Amtrak: The good, the bad, the ugly (and icky)

I live in Charlotte, NC.

I have never ridden the Crescent, it comes through Charlotte at 2 AM, but Amtrak partnered with NCDOT runs two trains that originate in Charlotte and go to DC and back. Every Amtrak employee with whom I have had contact has been very friendly and helpfull.

That said, the train station looks like a bus station and is in a bad neighborhood, however, the City of Charlotte is about to build a new intermodal teminal in city center that will put Amtrak, Charlotte Area Transit (CATS) Linx commuter rail, Greyhound, Shortline, The CATS buses, and the CATS trolley all in the same building complex. The CATS bus will connect the terminal with the Charlotte Douglas Airport (10th busiest in the US, USAirways biggest hub) and the CATS Trolley will go to the convention center, The Carolina Panthers NFL stadium, The Charlotte Bobcats NBA arena, and the new NASCAR Hall of fame.

I just wish Atlanta was as forward looking as Charlotte!

I also wish SC and GA would pony up some money and extend the Carolinian down to Atlanta. We could use a day train through the Piedmont to the northeast. I know quite a few people who would use it.

http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/CATS/Rapid+Transit+Planning/Gateway+Station/CGS+Project+Description.htm

The gateway station of which I spoke.

Let’s talk about the icky:

The icky: the Amfleet I bathrooms. There were in working order, but hardly kept clean and supplied by the coach attendent. I had to hunt up a new pack of paper towels in the one bathroom. On the design side, they are totally inadequate for overnight travel. No real place to change, should you care to, without dropping you stuff all over the floor. No cups that have a bottom to them, should you care to brush your teeth. Bad design, bad supplies, bad cleaning. Ick!

I rode a LOT of trains this summer. The LD trains (29, 5, 6, 3) were fine bathroom-wise. We had pretty decent attendents all round and, almost as important, either 5 or 6 restrooms per car. I don’t know, maybe people were more conscientious, too.

The Amfleets (97, 98, 50), on the other hand, were horrible. On 2 of the 3 trains, several cars had restrooms that weren’t working. There was a maximum of three per car (in some cars there were only two), and the attendants did little to keep them either clean or stocked. On one of the trains we had to argue with the attendant to get him to post a sign saying “out of order” on the bathroom door so people would stop trying to use it!

I READ YOUR VEY CURT MESSAGE ABOUT THE CRESCENT WHICH ORGINATES N NEW ORLEANS TO NEW YORK.MY WIFE AND I WERE ON THAT PARTICULAR TRAIN MANY TIMES,ALTHOUGH I WILL ADMIT NOT IN THE PAST YEAR OR SO.EACH AND EVERY TIME WE RODR THE CRESCENT THERE WAS AN INFORMAL RACE BETWEEN CREW MEMMBERS,PORTERS ,WAITERS,DINING ROOM CAPTAINS,COOKS ETC TO DO BETTER THAN THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS FROM CHICAGO TO NEW ORLEANS WHICH WE HAVE RIDDEN MANY TIMES.I NVER EVER HAD A PROBLEMN WITH OUR SLEEPING ACCOMDATIONAS,MEALS,SERVICE ET6C.THEY WERE ALEAYS VERY GOOD TO EXCELLENT.WHEN YOU RIDE A TRAIN FOR 28 HRS YOU EGT TO KNOW INFORMALLY SOME OF THE PERSONNEL WHO WORK THESEE TRAINS.PEHAPS YU RODE COACH FROM GAINESVILLE,GA,AND TOMY KNOWLEDGE THE COACH PASSENGERS DONT GET THE SAME KIND OF SERVIC AND ATTENTION THE 1ST CLASS SLEEPING PASSENGERS DO.THAT MY THOUGHTS ON THIS TRAIN.

Perhaps the paternalistic attitude that trainmen take toward passengers goes back to the Southern Rwy days? On a number of occasions in the 1970s I rode what was then called the Southern Crescent; you may recall that W. Graham Claytor kept it under Southern’s aegis and out of Amtrak. Claytor also rehabbed the train – even promoting it briefly in Washington and Atlanta media. Except for one waiter (in a real dining car), no one was ever rude to me, but I definitely experienced excess handling in terms of sit here, no you can’t sit there.

One possibility raises itself: everyone mentions the “sea change” the Crescent undergoes at Charlottesville. Northbound, it changes from the Washington, D.C.-bound overnite train from Atlanta; after it hits Charlottesville it becomes a day train, the daily C’ville shopping and culture special. Southbound something of the same thing happens in reverse; above C’ville it’s all about long-distance commuting; after Charlottesville it turns into the Atlanta overnite.

Is it possible that the conductor or trainmen were trying to hold some space available for Charlottesville riders, even if it meant packing the behind coaches a little? What I’ve heard above rings true to what I remember from the tail end of the Crescent’s pre-Amtrak days. I’m not trying to make excuses for the employees, but it almost sounds as though they themselves are going to extra trouble to inconvenience the passengers. There is almost always a good reason for that type of behavior. Don’t NEC passengengers sometimes experience a lot of body-shifting to accommodate the crowd wanting out or in at Philadelphia 30th St?

As for Amtrak in general, seems every journey I’ve had has been like death by a thousand cuts: the “missing” diner, the delays, the cruddy Amfleet coaches whose footrests don’t even work, missing or otherwi

Not a surprise the French Turboliners road well. They had cylindrical wheels rather than conical wheels. All of the high speed French trains do. So did the North Shore interurbans back in the day. As did the high speed equipment on the ATSF.

Conical wheels will always hunt at a certain speed (varies with conical ratio and wheel diameter). The Japanese had hunting problems too until they went with a 1:100 conical ratio (1:20 to 1:40 is typical in US).

We continue with the 1:20 to 1:40 because well we always did it that way. Guess we can’t seem to learn from others who do it better.

Amtrak spills water and derails

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/28/amtrak-train-derails-in-moorpark-california/70366552007/

Note the open escape hatch on the locomotives roof. Nice feature I did not know existed until now.

16 year old thread back from the dead.

Tapered tread, conical wheels, are supposed to reduce flange wear and wear of une inside of curvede rails. i beleve most “cylindricle” wheels stilll have a very slight taper. The North Shore for example,

You have to look very carefully, first at Wickens et al. (and their assumptions) vs. the adoption of low-taper wheels for HSR (and their assumptions).

Remember that the issue involved here is not curve guiding, or radial steering, it is the hunting produced by oscillating ‘miscorrection’ of true wheelset following whether on straight track or curved. Note also that there is an implied ‘mating taper’ on the inside railhead that assists the coned wheels in staying centered in the nominal gauge.

For the cylindrical tread profiles (which do in fact have a very shallow ‘centering’ taper) it is assumed that the root profile of the tread, or in fact actual flange-area contact, will be necessary either for lateral force displacement or curving force accommodation. Unsurprisingly, for true LGV, we’re talking about minimum designed curve radii on the order of 12 miles, with spiraling taking account all the way down to lock in the position derivatives. We’re also probably talking about profoundly damped truck rotation or actual alignment control to make the cylindrical flanges effective, whereas at lower speeds the dynamics work as Wickens indicated to ‘self-steer’ the frame and thereby allow very low pivot and side-bearing friction – something VERY desirable for interchange cars that may go an extended time between receiving maintenance of those areas. (As an interesting aside, there is a long history of ‘independent wheels’ on wheelsets being “innovated”, including the original Talgo and Train X systems and at least one patent dividing a three-piece truck wheelset so the halves independently rotate. Guiding on these is va

Perhaps this is the thread to raise the question, ewhat should be done about wheel profiles on the modern ubiquitous low-floor “trams,” streetcars," light-rail" cars ior whatever you wish to call them. All strikingly modern in appearance and passenger and operator amenities, but mechanivcally simply the old “two-rooms-and-a-bath” design multiplied. In other words, a bunch of four-wheel fixed-truck cars linked together by body sections suspended between them. With the multiplied forces on flanges and rail edges and screech on curves without flange oilers (as compared with cars with swivaling trucks). Any opinions on the optimum wheel profile?