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‘Empire Builder’ connections restored as delays drop
The Empire Builder has had much better performance the last week or two.
Encouraging … but the test will be this summer, when BNSF bites off another 50 miles (in North Dakota and Montana) for double-tracking and related work and additional work on the Minot-Grand Forks segment.
Amtrak could have more comfortable connections by negotiating with BNSF to change the current “shorter” schedule which had been in effect for years and was always flawed. In the ten days since returning to its longtime 440 PM departure from Seattle on January 12, the Empire Builder has averaged 40 minutes early at Spokane, 12 minutes early at Whitefish, and 19 minutes early at Shelby (in the case of the Whitefish and Shelby times, the exception was the train of 01/18 which was operating late). If Amtrak was to move those cumulative 71 minutes of dwell to station times between Fargo and St. Paul, on-time performance would improve all the more (in addition, the station dwell in Spokane could easily be cut from 45 minutes to 30). It’s impossible to plan schedule padding so a train is on time at 100 percent of station stops all the time no matter what, but it is illogical to have an eastward train with most of the padding on the west end of the run, as is the case now with the eastbound Empire Builder.
–Mark Meyer
@Mark Meyer: Yes, 40" of “rubber” into Spokane may seem excessive … but Seattle to Spokane being single track, and the route of the 7.79-mile-long Cascade Tunnel, there is a lot of potential for bottleneck delays. The dwell time in Spokane of course is to accommodate switching cars from #28 onto the train. Particularly in winter, with snow and ice clogging couplers, air hoses, and 480-volt jumper receptacles, I’m sure there are many nights when that extra time is needed! There also is about 20" of padding going into Minot, and about 15" going into St. Paul … so aside from coming into Spokane, the rubber is fairly spread out along the route.