not a single person on the extra board that they couldn't have called in during that time? Did nobody go "hey, this is going to end badly" beforehand? Honestly, this is worse than the times when Chicago has had trains run of out fuel on the mainline in my opinion.
 
Usually the real story is that there is a tremendous shortage of crews in Chicago. They have pared down the extra board to bare bones. They rely on a lot of inbound crews to get their rest or a four hour release in Chicago. I think many times trains leave Chicago because of lack of rested crews. The train crews are federally obligated to have the rest requirements and there are no replacements that have their required rest. Amtrak does not want to over-staff the extra board due to the cost of having employees at times with nothing to do and sitting at home. This is an expense to Amtrak as they must be paid a minimum amount and the company must provide benefits. This is not a problem unique to Amtrak as it occurs a also on BNSF (especially on the High Line), the UP and the CP.

As a point of interest an Amtrak manager one ordered a crew to violate the Hours of Service law. It cost Amtrak, thousands of dollars and the manager his job.
 
The real doozy here...where does the LSL switch crews for the first time? Cleveland or Toledo? I ask because it sounds like not only did they send out a crew that was about to expire, they scheduled a crew which could not have made it to the crew change location if the train had been on time!
 
oldtimer said:
Usually the real story is that there is a tremendous shortage of crews in Chicago. They have pared down the extra board to bare bones. They rely on a lot of inbound crews to get their rest or a four hour release in Chicago. I think many times trains leave Chicago because of lack of rested crews. The train crews are federally obligated to have the rest requirements and there are no replacements that have their required rest. Amtrak does not want to over-staff the extra board due to the cost of having employees at times with nothing to do and sitting at home. This is an expense to Amtrak as they must be paid a minimum amount and the company must provide benefits. This is not a problem unique to Amtrak as it occurs a also on BNSF (especially on the High Line), the UP and the CP.

As a point of interest an Amtrak manager one ordered a crew to violate the Hours of Service law. It cost Amtrak, thousands of dollars and the manager his job.
Click to expand...
Honestly, it would be far cheaper for Amtrak to hire a few extra guys rather than have nonsense like this, especially in lost passenger revenue.
 
Crews are based in Toledo. I don't know if any Chicago-based crews are qualified on that stretch. If they were really that short of crews, then most likely the best they could have done was send the train on its way with the crew they had, while a fresh Toledo crew got its full rest, then reported for duty. At least that way, the train is 1 hour closer to Toledo for when the new crew does show up.

Besides, I learned long ago to take anything Gene Poon says with a grain of salt. He's one of the biggest "point out everything Amtrak gets wrong" cheerleaders on the net, and has been for well over a decade.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ryan is correct. That site is filled with a bunch of whiners who love to overexaggerate everything.

Why not send the train out? It's not like the passengers were stranded without HEP or food. I'm sure there were no other crews available, so everyone on the train would either sit on the train when the crew's HOS expired, or Amtrak doesn't send the train out and they are stranded in Chicago. Is that really any better of an option?

This is what happens when you are forced to operate on a tiny budget. There is no money to properly maintain the engines, so power is frequently short or non existant. Extra boards are staffed at bare bones levels as well, so there aren't as many extra crews available as there should be.
 
Ohhh, there's a subtle point here.

Suppose the regular crews for this part of the LSL are based in Toledo (not Chicago).

Suppose that there are no Chicago-based crews who are qualified from Chicago to Toledo.

Suppose that there *are* Chicago-based crews who are qualified from Chicago to Porter, IN (who normally work on the Michigan trains).

Suppose that there are no Toledo-based crews waiting at Chicago, and so a Toledo-based crew has to be sent west by auto or freight train to meet the LSL.

In that case, it is clearly most efficient to send out one of the Chicago-based crews to take the LSL as far as they're qualified (Porter), which also allows the Toledo-based crew to drive less far and avoid Chicago traffic, and gets the LSL through the bottleneck south of Chicago.

One hour is suspiciously close to the Chicago-Porter scheduled runtime.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
RyanS said:
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and not take anything in that thread at face value. TO is good for a lot of things, objectivity isn't one of them.
Click to expand...
Yes, GenePoon and several others at TO have a toolshed of axes to grind when it comes to Amtrak. GenePoon especially appears to think Boardman has it in for the LD trains, despite the fact that Boardman has been running Amtrak for over 5 years, more than enough time to do dastardly deeds if that was Boardman's super secret plan. The posts on TO are useful for info on the day to day operational stuff, but few there have the bigger picture view. So I take posts there with a bucket of salt.
That said, Amtrak is having major problems keeping many of the LD trains anywhere close to on schedule in recent months. The LD trains are often departing late which does not help at all. Don't know how much of it is inadequate staffing to try to cut costs as much as possible, inadequate resources provided to maintenance, poor management of the maintenance facilities, mid or upper level management failures, aging equipment, poor employee morale, overwhelmed freight system because of the boom in oil trains, track maintenance projects and so on. 2014 is not shaping up as a good or even decent year for the LD and many of the corridor trains.
 
There seems to be a definite problem with getting trains out on time from Chicago; poor morale after this winter's storms? Bad habits hanging on for 40 years? Holding trains for other trains, or for crews who came in late (cascading delays)? Trains seem to be departing close to on-time from the other termini (Boston, NY, Albany, DC, Miami, New Orleans, San Antonio, LA, Oakland, Portland, Seattle), although there have been intermittent problems.
 
Neroden you are EXACTLY correct. LSL crews are based out of Toledo, and I can almost guarantee no one working out of Chicago is qualified that far. Your post explains a very valid explanation as to why the train was sent out with a nearly expired crew. See what I mean? TO members love to twist the truth.
 
I think a lot of the Chicago problem is a lack of resources. Equipment is short and must be turned quickly. When an inbound train is late it can really screw an outbound which could be forced to be held due to lack of equipment. You notice it more in Chicago than anywhere else in the system simply because Chicago is the biggest hub in the system. Of course more trains have problems out of Chicago than anywhere else. Chicago has the most trains! More trains run = a higher number of trains that run into problems. Imagine that!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
MetraUPWest said:
I think a lot of the Chicago problem is a lack of resources. Equipment is short and must be turned quickly. When an inbound train is late it can really screw an outbound which could be forced to be held due to lack of equipment. You notice it more in Chicago than anywhere else in the system simply because Chicago is the biggest hub in the system. Of course more trains have problems out of Chicago than anywhere else. Chicago has the most trains! More trains run = a higher number of trains that run into problems. Imagine that!
Click to expand...
Biggest hub in the system? Since when does Chicago have more trains than New York?
 
Yeah Chicago is not the biggest hub overall for Amtrak, not by a very long shot.

OTOH, it is most likely the biggest LD train hub for Amtrak.

And for whatever reason Chicago appears to be considerably more screwed up than Sunnyside. This may be hard to believe but it appears to be the case.
 
RyanS said:
If there was a crew available, don't you think that Amtrak would have used them?
Click to expand...
Yes. In all likelyhood. However, stranger things have happened. As I've seen you say to folks before, when one is so sure about something, then cite the source.
 
He's a METRA engineer that runs out of Chicago, so it's a safe assumption that he's got a clue what's going on.

He's also a friend, so I generally assume that he knows what he's talking about.

And I doubt that his "I'm sure" was meant to be taken literally. :D

Put it all together with something that sounds logical, and it makes sense to me. Worlds away from some no credibility person showing up here and making some wild claim that begs for a [citation needed].
 
RyanS said:
He's a METRA engineer that runs out of Chicago, so it's a safe assumption that he's got a clue what's going on.

He's also a friend, so I generally assume that he knows what he's talking about.

And I doubt that his "I'm sure" was meant to be taken literally. :D

Put it all together with something that sounds logical, and it makes sense to me. Worlds away from some no credibility person showing up here and making some wild claim that begs for a [citation needed].
Click to expand...
 
So we here @ AU are Cheerleaders forAmtrak according to the grumpy old men @ TOs! ("Get off my lawn!")

I read train orders but am not a member and based on what I see IMHO the Posters @ AU generally don't cheerlead for Amtrak, in fact we seem to generally offer constructive criticism

when we find fault with things @ Amtrak, while TOs ranters seem to repeat the same old cliches about Boardman, OBS etc without any ideas or suggestions on how to improve or fix problems and discrepancies discovered or imagined @ Amtrak! Just saying!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I meant Chicago is the largest LD hub. Thanks Jis. I know a lot of guys working for Amtrak that I used to work with on freight that tell me how tight the crews are over there. They are constantly short. I work 6 days a week at Metra because our crews are also always very short. Bottom line is if Amtrak had the money to hire more train and engine crews, they would. They don't, so the boards are kept as this as possible- and occasionally too short. I'm not excusing it, Amtrak just doesn't really have any other choice. I don't think it's a big mystery that equipment is short, too. I don't know the particulars of this situation, but I do know how things tend to work around here.

What really angers me more than anything is this business about the "Chicago problem". Everyone on the outside acts like maintenence personnel especially just come in to work, sleep for 8 hours, and go home. There are a few bad apples just like there are anywhere else, but the majority are very hard working people that are asked to do nearly impossible work. Have most of you seen exactly how little time they are given to receive, clean, maintain, and send back out the locomotives and coaches? If you had, you certainly would change your tune.

How could anyone think that if there were qualified crews Amtrak would send the one with no time left to work? As big as Chicago is, the crews on LD trains are mostly based out of outlying points and layover in Chicago. Sometimes it's just not possible to get a fresh crew there in time. Having the crew die on hours is not an ideal situation, but neither is cancelling the train.
 
RyanS said:
Yay. And now we're famous.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3453603

I welcome any of them that take issue with what I've said to clarify the issue, if they can crawl out from behind their paywall to do it.
Click to expand...
Cheap challenge.

But it was refreshing to see your reference to a bunch of oldies (and foamers,too, yah) on an incestuous ancient forum in their worst aspect of just rehashing old dogmas :) and quoting folks older than me who are more set in their ways than I hope most of us are.

That was valuable.

Let's get with the times!

And even more off-topic - Terry Pratchett's latest is about -- Steam Trains -- (and codgers and grags and other stuff)
 
I don't have a problem with TO. There's a lot of good stuff on there. I just tend to stay away from the passenger section because it's filled with the same complaints over and over. There are only so many "Boardman only cares about the NEC" and "Amtrak wouldn't have all these problems if they didn't retire the F40s so quickly!" posts I can read in a day.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top