September report is out: Best year since 1973

[Anderson]

Woody: My understanding of the Crescent cutoff proposals is that (depending on the nuances of the proposal du jour) the train south of Atlanta would be a car or two shorter, but north of Atlanta it would be noticeably longer. This has a lot to do with the fact that Atlanta is a major discharge station southbound/boarding station northbound. There's a decent amount of traffic to/from the south as well, but not as much as is to/from the north. This has pretty much always been the case (there's a reason that a second daily WAS-ATL train lasted well into the 70s while Birmingham-New Orleans was tri-weekly at the time).

With that said, there also used to be a through sleeper between the Crescent and the Sunset on days they both ran. But for the single level/bilevel issue, reinstating this would probably not hurt anyone (though you'd need to have things set up to manage space in the through car so you could sell it on either side if it wasn't going to be used for through passengers (i.e. selling space ATL-WAS if there was a LAX-ATL passenger) but otherwise keep it relatively clear for passengers going through (i.e. not selling it out WAS-ATL and therefore being unavailable for passengers NYP-LAX).

 

[Paulus]

If anyone's curious, the direct-loss subsidy numbers from Boardman's March 2013 graph are as follows, accurate to the decimal place (measured off a zoomed-in copy of the graph!) -- parentheses indicate profit:

Silver Star 6.1

Cardinal 6.3

Silver Meteor (1.4)

Empire Builder 10.8

Capitol Ltd 5.8

California Zephyr 30.5

Southwest Chief 27.9

City of New Orleans 5.3

Texas Eagle 13.5

Sunset Ltd 23.9

Coast Starlight 16.9

Lake Shore Ltd 1.7

Palmetto (4.1)

Crescent 7.9

Auto Train 0.0

Estimates of direct costs per train mile:

Route Direct costs per train mile
Auto Train $112.27
Coast Starlight $60.98
Sunset Limited $57.66
Capitol Limited $49.82
California Zephyr $47.02
Southwest Chief $45.57
Texas Eagle $45.16
Empire Builder $44.62
Lake Shore Limited $44.22
Crescent $43.67
Silver Star $41.48
Cardinal $40.83
Silver Meteor $40.39
City of New Orleans $40.15
Palmetto $23.44
The estimates are about in line with previous ones I made on my blog, though those were for the sector as a whole. The gap between the Palmetto and all other trains continues to reinforce my stance that coach and café only is the best way to go. I can't think of a reasonable explanation for the Starlight other than the PPC cars and if they're responsible for that amount of expense, they very clearly need to go because there is no way that they bring in enough revenue to offset their costs. Not sure what the deal is with the Sunset Limited, at a guess I'd suggest it's getting dinged with expenses from the TEagle through cars while all the revenue goes to the Eagle.

From this I derive the following numbers for 2012 allocated overhead:

Silver Star 39.0

Cardinal 10.9

Silver Meteor 39.3

Empire Builder 46.8

Capitol Ltd 18.2

California Zephyr 39.8

Southwest Chief 38.8

City of New Orleans 15.9

Texas Eagle 20.5

Sunset Ltd 17.8

Coast Starlight 38.2

Lake Shore Ltd 30.9

Palmetto 15.3

Crescent 33.7

Auto Train 34.5

To me, these numbers pass the "eyeball test" for plausible allocations.

Divvying it up by train mile gets this:

Route Allocation per train mile
Auto Train $52.27
Silver Meteor $38.53
Coast Starlight $37.45
Lake Shore Limited $37.23
Silver Star $36.11
Crescent $34.39
Capitol Limited $31.93
Cardinal $30.28
Sunset Limited $27.81
Empire Builder $25.16
Palmetto $25.08
City of New Orleans $23.38
Southwest Chief $23.23
California Zephyr $22.36
Texas Eagle $22.04
There's no real rhyme or reason that's popping out at me. Initially I wanted to suggest that it was related to car-miles, but that doesn't seem right, and while NEC LDs tend to be be higher, the Starlight's #2 (ignoring the Auto Train) and Palmetto is fairly low down.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

If anyone's curious, the direct-loss subsidy numbers from Boardman's March 2013 graph are as follows, accurate to the decimal place (measured off a zoomed-in copy of the graph!) -- parentheses indicate profit:

Silver Star 6.1

Cardinal 6.3

Silver Meteor (1.4)

Empire Builder 10.8

Capitol Ltd 5.8

California Zephyr 30.5

Southwest Chief 27.9

City of New Orleans 5.3

Texas Eagle 13.5

Sunset Ltd 23.9

Coast Starlight 16.9

Lake Shore Ltd 1.7

Palmetto (4.1)

Crescent 7.9

Auto Train 0.0

Estimates of direct costs per train mile:

Route Direct costs per train mile
Auto Train $112.27
Coast Starlight $60.98
Sunset Limited $57.66
Capitol Limited $49.82
California Zephyr $47.02
Southwest Chief $45.57
Texas Eagle $45.16
Empire Builder $44.62
Lake Shore Limited $44.22
Crescent $43.67
Silver Star $41.48
Cardinal $40.83
Silver Meteor $40.39
City of New Orleans $40.15
Palmetto $23.44
The estimates are about in line with previous ones I made on my blog... Not sure what the deal is with the Sunset Limited, at a guess I'd suggest it's getting dinged with expenses from the TEagle through cars while all the revenue goes to the Eagle. ...

Remember that the 3/7 trains (the Sunset Ltd and the Cardinal)

take a big hit on labor costs, when the crew gets hotel rooms

and "away pay" for the days when they arrive at the end point,

but no train is running the next day for them to work their way

back home. In the same way, the 3/7 trains caused some

equipment to be idle. But the recent rejiggering of the Sunset

from four consists to three may have already saved on those

equipment charges. The Sunset's reported results may get better

as the months pass with one less consist being used.

In any case, clearly the Sunset's cost/revenue ratio would

improve with a daily train.

iirc, The PRIAA PIP study showed a daily Sunset would have

a loss per passenger etc in the lower middle of the pack, much

much improved from being the second most costly LD train

(the one-of-a-kind Auto Train excepted).

I don't see how the Sunset could go daily without a lot more

equipment in Amtrak's pool. It's not like scrounging up another

sleeper for the Cardinal, or a coach for the Auto Train.

I'm pretty sure that we'll see more single-level coaches and other

revenue cars ordered before we see bi-levels for the Western trains.

So even if Amtrak had another 100 cars to work with, one or more

of the Superliner trains would need to be converted to single-level

-- the City of New Orleans, the Capitol Limited, the Sunset shuttle

(San Antonio-Houston-New Orleans) -- to free up much equipment

to move to Western trains.

Of course, the Superliners are more efficient, with many more

paying passengers per car, so costs per rider would go up on

any Superliner-to-Viewliner route, and that's maybe not worth it.

 

[Anderson]

Finally, we're onto the state corridors. This is, for the record, a wonderful mishmash brought on by Amtrak's "fun" accounting practices.

On paper, state corridor ridership dropped by just under 700,000 from last year. However, once adjustments are made for the "phantom riders" the loss drops to just under 90,000. Obviously no loss is good news, but one of these figures would represent a crisis for the system while the other more closely represents one for whomever was doing the multi-ride ticket estimates.

Moreover, the vast majority of the roughly 600,000 phantom riders can be found on very few routes: The Capitol Corridor (140k) and the Keystones (180k) represent over half of the adjustment, while the Downeaster (44k) and Hiawatha (42k) get honorable mentions. The Pacific Surfliner also posted some losses here (35k), though in the context of the massive ridership there the adjustment was only a bit over 1%. Those five routes represent about 3/4 of the adjustments, with the rest scattered over a number of the remaining routes.

Probably the worst aspect of this change is the fact that on both the Keystones and Capitol Corridor, these adjustments represented a large share of the previous year's ridership (14% for the Keystones, 16.5% for the Capitol Corridor), and the implications for per-passenger revenue are also rather strong (those numbers were a lot higher than they previously estimated, and I'm guessing that an implicit correction of about 10% is due for several previous years).

Setting aside the tangle of the VA routes, those trains going to/from the NEC generally had a decent year. The Downeaster roughly broke even on actual ridership, with revenues up over 5%. The Vermonter's ridership was up over 6% (revenue up 10%), and the same general story showed up on alll of the other corridors connecting to the NEC. The only ones to post a post-adjustment loss were the North Carolina routes and the Ethan Allen. Of these, only the Carolinian suffered a drop in revenue.

The Midwest was a bit more of a mess. Every train out of Chicago took a hit of some kind with the exceptions of the Hiawatha and Blue Water. The River Runner also took a hit. A lot of this is down to OTP issues (which were in turn related to construction in certain cases and the NS meltdown in others), though the Winter From Hell likely took a nasty toll here as well (many routes took double-digit drops in January and February). With that being said, in a lot of cases average fares did go up by 3-6%.

Out west, there was a general slump (Cascades had mudslides, Capitol Corridor has pricing issues and ridership fudge, and the San Joaquins...well, I'm not quite sure what happened there but I'm inclined to blame a mix of capacity and everything else being a generalized mess), though the Surfliners didn't do too badly (ridership was up post-adjustment while another hike of close to 4.5% on the fare side actually stuck).

 

[Paulus]

If I'm not mistaken, the PSL only had a 2% fare hike; the rest is likely from longer trips.

 

[jis]

This is a slight aside, but...

I don't have the connections to ask the right people since my connections focus on VA and the DC area, so does anyone know whether Amtrak has considered reinstating a stop at Sanford, FL (or at any of the other SunRail stops in lieu of Sanford)? Amtrak kept stopping there until the old station building more or less died on them; adding a stop at a pre-built commuter station would have minimal to no costs beyond a few minutes on the timetable, and would presumably toss a couple of thousand passengers per year onto the train.

I think they canned the stop because they could not justify continuing it based on potential ridership and catchment area. How many additional riders do you suppose will materialize that are currently not riding the train because they have to drive 10 miles to Deland or Winter Park instead of 5 miles to Sanford, or take SunRail to either of those two stops? Are there really a couple of thousand or three of those per year? There really isn't much of anything by the Sanford station area. Sanford is under 17 miles from both Deland and Winter park.

 

[neroden]

In an ideal world Amtrak would look to "flip" the LSL's schedule for a second frequency (late departure from NYP, early departure from CHI) to actually allow solid connections with the Silvers as well as offering passable daylight times to Cleveland, Toledo, etc. both ways.

Yeah. Given runtimes near to the current ones, with plenty of equipment and agreement from the host railroads, a good schedule would have:

- afternoon departure from NYC, early morning arrival in CHI (as currently)

- evening departure from NYC, late morning arrival in CHI -- in addition to making the connections from the south, this is desired by a lot of the NYC-upstate traffic, as well (stay later in NYC!)

- afternoon departure from CHI, morning arrival in NYC -- in addition to making the connections to the south, this would have solid intermediate ridership from Cleveland to Chicago

- evening (7 PM) departure from CHI, midday arrival at NYC (as proposed in the PIP). Nobody likes the 9:30 departure. It exists solely to accomodate connections from delayed western trains, which should mostly be accomodated on the Capitol Limited instead.

...I just had a brainstorm here....

I firmly believe that a dining car is valuable. But does it need to run overnight?

Arrange for one pair of trains to leave CHI after dinner and arrive before breakfast. Attach the dining car from Buffalo to New York. Arrange for the other pair of trains to leave NY after dinner and arrive before breakfast. Attach the dining car from Cleveland to Chicago. It looks to me like you'd need at most 4 dining cars for what is probably 6 trainsets, and you wouldn't need roomettes for the dining car staff. On the other hand, you'd need more commissaries.

I agree that the train is likely primed to add a coach on the basis of those numbers; the train frankly seems increasingly primed to smack into platforming problems at NYP.

I'm not sure what the platform length limits are, currently. It has been suggested, as part of the Moynihan station project, that the former mail platform (the "diagonal platform") be brought back into use for Empire Service trains, which would include the LSL. This would probably provide enough room for several more cars, as well as providing a wider platform which is much more suitable for boarding a very busy train.
Regarding overhead, direct costs, etc.:

The estimates are about in line with previous ones I made on my blog, though those were for the sector as a whole....

Divvying it up by train mile gets this:...

There's no real rhyme or reason that's popping out at me.....

Well, at least the overhead numbers aren't all over the map. With the exception of the Auto Train, they're all within a reasonable range. $22.04 - $38.53 per train mile isn't an extreme range for overhead allocation.
Regarding that range: It's possible that the allocations are partly based on car maintenance costs. Consider the chart of 2012 overhead allocation by train mile:

Route Allocation per train mile
Auto Train $52.27 (autoracks)
Silver Meteor $38.53 (Heritage dining car, Heritage baggage car)
Coast Starlight $37.45 (Heritage PPC, Heritage baggage car)
Lake Shore Limited $37.23 (Heritage dining car, 2 Heritage baggage cars)
Silver Star $36.11 (Heritage dining car, Heritage baggage car)
Crescent $34.39 (Heritage dining car, Heritage baggage car)
Capitol Limited $31.93 (Heritage baggage car)
Cardinal $30.28 (Heritage baggage car)
Sunset Limited $27.81 (Heritage baggage car)
Empire Builder $25.16 (Heritage baggage car)
Palmetto $25.08 (Heritage baggage car)
City of New Orleans $23.38 (no Heritage cars)
Southwest Chief $23.23 (Heritage baggage car)
California Zephyr $22.36 (Heritage baggage car)
Texas Eagle $22.04 (no Heritage cars)
This looks like it might be a pattern to me. If I am correct, the elimination of the Heritage cars should improve the "overhead allocation" on almost every long-distance train.
(regarding direct costs)

Not sure what the deal is with the Sunset Limited

These are 2012 numbers. The schedule change wasn't made until May 2012. There was an awful lot of "paying OBS crew to stay several days in New Orleans" prior to the schedule change. Perhaps somewhat less of that now, though there still may be quite a lot of it as long as the train isn't daily.

so does anyone know whether Amtrak has considered reinstating a stop at Sanford, FL (or at any of the other SunRail stops in lieu of Sanford)?

Once SunRail is fully up and running, it will be running from DeLand Amtrak on the north end to Poinciana (well, Intercession City really) on the south end. Frankly, if the frequencies for SunRail can be expanded enough, it makes no sense for Amtrak to add stops at the *intermediate* stations -- get off at DeLand and take SunRail to Sanford. But Poinciana might make sense, because people hate to backtrack.

I don't see how the Sunset could go daily without a lot more

equipment in Amtrak's pool. It's not like scrounging up another

sleeper for the Cardinal, or a coach for the Auto Train.

Or even a daily Cardinal. For a daily Cardinal, only one more trainset is needed (according to Amtrak); the new baggage cars, sleeping cars, and dining cars are on order, there is still an excess of single-level cafes, and with the Horizons becoming redundant there's got to be a way to scrounge up coaches.
For a daily Sunset Limited, though, there will be a few bilevel coaches freed up soon, but that's it.

I'm pretty sure that we'll see more single-level coaches and other

revenue cars ordered before we see bi-levels for the Western trains.

So even if Amtrak had another 100 cars to work with, one or more

of the Superliner trains would need to be converted to single-level

-- the City of New Orleans, the Capitol Limited, the Sunset shuttle

(San Antonio-Houston-New Orleans) -- to free up much equipment

to move to Western trains.

Of course, the Superliners are more efficient, with many more

paying passengers per car, so costs per rider would go up on

any Superliner-to-Viewliner route, and that's maybe not worth it.

The Capitol Limited is the obvious candidate for conversion. The Capitol Limited seems recurrently short on ridership compared to the other eastern trains. It might be possible to "right-size" it more accurately with single-level equipment. It shares 13 of its 16 stations with single-level or high-level-boarding trains (including the LSL, Pennsylvanian, and MARC), and it seems desirable to have through cars from the single-level Pennsylvanian. It would eliminate the need to maintain Superliners in DC (Auto Train aside).

 

[afigg]

In an ideal world Amtrak would look to "flip" the LSL's schedule for a second frequency (late departure from NYP, early departure from CHI) to actually allow solid connections with the Silvers as well as offering passable daylight times to Cleveland, Toledo, etc. both ways.

Yeah. Given runtimes near to the current ones, with plenty of equipment and agreement from the host railroads, a good schedule would have:

- afternoon departure from NYC, early morning arrival in CHI (as currently)

- evening departure from NYC, late morning arrival in CHI -- in addition to making the connections from the south, this is desired by a lot of the NYC-upstate traffic, as well (stay later in NYC!)

- afternoon departure from CHI, morning arrival in NYC -- in addition to making the connections to the south, this would have solid intermediate ridership from Cleveland to Chicago

I think this discussion of a second LSL or NYP-ALB-CLE-CHI train overlooks that the 3rd busiest station in the Amtrak system, PHL, has no direct service to CHI and the Midwest except through the long way around Cardinal. Yes, PHL and SE PA is likely to get pass-through cars on the Pennsylvanian, but those will be a limited substitute with a 2-3 hour layover in Pittsburgh. The recent problems with the NS meltdown show the drawbacks of making the eastbound Pennsylvanian, a reliable corridor service, dependent on the Capitol Limited.
IMO, if Amtrak were to restore/add a NYP-CHI service, it should be with the restoration of the Three Rivers. Or call it the Broadway Limited for marketing purposes. Amtrak owns the 195 miles of higher speed track from NYP to HAR that has gotten over the past 10 years and is getting the benefits of a number of upgrades. It is nuts in some ways that Amtrak doesn't run an LD service over it.

Unlike the late departed Three Rivers, the restored service can follow a schedule similar to the above discussion. Depart NYP at circa 6:30 PM (yes, getting a slot is problematic), dep PHL at 8:15 PM, HAR 10:10 PM, reaches PGH around 3:30 AM, then provides CLE and TOL with early morning service to CHI. With 3 trains between TOL and CHI, one should go through Michigan to take advantage of the 235 miles of Amtrak controlled 110 mph class track (by mid-2017), but which one can be argued over. Eastbound, the CHI-PHL-NYP train can depart CHI by 4 PM for acceptable CHI-TOL-CLE station times, overnights again between CLE and HAR, arrives PHL and NYP late morning. The CHI departure provides connections from the CONO, TE, Hiawatha, IL corridor trains with the CZ, EB, SWC left out, but can't connect all the trains. Eastbound provides a connection at PHL to the Silver Star.

Of course, in the present circumstances, this is probably all fantasy discussion. But I think the above train would provide more people with CHI to east coast service than a second NYP only LSL. Another factor is that the incoming Governor Wolf (PA) mas made statements that indicate he will be a strong supporter of passenger rail and transit. He may put money towards western Keystone track improvements and add a second daily Pennsylvanian service. A restored Three Rivers or whatever it is called, can take advantage of the improvements along the entire PHL-PGH corridor.

One question: when Gunn canceled the Three Rivers, what was the ridership on the Keystone service? The Pennsylvanian? I don't have ridership numbers that go back that far. The Keystone has seen significant growth since PA under Rendell put $160 million into the eastern Keystone to fix it up. The PHL-HAR-PGH corridor provides a much better customer base than it did when Gunn killed the Three Rivers.

 

[Anderson]

To answer your question on the Keystone/Pennsylvanian/Three Rivers, in FY2003 the ridership on the Pennsylvanian was 124,372 and ridership on the Three Rivers was 137,234. In FY2004, it was 171,483 and 152,842. From what I can tell (from the fall 2003 timetable), the Three Rivers was running to Chicago while the Pennsylvanian terminated at Pittsburgh...but the Pennsylvanian also had an earlier schedule out of New York than it does at present (departing NYP at 0700 instead of just before 1100) and still had the split weekend schedule with a late arrival at NYP on Sunday night.

 

[Paulus]

The Three Rivers was also enormously expensive and barely made any additional money compared to the Pennsylvanian. Five times the cost for less ridership doesn't strike me as a terribly good deal.

Keystone ridership, incidentally, was 886,003 in FY2003 and 901,170 in FY2004.

 

[Paulus]

(regarding direct costs)

Not sure what the deal is with the Sunset Limited

These are 2012 numbers. The schedule change wasn't made until May 2012. There was an awful lot of "paying OBS crew to stay several days in New Orleans" prior to the schedule change. Perhaps somewhat less of that now, though there still may be quite a lot of it as long as the train isn't daily.

I'm not so sure of that; 2013 only saw a $0.3 million decrease in expenses for the Sunset Limited. 2014 saw an additional $3 million decrease, but only the Capitol Limited and CONO failed to post a major cost reduction, so I wouldn't assume it's necessarily that.

Also, a very rough estimate of the cost of sleepers. It's basically the direct costs minus all F&B costs and minus the Palmetto's direct costs (as a representative "Locos+coaches," I don't think that particular number is 100% applicable and it's more of a representative placeholder). Useful perhaps for a general range and posted partially for a sanity check. Note that it this assumes all sleeper revenue is credited towards sleeper cars and that there is zero allocation to F&B:

Route	Sleeper profit/loss per mile	Sleeper profit/loss	Assumed sleeper cost per mile
Empire Builder  	$1.96   	$3,643,030	$12.69
Silver Meteor   	($0.23) 	($233,981)	$11.50
California Zephyr	($1.08) 	($1,920,555)	$14.35
Capitol Limited 	($1.12) 	($640,692)	$17.19
City of New Orleans	($1.52) 	($1,035,378)	$9.91
Lake Shore Limited	($1.72) 	($1,429,510)	$13.11
Southwest Chief  	($2.36) 	($3,934,387)	$13.76
Texas Eagle     	($4.29) 	($3,987,374)	$13.35
Crescent        	($4.58) 	($4,491,202)	$12.26
Silver Star     	($6.08) 	($6,561,029)	$12.99
Coast Starlight 	($7.42) 	($7,563,534)	$24.28
Cardinal        	($9.02) 	($3,246,173)	$12.97
Auto Train      	($11.53)	($7,607,175)	$55.06
Sunset Limited  	($14.06)	($8,997,844)	$21.85

Edit: Add $1.65 to assumed costs, forgot to zero out the Palmetto's F&B costs.

 

[Anderson]

Just to ask, but you went with some degree of per-mile costs, not flat dollar costs, right?

 

[afigg]

To answer your question on the Keystone/Pennsylvanian/Three Rivers, in FY2003 the ridership on the Pennsylvanian was 124,372 and ridership on the Three Rivers was 137,234. In FY2004, it was 171,483 and 152,842. From what I can tell (from the fall 2003 timetable), the Three Rivers was running to Chicago while the Pennsylvanian terminated at Pittsburgh...but the Pennsylvanian also had an earlier schedule out of New York than it does at present (departing NYP at 0700 instead of just before 1100) and still had the split weekend schedule with a late arrival at NYP on Sunday night.

Looking at a 2003 timetable, the Three Rivers after departing NYP at 12:15 PM, took 4 hours and 10 minutes to Harrisburg. This with only 2 stops, Paoli and Lancaster, between PHL and HAR. Eastbound, after departing HAR at 3:56 PM, the scheduled trip time was 4 hours and 8 minutes to NYP. Quite slow as the Pennsylvanian currently does NYP to HAR in 3 hours and 34 minutes with more stops. The Three Rivers was also receive or disembark only from NYP to HAR, so it blocked out HAR, LNC, PAO to NYP ticket sales which would have been extra revenue.

West of Harrisburg, the Three Rivers stopped at all the stations to PGH except for Tyrone. If it were to be brought back as a night train through PGH to CHI, it could stop only at Altoona and Johnstown between HAR and PGH for a faster trip and to make running the train more palatable to NS (fewer blocking a track stops). I would add Elizabethtown as a stop on the eastern Keystone to get the busiest stations.

Comparing the FY2014 numbers for 10 years later, the Pennsylvanian had 230,767 passengers and the Keystone service 1,326,450 passengers. Respectable increase and larger market base.

 

[neroden]

I think this discussion of a second LSL or NYP-ALB-CLE-CHI train overlooks that the 3rd busiest station in the Amtrak system, PHL, has no direct service to CHI and the Midwest except through the long way around Cardinal. Yes, PHL and SE PA is likely to get pass-through cars on the Pennsylvanian, but those will be a limited substitute with a 2-3 hour layover in Pittsburgh. The recent problems with the NS meltdown show the drawbacks of making the eastbound Pennsylvanian, a reliable corridor service, dependent on the Capitol Limited.

Aaagh, you're right of course.

IMO, if Amtrak were to restore/add a NYP-CHI service, it should be with the restoration of the Three Rivers. Or call it the Broadway Limited for marketing purposes. Amtrak owns the 195 miles of higher speed track from NYP to HAR that has gotten over the past 10 years and is getting the benefits of a number of upgrades. It is nuts in some ways that Amtrak doesn't run an LD service over it.

Unlike the late departed Three Rivers, the restored service can follow a schedule similar to the above discussion.

Sure. We can discuss schedules for a long time.

Depart NYP at circa 6:30 PM (yes, getting a slot is problematic), dep PHL at 8:15 PM, HAR 10:10 PM, reaches PGH around 3:30 AM, then provides CLE and TOL with early morning service to CHI. With 3 trains between TOL and CHI, one should go through Michigan to take advantage of the 235 miles of Amtrak controlled 110 mph class track (by mid-2017), but which one can be argued over.

Which one of the three trains should detour north to Dearborn and along the Michigan line through Ann Arbor? The one which allows connections from all points east to and from Michigan, with daytime waiting in Toledo for the connection. So it should be the latest of the westbounds and the earliest of the eastbounds. Some schedule fiddling would be required to make this work out right.

Also, a very rough estimate of the cost of sleepers.

(Nose-wrinkle)Doesn't pass the smell test; too variable. Something else is hiding in the estimate. Even if you throw out the Auto Train (autorack costs), and the Coast Starlight (PPCs) and the Sunset Limited (less-than-daily weirdness and Texas Eagle through-car accounting), it's not at all clear why the CONO should have extra-low costs or the Capitol Limited extra-high costs.

Also, seriously, it's not proportional to the number of sleeping cars in the consists, which means it's not proportional to number of cars or number of attendants? *scratches head*. Yeah, I don't think this method of estimation of sleeper costs worked.

I think you're finding something else out by this computation, and it's not the cost of sleepers. After subtracting F&B, there's a bunch of direct costs attached to the Silver Star, but not to the Meteor or Palmetto. How expensive *is* it to detour to Tampa and Raleigh anyway? Apparently very expensive.

Also, what year's numbers are you using for F&B? I've had some terrible apples-to-oranges problems when I try to mix numbers from different years, and unfortunately I only have overhead estimates for 2012.

 

[Anderson]

I just went and checked the count of Keystones in the October 2003 timetable. Horridly dated Acela (offering NYP-BOS tickets for $99 and FC for another $50) notwithstanding, there were nine Keystones each way. Oddly, there were five that originated at NYP (two had connecting trains, two didn't have that) but six that terminated there (the other three had connecting trains). Asymmetrical equipment moves...always fun. Throw in the two long-haul trains and you get 11 trains total.

Now there are a bunch more: 13 Keystones plus the Pennsylvanian (so you have four more trains being credited to the Keystone line, one offsetting the cut Three Rivers).

 

[Paulus]

Well that's a bit disappointing that that didn't work out.

Also, what year's numbers are you using for F&B? I've had some terrible apples-to-oranges problems when I try to mix numbers from different years, and unfortunately I only have overhead estimates for 2012.

Luckily, the OIG's F&B investigation had the numbers for 2012.