Devil's Advocate
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Only in America?
In what country does the business day end at 2:45AM and start up again at 4:30AM?
Sunset Early Arrival
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In what country does the business day end at 2:45AM and start up again at 4:30AM?
Spain. They take a reaaaaally long nap in the middle of the day.
johnny.menhennet
Conductor
Personally, i do not find Fletcher Cove to be too crowded. Moonlight is an incredible beach in Encinitas and is much more crowded, as is the entirety of Del Mar, especially around 15th St./Powerhouse (right at the depot) since parking is hard to find on the rest of Del Mar. Solana Beach has the cliffs that make the beach relatively inaccessible except at Fletcher Cove, where there is little parking. Solana Beach's cliffs may at times be 150 feet, but I would not go for 700. The highest in the county would be right below the golf course and the Gliderport at Torrey Pines. I go to Moonlight Beach all the time since my high school is in Encinitas (San Dieguito Academy) and Moonlight is one of the few beaches where you can still have bonfires, so all of my little clubs (Academic Team, Speech and Debate, Comedy Sportz, etc.) all hang out there. But seriously of you want busy, go to MB at Belmont Park on the 4th of July.
On train stuff, I personally don't see an issue with the early arrival. I'd rather have the train arrive early consistently rather than be late consistently on previous schedules. The people who purchase tix on these runs know what they are in for when they buy. I think the times overall are great for the stops en route. The only thing I still don't like the MOST is the fact that there are no connections from either the CONO or Crescent in NOLA. I know that this has always been a problem, but if Amtrak sees a big market in pax connecting between trains like 14 and 2, then they should look at finding SOME way to resolve this. I know it would be very difficult, but there should have been a solution in the first place.
On train stuff, I personally don't see an issue with the early arrival. I'd rather have the train arrive early consistently rather than be late consistently on previous schedules. The people who purchase tix on these runs know what they are in for when they buy. I think the times overall are great for the stops en route. The only thing I still don't like the MOST is the fact that there are no connections from either the CONO or Crescent in NOLA. I know that this has always been a problem, but if Amtrak sees a big market in pax connecting between trains like 14 and 2, then they should look at finding SOME way to resolve this. I know it would be very difficult, but there should have been a solution in the first place.
Texan Eagle
Conductor
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I don't know how 2.45AM came into the picture and I also don't know what why "business day" is important here, but if you want examples of trains and flights originating and arriving at unearthly hours, I can give you one example- India (or any country in the sub-continent for that matter). I can't find the link now but I remember someone had prepared a nice list on the Indian Railways Fan Club site of 'Trains Departing from Source and/or Arriving at Destination between midnight and 5AM' and it had several dozen express trains. Also, because of Americas (and Europe's) insistence of wanting the luxury of arriving departing at comfortable hours, international flights to and from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh end up there at ungodly hours. Go to any travel sites and check flights from Mumbai to New York or Delhi to Chicago or any such pair and you will see almost all arrivals barring a couple of non-stops between 11pm and 5am. I have experienced this five times by now- reaching Mumbai in the dead of the night and starting from Mumbai in wee hours of the day. Long story short- due to scheduling requirements, trains and planes DO end up at their source or destination at not-so-great hours. It's nothing to lose sleep over nor unique to Sunset Limited. Deal with it. Take another means of transport if you love your sleep so much.
OlympianHiawatha
Engineer
I would much rather roll into LAUPT(S) at 0530 and be able to relax a bit before starting my ground day than arrive at some international airport at 0630 jetlagged, cramped and having to deal with Customs and Immigrations and then figuring out how to get to the hotel, let alone being able to get into a room. And last time I flew into Heathrow, Tegel or Schiphol there was no Phillipe across the street 
henryj
Conductor
LOL, Texas Sunset is in San Antonio. They are just in the wrong place geographically for this train. I am in Houston, so I am very pleased with the new timetable. Back in the good old days when SP ran the train and it was new, the westbound was overnight between NOL and Houston going through SAS around noon. But the eastbound still hit SAS between 3:30 and 4 in the morning. But then there was a second train on the route called the Argonaut. As long as you connect with the Eagle, this schedule is about as good as you can get. If you want to run the Eagle out the Baird sub to El Paso and connect there then you could flip the Sunset schedule and go through SAS during the day. But Houston to NOL would be overnight both ways. We will miss you TS, but I am sure you will be replaced many time over by others who like the new schedule.
Devil's Advocate
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2:45 AM is when the westbound Sunset Limited leaves SAS.
4:40 AM is when the eastbound Sunset Limited arrives at SAS.
4:45 AM is when the westbound Sunset Limited arrives at LAX.
"Business hours" are when most Americans of working age are going to expect most forms of transportation to be available to them. We're talking about the one and only train running between the seventh and second largest cities in the US here. What other country's passenger rail system operates like that?
If Indian flights are arriving and departing at ungodly hours then wouldn't that seem to go against what the European and American passengers are insisting upon? Or are you saying that Indians are the only people traveling between India and Europe/America? Everything I've seen so far has claimed the reason Indian flights leave and arrive at such odd hours is because their infrastructure cannot physically handle it any other way. Is that incorrect?
Maybe you should petition the FAA and regional ATC's to repeatedly delay your flights. I mean, wasn't that the same sort of useless advice you were trying to peddle to us earlier?
Long story short - apparently you're just as bitter and snarky about scheduling as anyone else.
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Texan Eagle
Conductor
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Ok, gotta give it to you on this one. Agreed. No other country's passenger rail system operates like that because any decent country worth its name would have multiple daily departures between the seventh and second largest cities
No. What I was suggesting was that I have arrived at destination at all sorts of god forsaken hours of the night and its not a big deal, so no need to delay flights. Also, sorry my bad I forgot to put <sarcasm> tags around the asking-UP-to-delay-SL "useless advice".
Let's face it...the problem here isn't the train schedule per se...it's that on a lot of routes, there is one daily train, which leaves a lot of folks SOL if the timings aren't great. A lovely example of the side-effects of this include the lack of a decent business train from Chicago to the East Coast (in spite of having two decent ones to Chicago...neither is terrific, but the LSL and Cap both do at least a decent job in this regard). On the one hand, each route only has one train; on the other hand, coming in from the west, each route only has one train.
But even setting connection-related issues aside, there are a lot of cities that get a pretty bad deal as a result. San Antonio is one of them; another would be Salt Lake City, and Minneapolis is another example (though that partly comes from being at the end of a very long route). Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Omaha, and Memphis also come to mind to varying extents (some are decent one way but lousy another; some are awful all around). I know that there are cases that I'd take an additional layover for a few hours if I could have a decent starting time (Salt Lake City, I'm looking at you).
As to the arrival time issue, part of the problem there isn't just that the arrival time is at an annoying hour...it's also that you end up arriving at a time when there's no connecting transit, nothing is open, etc. For example, with a 5:00 AM arrival in downtown LA...there's not even likely to be an IHOP or anything like that, and there simply aren't hotels set up to deal with folks arriving at a super-early hour. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there aren't too many hotels where check-in is 4 AM and check-out is 2 PM.*
*I'm in Holiday Inn's Priority Club, so I've managed a number 2 PM checkouts. With that said, this isn't standard for any chain that I know of. I'd also note that this point is also annoying as someone who prefers to drive through the night and sleep for a good portion of the day as a means of avoiding rush hour traffic.
But even setting connection-related issues aside, there are a lot of cities that get a pretty bad deal as a result. San Antonio is one of them; another would be Salt Lake City, and Minneapolis is another example (though that partly comes from being at the end of a very long route). Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Omaha, and Memphis also come to mind to varying extents (some are decent one way but lousy another; some are awful all around). I know that there are cases that I'd take an additional layover for a few hours if I could have a decent starting time (Salt Lake City, I'm looking at you).
As to the arrival time issue, part of the problem there isn't just that the arrival time is at an annoying hour...it's also that you end up arriving at a time when there's no connecting transit, nothing is open, etc. For example, with a 5:00 AM arrival in downtown LA...there's not even likely to be an IHOP or anything like that, and there simply aren't hotels set up to deal with folks arriving at a super-early hour. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there aren't too many hotels where check-in is 4 AM and check-out is 2 PM.*
*I'm in Holiday Inn's Priority Club, so I've managed a number 2 PM checkouts. With that said, this isn't standard for any chain that I know of. I'd also note that this point is also annoying as someone who prefers to drive through the night and sleep for a good portion of the day as a means of avoiding rush hour traffic.
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The Davy Crockett
Engineer
Could the definition of an 'Amtrak Apologist' be someone who says a schedule change which results in a LD train now arriving into its final station, where nothing is open and no services are available - at 4:30 AM - is not a bad idea? And will try to claim it is a good thing?
I can hear this coming too: "A TRUE railfan would know how to deal with the situation and, in fact, would thrive under such circumstances."
HUH? :wacko:
Who said being a railfan meant being a masochist? :unsure:
And most people who ride Amtrak are not railfans. Look at the expressions on their faces when they hear they might get into LAX at 4:30 in the morning. :blink:
I stay at a hotel when I'm in LA that has been good about holding my bag, and often getting me early check-ins when I arrive on #1 or #3, but I can see the night desk person's face when I ask for an early check-in at 5:30 in the morning.
I can hear this coming too: "A TRUE railfan would know how to deal with the situation and, in fact, would thrive under such circumstances."
HUH? :wacko:
Who said being a railfan meant being a masochist? :unsure:
And most people who ride Amtrak are not railfans. Look at the expressions on their faces when they hear they might get into LAX at 4:30 in the morning. :blink:
I stay at a hotel when I'm in LA that has been good about holding my bag, and often getting me early check-ins when I arrive on #1 or #3, but I can see the night desk person's face when I ask for an early check-in at 5:30 in the morning.
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If we're going to start attacking the passenger rail network in the US because of its poor connectivity in connecting the "seventh and second largest cities" (an arbitrary rule of thumb, if I've ever heard one), I guess the first question is, what other country's seventh and second largest cities are 1300 miles apart?
Michael061282
Lead Service Attendant
they should rename #1 the Sunrise Limited and keep #2 the Sunset Limited... OOOf.. 5:30 scheduled arrival time. I do remember taking the old Night Owl from DC in about 1989 and being in a set off car Amtrak called "The Executive Sleeper" The Attendant told us when we got to NY, To make sure our bedroom doors were LOCKED. And once the car was switched off the Night Owl, he'd stay awake for 30 minutes incase people wanted to get out and streth or whatever but once the car doors were shut they were staying that way until 545am. As the SCA said "Too many strange people in these tunnels"
The only countries with city spacing on the scale of the US are the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China); (the long southern parts of Argentina and Chile are largely unoccupied). Brazil simply doesn't have a passenger rail network anymore (there's one line in one part of the country), which really only leaves China, India, and Russia. And India...definitely qualifies for this. Bombay-Calcutta is around 1200 miles. Shanghai-Beijing is about 1000 miles, and Guangzhou-Beijing (I'm using this as a proxy for Hong Kong) is around 1350 miles. And Russia is Russia.
jis
Permanent Way Inspector
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That's what we were told at a NARP meeting by an Amtrak Management type guy. So maybe that is the Amtrak party position on this matter? I have no way of knowing why he said so.
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Hmm, what about Canada and Australia? If Kazakhstan had major cities on the east and western end of the country, they could be 1500 miles apart.
Anyway, I agree with your previous post about the limits imposed by a once a day LD train network. With a intercity passenger train system that is skeletal at best outside of the Northeast, Midwest, California, NW corridors, impossible to schedule the trains to arrive and depart at all the major cities at convenient hours. Amtrak has to accommodate a limited number of connection options as best as they can.
When UP finishes the double tracking from LA to El Paso and the projects in CA, the westbound SL may end up arriving LA at 3:30 AM. What would happen if the westbound SL schedule were to be shifted to 2 hours later? Back to a longer layover in SAS for the TE, but the TE CHI-SAS schedule could be shifted with an hour later departure from CHI. Which, of course, impacts on the slot availability in CHI and the CHI-STL corridor schedules. With only 15 LD trains, there is a complex ripple effect on any change.
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I think the key point is that the SCRRA does not want the Sunset Limited scheduled into LAX during morning rush hour. If it happened to arrive during the morning rush because it was early (or now late), then they dealt with it. The SCCRA absolutely does not want it sitting from 5:30am (or earlier) into rush hour so sleeper passengers can get some extra sleep. So, at 6:30am, everyone gets off, and the train has to be taken out of LAX to make room for the commuter trains. That is what happens when you are a guest in someone else's home. You play be the owner's rules.
Swadian Hardcore
Engineer
Yes, Canada and Australia both have super-long-distance trains. Argentina actually has some long routes as well. They probably have the best system in South America.
Montanan
OBS Chief
Canada, Australia, and Argentina definitely have geographies that are more similar to the U.S. than most other countries ... and none of their longest-distance routes operate daily. The Canadian of course operates tri-weekly, but the longest-distance routes in Australia and Argentina only run twice-weekly ... so in comparison, we're doing pretty good.
I wouldn't mind the new SL schedule. I work the graveyard shift at my place of employment, so I'm used to being wide awake at 4:30 AM. So for me, the earlier arrival into Los Angeles would be no problem. I have never ridden the SL from New Orleans to San Antonio; it's the only portion of any of the western LD trains I've never ridden. It's on my to do list.
As one who frequently boards/detrains at Spokane, I have empathy for those folks in San Antonio. The hours at Spokane are godawful too. Yet to make good connection times with trains in Chicago and Seattle/Portland, the schedule has to be what it is. The only solution I see is to run another EB 12 hours later. Of course that will never happen. Either that, or move Spokane a few hundred miles either direction. :lol:
As one who frequently boards/detrains at Spokane, I have empathy for those folks in San Antonio. The hours at Spokane are godawful too. Yet to make good connection times with trains in Chicago and Seattle/Portland, the schedule has to be what it is. The only solution I see is to run another EB 12 hours later. Of course that will never happen. Either that, or move Spokane a few hundred miles either direction. :lol:
Devil's Advocate
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Exactly.
Try getting a ride to or from the train station at 2:45 AM or 4:30 AM. Where I live that's simply not a normal request and for anything besides an emergency I wouldn't even be asking. Of course if I had an actual emergency I certainly wouldn't be riding the Sunset Limited. Other than Amtrak there is no other public transportation running at those hours. We do have taxis, but they generally cost around $40-$50 each direction even if you're no more than fifteen minutes away. So now you just added another $80-$100 or so per trip because there is no economical way to get to/from your train. Combining recent increases in ticket costs with taxi fees and you could be paying almost as much as a flight that runs every couple hours for a service that takes five times longer and runs once every few days in the middle of the night.
For some folks this schedule is an improvement. If that's the case then I'm happy for those who feel that way. For other folks this new schedule makes even less sense than the previous schedule made. This is probably the only change we'll see to the schedule for many years so some of us are understandably rather disappointed. Then there are the folks who have apparently made it their mission to challenge anyone who dares to criticize this change. I simply cannot fathom what folks like that hope to accomplish by browbeating everyone else into silence.
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I kind of doubt it because Amtrak has 3 or 4 "dedicated" tracks for multiple Pacific Surfliners, Coast Starlight (10 am and 8 pm), Southwest Chief (7 am & 6 pm), and Sunset Limited (6 am"ish" and 10 pm). Plus 2 "new" tracks will be available in a year or two. One track can only fit one long distance Amtrak train.
EDIT: Fix Sunset Limited departure time.
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henryj
Conductor
I am just reading this with utter amusement. Where was all this angst when #2 arrived in Houston 4:40am and was often early? In all this crying and nashing of teeth I have not read anyone post a proposed solution. I have played with the Sunset's schedule for years since Katrina working on various options. Westbound San Antonio is just SOL. This schedule is about as good as it gets. The only other option would be to leave SAS a little earlier, but you have to allow for a TE that is often an hour or more late. The only way to negotiate a later arrival in LAX is to increase the length of the stopovers in El Paso and Tucson. In other words just add more padding. Eastbound the schedule is just about optimal. I had originally planned for a 7am or so departure from SAS and they got close with the 6:30. You have to arrive in SAS early enough to allow for UP delays so as not to impact the TE departures and you don't want to arrive in NOL exceptionally late. So in my opinion Amtrak has just about nailed it with this new schedule. Historically under Amtrak and late SP #1 has always been scheduled into LAX early in the morning. The only improvement I can think of would be, as I stated above, to have the train #1 dally in El Paso and Tucson a little longer so as to arrive in LAX around 6:30 or 7am. But as many have already stated above, this schedule had to be worked out with the agency owning LA Union Station and the tracks there, but also the UP. So it could be this is the best they could get. Anyway, there is no problem with arriving in LAX early. You just sit down and relax and take your time getting to your ultimate destination. At least you beat the rush hour. Hotels will check your bags for you so you can do some shopping or sight seeing while you wait for check in time. I have done this many times.
the_traveler
Engineer
A few years ago, the CZ left SLC around 12:30 am westbound & 4:30 am eastbound. (Without looking, I don't think it changed all that much.) And SLC is not exactly a small city. No, it doesn't have all those millions and millions of people. When I lived in AZ, my nearest station was Needles, CA - which was served at 1 am & 2 am. Yes, it is a small town - but at the time was the van connection point to/from Las Vegas! And how about #66 & #67 - which get to NYP (a VERY BIG city) at 2 am! Many get on and off both trains in the middle of the night!
the_traveler
Engineer
Just to add, this week I took the Downeaster (after arriving on #66) and got to POR well before noon. I had no problem checking in at that time!
SLC Is now about an hour earlier each way. Provo is the better station for me ( a lot closer to my daughter), but does not even have an AmShack. I got off in Provo last fall, but I may book to SLC just in case my SIL can't pick me up when the train is due to arrive in Provo. I can then wait at SLC or try to get a hotel.A few years ago, the CZ left SLC around 12:30 am westbound & 4:30 am eastbound. (Without looking, I don't think it changed all that much.) And SLC is not exactly a small city. No, it doesn't have all those millions and millions of people. When I lived in AZ, my nearest station was Needles, CA - which was served at 1 am & 2 am. Yes, it is a small town - but at the time was the van connection point to/from Las Vegas! And how about #66 & #67 - which get to NYP (a VERY BIG city) at 2 am! Many get on and off both trains in the middle of the night!
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