I had a brief, but thoughtful discussion with several of my local BNSF folks today. As we can see today's EB's are all running between 2-4 hours late, and yesterday's were even later, as has been the case almost every day now this entire summer. One of my BNSF people raised the question: Why does Amtrak keep the old schedule, when they know the current situation (which is forecasted to continue for at least another year) will preclude them from coming even close to that schedule most of the time? He went on to say BNSF laid out the entire Summer and Fall construction plan, along with freight projections (which were slightly more conservative than what is actually happening) and they told Amtrak right up front that given all of the operating parameters an average 3+ hour delay over the entire route was a foregone conclusion. Since #8's are averaging a little over 4 hours late into CHI over the past 6 weeks or so I too am scratching my head as to why Amtrak just doesn't bite the bullet and take into account reality. I have taken several EB's during this time and I can say, from my observations, BNSF did indeed try to move our train along as best as they could, but the combination of very heavy freight traffic and numerous small and a couple major work areas just mitigated those efforts to be able to stay on time. My best arrival time so far this year in CHI has been 150 minutes late, the worst was 240 minutes late. Perhaps it is because they no longer can muster that extra train set in SEA and PDX?
Things should get better when the major work is done in a little over a year. But in the mean time I guess we will just have to live with missed connections and long delays.