Friends of ours traveled on the Texas Eagle from Chicago to Austin, Tx. before Christmas to spend holiday time with family there. Going by train for the first time was to be part of the joy of the trip. Only got as far as St. Louis. Engine trouble. Waited six hours there while repairs were attempted with no success. Finally, Amtrak put the passengers, 400 of them, in hotels. Friends’ son was able to separately arrange hotel overnight and airline tickets from St. Louis to Austin the next day. They canceled their trip back by Amtrak and flew home instead. Another chance for Amtrak to shine, and it gets a shiner instead.
1 Like
Travel - no matter the mode of transportation has and will always have issues that result in delays of one variety or another.
3 Likes
For FY24 the average All Stations On-Time Performance for the Texas Eagle was 56.6%. The average Customer On-Time Performance was 62.5%. The average number of minutes late per rider was 90.
I take the Texas Eagle from Temple to El Paso or Tucson a couple times a year. I do not plan on departing or arriving on time.
It is relatively rare for the Eagle to be cancelled, but on more than one occasion Number 21 has arrived at Fort Worth so late that Amtrak terminates it there and puts the through passengers on a bus for San Antonio or intermediate stations.
2 Likes
Without knowing how much of the delays are due to locomotive problems, would a straightforward approach to improving the reliability of services be to have additional locomotives on the head end incase one goes off line. Almost back to the Rainbow era when they counted on locomotives breaking down.
No.
Most Amtrak delays are not locomotive related, however, when locomotive issues are the cause - getting replacement power is a time consuming affair no matter if that relief power is Railroad or Amtrak. Neither Amtrak or the Railroads routinely have ‘free’ power available to sub in for failed power.
Amtrak does not have sufficient number of locomotives to routinely overpower their trains.
1 Like
According to the September 2024 Host Railroad Report, in FY24 Amtrak was responsible for 22.9% of the delay minutes on the host railroads. Engine related failure was responsible for approximately 14% of Amtrak’s delay minutes.
1 Like
Total delay minutes is not a good way to measure locomotive delays. In most all cases, engine issues will accumulate hours of delay per incident. So, only a relatively few engine issues can ring up a great many delay minutes. If Amtrak wants to make an accurate statement '30 engine failures for 3030 minutes…nor just 3030 minutes of engine delay.
I agree, but as far as I know that information is not publicly available. All I could find was what I posted. The key point, however, is engine delays, as you mentioned above, account for a relatively small percentage of Amtrak’s delays on host railroads.
It may be that there is some kind of probable HEP failure thast Amtrak is concerned about. Many European carriers seem to have the HEP or similiar cables located higher up than Amtrak’s If snagging one or more cables is a problem then maybe it would be best to run some trains with locos top and tail. Then if failure then rear could provide HEP to some cars for heat?
The biggest problem with HEP connections is the continuity check circuit built into HEP. That circuit means a conductor is going to have to connect HEP lines up to re establish the continuity circuit.
Interesting point about the HEP failures. It makes sense to consider the design differences between Amtrak and European systems. Running trains with locomotives on both ends could definitely help with reliability. It’d be great to see Amtrak adopt some of those practices!
Interesting that HEP is getting fingered. HEP was the fix for steam trainlines, DC axle powered generators, batteries and DC driven Air Conditioning and lighting - which were horrible.
No matter the kind - if it is not properly maintained it will fail.
1 Like
For sure. HEP is soooo much easier to maintain than all that DC crap that used to be…
What is the DC crap you are referring to?
This is why Amtrak and dependability is an oxymoron. Yes things fail. I get that. But when I rode the TransCanadian and a logging truck hit it Via flew us onwards.
When I took the Southwest Chief and a flood blocked the tracks Amtrak simply shrugged. Their response was to spend the night on a non moving train and then they would Greyhound us the next day to LA. I asked for a refund and hopped on a flight to LA.
In both cases we were in first class sleepers. See the difference?
Onboard generators and batteries on each car supplied electric power. Which wasn’t very much either. Just dim lighting and maybe fans. No heat. No AC.
AC was run off axle generators and batteries from the 1930s, and was the ‘staple’ technology for ‘regular’ lightweight cars by the late Forties when Kiefer noted its effect in the 1947 survey of motive power. There is a tractive-effort curve there which clearly shows the steps as the individual cars kick in their Spicer generators.
Some of the early streamlined trains had separate trainlined electricity – there is a picture in the Clessie Cummins autobiography of a :“Zephyr equipped with Cummins engines”, which will make you blink in surprise until you realize they were gensets for lighting and /HVAC. For general Pullman service, the idea of a standardized, expensive, critical trainline supply was probably ridiculously expensive, and railroads would likely have balked at being required to supply both the equipment and the generation capacity – as opposed to burning a bit more coal to pull an increased trailing load that only kicked in after initial acceleration.
Amtrak has (sensibly, imho) banned axle generators or anything else driven off running gear – they require PVs to be fully compliant with their system of 440V HEP.
1 Like
AC as in Air Conditioning as opposed to Alternating Current. With Balt’s question about DC, I figured it would be good to remove the ambiguity.
FWIW, a number of railroads were using gensets to provide power for the Air Conditioning prior to HEP. Some of UP’s early “City” streamliners used HEP, with the somewhat surprising finding that using electric resistance heating powered by gensets used less fuel than steam heating.
I won’t get into steam ejector A/C…
Our older Canadian cars still have the DC connectors in place, albeit unused, and many are still carrying the generators, disconnected. The batteries are long gone.
Air conditioning was often via steam (even the cooling).
Was on a business trip some years ago, flying. Our “puddle jumper” was held out of Philly for weather, and we had to land elsewhere for some fuel. By the time we got to Philly, we’d missed our scheduled flight. After three gate changes due to lack of available aircraft, crews, and I forget what else, we finally got out about six hours later (11PM-ish). At least they fed us. The youngster who insisted he wanted to play with his noisy game almost got lynched, though…
Axle driven generator, spicer drive and clutch, lead acid batteries, and lots of motor driven devices like blowers and compressors…all of which have brushes.
HEP stuff is bullet proof by comparison.