Recently, I was reading about Amtrak on-time performances and I noticed a parenthetical notation that seemed to say O.T. was counted as within 30 minutes of scheduled arrival. I got to wondering, what was considered “on time” in days past? We’ve all heard that the Century or Broadway, in their heyday, were watched to the minute-and the stories of the trains so erratic that you had to check your calendar to see if it was late or not. Aside from the “who cares” days of trying to drive people away, what was considered late enough to be late?
Depends on your point of view.
Dispatching trains was to the minute. You were either on time or you were late. Period.
Until the airline value system of being “On-Time” was put into use by the railroads, it was the dispatching definition. Then it went to “within 5 minutes”, then 10, then 15 and now to 30 minutes of the schedule.
I can remember at Portland (Oregon) Union Station, if a train was even one minute late, it was shown as such. Now, it may be as much as an hour late before the time is shown as LATE.
I think Amtrak uses a sliding scale based on miles. The minimum “grace” is 5 minutes sliding all the way up to 30 minutes for the LD trains. When you add in that there is another 20 minutes or so of padding in the last leg of the schedule, the 30 minutes grace seems excessive.
But, Amtrak has lots of company. The airlines will card 2 hours for a flight that’s in the air only 1:15 or so - and their on time performance isn’t any better than Amtrak’s.
I think back in the heyday of Milwaukee Road Hiawatha service the railroad considered on-time performance to be within only a couple of minutes of the scheduled arrival time.
In some long-ago issue of Trains there was an account of some sort about one of NYC’s crack trains. The engineer was issued orders that said something to the effect of “do not arrive in Albany before…”
Imagine that today…
when I first started flying regularly between AUS and DFW, the flight was scheduled for 50 minutes. That flight is 183 miles and 32 minutes of in-air time. Before I gave up on the airlines and started driving the same flight was scheduled for 60 or 70 minutes. Now I know the Austin is politically a bit left of the Dallas area - but I didn’t know it had drifted that far.
then a year or so ago, we took the Texas Eagle from CHI to AUS and I expected to be 30 to 45 minutes late and we actually arrived 15 minutes early.
dd
If an Amtrak train is greater than 15 minutes variance from it’s scheduled arrival, it is counted as late. In the specific case of the Empire Builder, the train receives priority dispatching only if it is within 20 minutes of scheduled times.
Back in the days when Timetable and Train Orders was the method of operation on Single Track lines (with and without Automatic Block Signals) ‘Wait:’ orders were a common Dispatchers tool to advance inferior trains against superior scheduled trains. The train order would be stated as
No 25 Eng 1425 wait at A until 925 AM and wait at B until 955 AM.
By rule, inferior trains were required to be clear in the siding 5 minutes prior to the time specified. This type of train order would leave the meeting point between the two trains up to the abilities of the inferior train to operate to those points by the required time. The realitiy of the situation would be that the times specified by the Dispatcher would be 5 to 10 minutes prior to the REAL time the Superior train would arrive at those points. This type of operation, as opposed to a ‘take siding and meet’ order provided flexibility to the inferior train to make the best possible move without delaying the superior train. The ‘take siding and meet’ order casts the meeting point in stone, regardless of how well the trains are operating.
In this case, however, we’re talking NYC’s 4 track Water Level Route, and the train may well have been the 20th Century Limited. He had the run of the railroad, but wasn’t supposed to get there too early…
I also remember a reminisence of a NYC bridgetender who had a fireboat follow a barge through his open span and thereby stabbed the Century for about 5-10 minutes. Even thought the delay was legit, he still had to write 2-3 reports up the chain of command to explain what happened. One train, one delay, one time. And the Lake Shore now has an average OT performance of ???
Yep, there was a time when on time performance of the passenger trains was the top “clear the decks” priority of of the railroads. In fact, if the goal was to make up some time, exceeding speed limits was tacitly allowed.
Try that today.