I just read in last evenings “Trains Newswire” that Amtrak has temporarily cancelled some trains due to the cold weather. In particular the story singled out the Empre Builder due to cold temps in the Dakotas, etc. Here is my question…I don’t recall hearing of such cancellations back in the “good old” steam heated car days and the trains then seemingly continued to run in just about any weather unless the snow was too deep and them I recall they simply delayed until the plows could open the lines again. Is there something new happening here or is Amtrak simply being overly concerned about equipment failures with the “new fangled” cars and locomotives?
I hate to say it, but I suspect that the equipment and the knowhow to get the trains through are still there. Also present, unfortunately, is the specter of legal proceedings if something should go wrong.
We had a great thread about the CZ on Donner Pass.
I think it is fair to say that extreme winter weather has always caused problems for railroads. At least after passenger trains were dieselized, steam lines freezing would occure. (I had a personal experience with that).
Cold temperatures also cause problems keeping air pressure up on brake lines, and ice formation on both freight and passenger equipment can cause problems.
My guess is that it also has to do with lack of on line mechanical support. “Back in the day” there were mechanical forces at every division point. Seeing that the Builder and the Fast Mail were not delayed at their station was both a requirement and a matter of pride. If ATK has mecanical forces anywhere other than Chicago and Seattle I would fall over in a dead faint.
Mac
1967 Graduate of Wenatchee WA high school. Old enough to have seen it on the GN.
In the 80s and 90s Amtrak could run in any Weather Condition, but in 2000s Amtrak doesn’t want to run in that kind of weather anymore?[2c]
Another issue about Amtrak and cold weather is the toilet. Back in the day, and really not too long ago, the toilet flushed directly to the tracks. (Kindly Flush The Toilet Except When Train Is Standing In Station) They were required to stop that practice and had to install pressured toilets and holding tanks on the older equipment. Cold weather caused problems as the equipment responded rather negatively. I once experienced that and the problem was very evident, we evacuated that car.
It seems Amtrak has a multitude of issues in cold weather, others already mentioned.
I know the problems we encounter with cold weather on our Polar Express trains. With the exception of steam lines, we face all the same issues. And we only do a 12+ mile run.
The main problem is the perishable nature of the cargo. While a load of paper or lumber might not mind the cold, people tend to complain (or worse) when not properly “handled.”
To ‘defeat’ Mother Nature in the weather that is fit as a Winter Wonderland it takes the oldest technology available…men with picks, shovels and brooms and in MASS quantities to keep a property operating successfully. The railroads of today do not have the manpower base to draw from that existed 20 - 30 - 40 years ago. In the day, MofW would assign a trackman to each yard or line of road job that had to either work industries or do station work on line of road in order to get the switches cleaned and operable. That does not happen in today’s world.
While switch heaters are installed on the power switches at most controlled signal points…there are hundreds to thousands of switches that crews must use that do not have switch heaters installed and the only methods of getting them to function is for a trackman to clean them out the ‘Old Fashioned’ way…Brawn and manual tools.
I guess I never understood the big deal about flushing train toilets onto the tracks…there are a whole lot more bears, deer, mountain lions and the like that poop on the ground than the number of humans that would flush their poop onto tracks from passenger trains, so what’s the big difference?
We took the Lake Shore to Chicago one year in february.It was late because the host railroads(CSX and ns) were behind due to snowstorms.As for toilets the only ones available were the 2 in the last coaches of the train.Like mentioned before you don’t want to have passengers stranded in the middle of nowhere in a storm.
stay safe
Joe
Yes, several times I took the Empire Builder round trip from Chicago to LaCrosse and/or Minneapolis and the outbound run from Chicago to LaCrosse or Minneapolis had clean and well stocked restrooms, BUT the inbound run having been occupied all the way from Seattle, the restrooms were NASTY to say the least. I know there are longer stops along the way where crews are supposed to clean the restrooms, but guess what…THEY EITHER DID NOT CLEAN THEM OR THEY DID A LOUSY JOB.
It’s all about maintenance, I think. The steam heat cars in their last before Amtrak rebuilt them to HEP were a disaster whenever it got cold. In the winter of 77-78, Amtrak sent deadhead trains south out of Chicago to NOL to thaw out! Trains were cancelled and annulled all over the place. And, even when it was working, the heat regulation was lousy. Some cars were just barely heated, some were stifling hot. Summer was no better. Keeping the AC going was a constant challenge. Just about every corridor train I rode in that era has at least one hot car in it. Many had condensate drains clogged up and dumped water at the ends of the cars making wet seats and carpeting. Then came Amfleet and the HEP conversions and Amtrak had nearly zero weather problems. Every car was properly heated and cooled no matter how hot or cold the weather. I suspect that Amtrak has not been able to keep the protective heating systems for the toilets up to snuff and they only find out about it when something freezes up. Not exactly good preventative maintenance…
What about moisture in the brake lines freezing and causing the brakes to fail – quite a bit of moisture builds up in the air reservoirs and I don’t think the locomotive air compressors have dryers.
From what I remember back in the 1990s when I was in college, there was a story I read in a newspaper about a guy who was fishing under a railroad bridge in a boat when an Amtrak train went over the bridge. As the train was going over, somebody flushed a toilet.
You can guess what happened. [xx(]
Kevin
Eolafan —
I’d imagine it’s a big difference to the people who work on or walk the track. In their boots, I’d prefer not to be stepping in concentrated piles of human effluent, or smelling it on a hot, humid summer day. Animal excrement tends to be less rich and more spread out than the situation we have here.
I worked with an engineer in the yard who, on his lunch breaks, walked the tracks picking up trash. I once asked him why he did that; it seemed to me like a losing battle. He explained that he was proud of his railroad, and that he didn’t want the public thinking of “the railroad” as being a dingy, dirty, unsanitary place. I think there’s something to that, and I’d say Amtrak’s holding tanks help that image as well.
Best,
back in the mid-60’s I attended the Univ. Of Mont in Missoula and spent Christmas at home near Chicago. One winter the temps were in the -40° range east of the mountains in eastern MT, ND, and MN, and the WB North Coast Ltd was running about 9 hours late due to freeze-ups. My EB train, due in around 5AM, was the same train having been turned in Seattle. It arrived in Missoula around 3PM, 10 hours late. We lost another 2 hours in Fargo while they built fires under the steam lines, and it was sunrise and -45° in Staples. The diner and Travelers Rest cars were frozen solid, so we got a thawed diner in St. Paul. At least we could get coffe and food. We arrived Chicago 12 hours late – but the train RAN!! I pity Amtrak.
While its only speculation on my part, I would not be surprised if some mid-level people at BNSF didn’t “encourage” Amtrak to consider cancelations, to avoid one more problem on ther lines along with their own cold weather equipment problems.
It’s a problem, but there are several solutions. The basic solution is the main reservoirs are mounted at a slight angle and there is an automatic condensate drain at the low end. On top of that, some trains are charged up with yard air at the start of the trip and the yard air systems sometimes have air dryers and an alcohol feed system to improve the quality of the air in the brake system and keep the brake valves from frosting up. Third, quite a few locomotives do have air drying systems on them. I don’t know how well they are maintained, however.
Is it a matter that most AMTRAK locos are DC traction motors and they arc over when snow geets in the traction motors? If the locos were AC (less likely to short out) maybe there would not be those kind of problems. Snow in the drive trains did not stop steam locos just the snow drifts.
If the new orders for locos are AC then AMTRAK can schedule them on predicted snow routes when the ACs are finally delivered. Maybe for the next three or so years AMTRAK can place additional Class 1 RR’s ACs in the lead (high speed gearing if possible) until new ACs are delivered to AMTRAK.
Costs?? would a couple ACs cost about $400/day? Time keeping would be improved and a 2 hr less delay would pay for the extra locos just in crew costs. That does not count passenger delay costs.
Next how much does it cost to rebuilt or repair a damaged DC traction motor subject to a snow caused short?