What's up with the Texas Eagle

[saxman]

I ride this train at twice a year, and it has been having a fairly good ontime record. Or at least it arrives within and hour or two. But I've noticed the last few weeks, its been arriving between 5 and 10 hours late everytime to its endpoints. What's really interesting is, the Amtrak website will say it is running 18 mins late at say Fort Worth, but it's actually adding about 2 hours to the estimated Chicago arrival time.

And yes, I know its UP, but there has to be more to it then that.

 

[coronado]

I rode the Eagle from Dallas to Los Angeles last week...

The train was almost 3 hours late into Dallas on Nov. 14th and we lost at least another hour between Dallas and Fort Worth due to a broken rail... resulting in a very late arrival into San Antonio... I think around 3:00am or 4:00am instead of the usual 10:30pm or so... I ride the Eagle 3 or 4 times a year and this is the lastest I've ever been

On the other hand, the Eagle/Sunset arrived into Los Angeles 11 minutes early on Nov. 16th, just before 10:00am... we only waited on a couple of freights the whole way between Texas and California... most were on sidings waiting for us... it was a pleasant experience.

 

[Bill Needles]

I read in another post about a bunch of speed restrictions between St Louis and Chicago. We took it from Austin to Chicago in October and it was only about 2 hrs late...apparently its gotten alot worse since then...Bill

 

[MichigantoTexasbyrail]

I rode the Texas Eagle in mid-October. On time out of Chicago Union. It was 6 hours late in to Ft. Worth, where the train was terminated. Passengers continued on buses. This was, as far as I could tell, almost totally because of a tank explosion in the Texarkana yard a couple of hours ahead of us. We were a half hour or less late before that. Endless traffic jam after that point.

On the return, we boarded over 2 hours late. It must not have done well with freight traffic before Ft. Worth. We lost a little more time in Texas. I slept through Arkansas. We were about 3 hour late when I awoke to the first morning light at Poplar Bluff, MO. If on schedule, daybreak should have been just out of St. Louis. We traveled slow all through Missouri. At this point, I knew our Pere Marquette connection was probably out of the question. On the other hand, the Ozarks, in peak fall color, were absolutely breathtaking! If on time, this would have been missed in darkness. We had a delay in St. Louis of a half hour. In spite of hauling serious butt across Illinois, we arrived 4 1/2 hours late, and about 45 minutes after our train left. They arranged for our travel by 26 passenger bus. The Zephyr was about 6 hours late. There were 10 passengers between the two trains who took to the highway for stops served by the missed connections in Michigan.

Texas was the time killer both ways for the train. I figured it was all related to the accident, and would be cleared up soon after. Hmmm. I could have been wrong.