Late trains

[Dan O]

Hey!

My daughter is on the way home on the Southwest Chief. Just called from Kingman AZ. She's supposed to be almost to LA by now. Anyway, it appears they got behind schedule early on in the trip and have keep falling behind more and more, rather than making up time. I thought in the midwest it may be due to flooding but not sure why out west. Is it because they have missed their window of opportunity to use the track? So now freight trains have priority and they just have to go when they can?

Thanks for the info,

DanO

 

[da40flyer]

Hey!My daughter is on the way home on the Southwest Chief. Just called from Kingman AZ. She's supposed to be almost to LA by now. Anyway, it appears they got behind schedule early on in the trip and have keep falling behind more and more, rather than making up time. I thought in the midwest it may be due to flooding but not sure why out west. Is it because they have missed their window of opportunity to use the track? So now freight trains have priority and they just have to go when they can?

Thanks for the info,

DanO

I can tell you what I was told on the Coast Starlight last week. The conductor said "A late train only get's later".

 

[the_traveler]

Is it because they have missed their window of opportunity to use the track? So now freight trains have priority and they just have to go when they can?

Yes. Most railroads have a schedule when Amtrak trains get priority. If the Amtrak train shows up at a time not "assigned" to them, the "regular" freights get priority, and the Amtrak train gets to "fit into the schedule where it can".

 

[Walt]

Anyway, it appears they got behind schedule early on in the trip and have keep falling behind more and more, rather than making up time. ...

Is it because they have missed their window of opportunity to use the track? So now freight trains have priority and they just have to go when they can?

...

I have always joked that a late train becomes "traina non grata".

But, yes, my personal experience is that once a train is substantially late, it only becomes later and later (regardless of what Julie claims). Especially when it has to keep pulling over onto a siding and stopping there.

 

[WhoozOn1st]

"A late train only get's later"

I've heard similar sayings from crew and passengers alike, including on the steam excursion to San Diego. 30 minutes late outta the gate, and the guy next to me said "A train that runs late is gonna run later."

And there certainly is a cascading, or snowball, effect. Once I was on a Pacific Surfliner from LAX to OXN on a Friday afternoon. Four and a half hours late, on what is normally a 2-hour run.. Things just happened, and we ended up spending more time in the hole than actually running. The train was in push mode, with Amfleet cars. Pre-9/11, when you could still stand up front to see out, and engineers left their cab doors open, so I could hear all the radio chat going on. None of it was good for our train, and things went from bad to worse. Just glad I was in no particular hurry. The engineer was plainly frustrated, but took it in pretty good stride.

In fact, on the drag through the San Fernando Valley (on the rare occasions that we were moving), the engineer invited several kids to do the horn thing for grade crossings. Naturally I got jealous, and asked if I could do the horn too. "Sure!" So in the end it didn't matter how late we were running. I got to be a kid and do the horn!

EDIT: On that same run the engineer played a joke on the kids gathered around the cab. Running over the Santa Susanna pass, in a cut with rock walls on both sides of the train, the guy hit the horn, knowing the loudness would be magnified in the cut. Those kids jumped about a foot in the air, and I probably went up several inches myself, as the engineer laughed his head off.

 

[Tony]

I just happen to notice that the CL (30) is already running over 10 hours late today, for a trip that is suppose to take only 18 hours.

 

[sjstarkey]

I was on the SWC on Sunday. It was supposed to be in Kingman at around 11:30pm. The best time we figured we would get there was 3:30 am, but ended up in KIngman at 6am.

Started off running late in Kansas City, because the bus didn't get there until 12am. Train was supposed to leave at 11pm. Still had at least 3 more buses coming, so we were really late getting out of the station. Just got later from there.

Staci

 

[Dan O]

I was on the SWC on Sunday. It was supposed to be in Kingman at around 11:30pm. The best time we figured we would get there was 3:30 am, but ended up in KIngman at 6am.
Started off running late in Kansas City, because the bus didn't get there until 12am. Train was supposed to leave at 11pm. Still had at least 3 more buses coming, so we were really late getting out of the station. Just got later from there.

Staci

Okay. She was on the train from CHI tho so it wasn't late busses. Got in over 6 hrs late. It was 7 hrs late to where she wanted to get off but made up an hr between Fullerton and LA.

Thanks to all for the info.

DAn

 

[puck71]

I can tell you what I was told on the Coast Starlight last week. The conductor said "A late train only get's later".

That's kind of what I thought too, but a few weeks ago (before the flooding really messed it up) I was checking the times for when the westbound EB got here to Fargo and when it got to Seattle. There were days where it got to Fargo a couple hours late, but got to Seattle pretty much on time. Maybe that's an exception, but it seems there are cases where it actually does make up time. Of course that's assuming amtrakdelays.com is accurate.

 

[JAChooChoo]

Okay. She was on the train from CHI tho so it wasn't late busses. Got in over 6 hrs late. It was 7 hrs late to where she wanted to get off but made up an hr between Fullerton and LA.
Thanks to all for the info.

DAn

The result of schedule padding.

Outbound from LA to Riverside is scheduled for 78 minutes while the inbound ia allowed 142.

 

[RobertF]

The TE is now about 8 hours late. We started 1.5 hours late in Chicago waiting for two connecting trains that were very late. It just got worse from there. We have constantly been sided for freight and in St. Louis we got hung up for a LONG time due to issues with a freight.