Because few people like riding backwards, or being disturbed to have their seats rotated. Not to mention, the crew doesn't want to turn 150 seat sets around and won't let the pax do it.
But that's just my guess.
I'd say that it's not a very good guess. They turn the seats on the through coaches on the Texas Eagle three times a week. Albuquerque is usually in the middle of the day, so they don't even have to do it while the train is moving. The TE passengers have to travel backwards until the morning.
It is going to make the stop even longer, since it seems that they need most of the currently allotted time to fuel the engines.
I disagree. I do not think they will be turning the seats to keep from turning the train.
Remember, you don't have to come to the station, take the train back to the wye, then come back to the station. The wye can be done on the way in or out of Albuquerque. It would add time, but I don't believe it would be enough for them to reverse the train instead.
I'm not sure with what you're disagreeing.
Your "disagreement" seems to have something to do with how long it takes to wye the train. I honestly don't know enough about how long it would take to either run the engines around *or* wye the train to make a determination as to which one is faster. I simply stated that your assertion that running the engines around the train was problematic because of issues with the facing of the seats was not a good guess, and gave a counterexample. I went on to say that this process (running the engines around the train) would make the stop longer, which seems to me like it would be a much bigger issue.
Wyeing the train would probably be faster than running the engines around it. Plus, you do not need to shut down train poiwer to wey it. In order to disconnect the engines from the train and reconnec them to it, the electric system of the train has to be shut down.
Where the time comes in with the engine runaround is the time it takes to diconnect the power, air lines, set brakes, etc, uncouple, run power around, recouple, connect air lines, connect electrical lines, brake test. You have to throw two switches to do the run around. You have to throw three switches to make a wye move. I see no real saving in labor or time by doing the wye move. In fat, I see the labor in making the power run around as being significantly larger than the labor in making the wye move.
As to the distance involved:
Here are the distance figures taken from an employee timetable of a few years back. (At that time they were available on a US DOT web site.)
Belen ot Dailies: 11.1 miles. This is the route that bypasses Albuquerque
Belen to Albuquerque: 30.7 miles
Albuquerque to Dailies: 27.7 miles
Total going through Albuq.: 58.4 miles.
Therefore going through Albuquerque requires 47.3 more miles of running than bypassing it. This would probably represent about 40 minutes of extra run time over bypassing Albuquerque.
The line from Dailies to Albuquerque meets the line from Belen at East Isleta which is 12.6 miles south of Albuquerque.