I noticed that Amtrak is thinking about changing the consist of the Empire Builder, and I was wondering whether anyone had ideas as to the ideal train length for the Empire Builder route, keeping in mind that the train has to be split at Spokane.
Passenger train length is too short to really cause any braking issues. The big operational problem is station platform length. If they have to make multiple stops at a station, it can affect time keeping. When I worked for the cB&Q, we had a combined Morning Zephyr/Empire Builder/North Coast Ltd that ran over 25 cars. This was the day before Memorial Day when the train where split up for the summer. Making 3 stops on the short Winona Jct platform resulted in a 20 minute delay.
Amtrak’s big issue is getting more equipment - The Empire Builder is always running short on sleepers.
Jim
The pro-forma numbers for the Empire Builder show that approximately 87,000 passengers will book sleeping car space in FY12. The trains offer 102,200 to 122,640 rooms or 204,200 to 245,280 spaces for sale during the year. The difference depends on whether the train has a transition sleeper to Seattle or whether it uses a portion of one of the sleepers for the crew.
I understand that the train has three sleepers to Seattle and one sleeper to Portland. That was the case when I rode the train two years ago. And I rode it in the first week of December, which is clearly not the high season.
Assuming one passenger per room, the average room load factor would be would be approximately 85 per cent to 71 per cent whilst the average space load factors would be approximately 42 to 35 per cent. The actual occupancy rate would be somewhere between the low and high estimates.
The overall load factor for the Builder was 60.9 per cent through August 2012 vs. 62.8 per cent for the long distance trains as a whole. In FY11 the overall load factor for the Builder was 57.5 per cent.
Given these numbers, whilst it may be a good decision to add cars to the Builder during the high season(s), it does not appear that they would be required for most of the year, which means that they would have to be stored and, therefore, would not earn any revenue whilst idle.
The key question is whether the incremental or marginal cost of the additional space (coach and sleeper) would be offset by the incremental revenues. I suspect that management has looked at the issue and decided that it cannot justify the additional space.
This post has been corrected and updated.
Sleeping car space can also be affected by ’ shorts’ - Like someone booking space between Chicago and Fargo… That space is now tied up and Chicago-Seattle passengers will not see a room the first night out. We took the EB a few years ago from Winona to Seatlle to meet an Alaskan cruise. I was able to get sleeping car space WB, but we could not get space EB. I kept checking and finally got a cancelled space while in Alaska! I am not sure if it was cancelled by an individual party or was part of a group bock that was released.
Jim
Or they might be useful on other routes, like New York-Florida, in the EB’s off-season.
Bingo, surely one of the flaws of the LD rail-passenger model. I thought of this a couple of months ago, when my wife and I enjoyed a roomette on the Builder for the 12 hours (daylight both ways) between Minot and Whitefish, Mont. I had booked 10 months ahead of time to ensure the space – always a good idea – and I’m sure some other poor soul wanting to go Chicago-Seattle was subsequently out of luck.
They could not be used on the New York to Florida services because Superliner cars cannot operate north of D.C. They could perhaps be used on the Auto Train if demand warrants it. The average load factor on the Auto Train for FY11 was approximately 68 per cent, which is considerably above the load factor for the long distance trains and well above the average load factor for the system as a whole.
I’m missing something here It seems to me that if you have 245,280 rooms and 87,000 are occupied by one person that is a 35.5% rate. If the average occupancy is 1.5 people per room the occupancy drops to 23.6%. What did I misunderstand?
For the first 10 months of last fiscal year, the Builder had 70,027 sleeping car passengers, so I can accept the 87,000 as a reasonable yearly figure. However, I’m wondering about the 245,280 rooms available. Is that the result of an analysis of the Builder consist or did it come out of some Amtrak report?
Finally, I’m disturbed by the (apparently widespread) reports of trains sold out of sleeping car space and the results being calculated here.
Your correct. I mistakenly mixed rooms and spaces; I have corrected and adjusted my original post.
Seeing that AMTRAK does not have an excess of equipment especially sleeper the off season would be a god time to do preventive maintenance and rotate some equipment.
To be flipant — when enough equipment is available – long enough to carry everyone who wants a reservation can get it with 3 days notice. ( that allows time to make up consist in CHI / SEATTLE and maybe even spares in St. paul / Spokane).
Yes, even more difficult is reserving a particular type of space when there is only one of it regularly on a train–as ordinarily there is only one drawing room in the equipment of the Canadian. From the time of our first trip across Canada, in 2003, my wife wanted to ride in it–and I was able to reserve it, for our fourth trip across Canada, from Vancouver to Jasper and from Jasper to Toronto, in April of 2009, by putting my request in at the end of August, 2008 (we also took advantage of the fare that enabled us to ride in both the U.S.A. and Canada for one price, which is no longer available).
I don’t “get” this thing about a long passenger train having to make multiple station stops.
“Back in the day” the concern was whether the airlines could board/disembark a 747 “jumbo jet” without having to use multiple boarding ramps. I remember seeing “concept” drawings of the then proposed 747, showing boarding ramps at multiple doors, including “bank shots” of cantelevering a boarding ramp to an over-the-wing door.
Don’t know about the A380 super jumbo, but it seems the airlines manage, no, they actually enjoy herding the passengers on and off even their biggest jets, all through one door. The only reason, it seems, that they have more than one door is for an emergency situation, such as a hard landing, where they have to get everyone out of the plane in the Federally mandated 90 seconds.
So why then would a passenger train that is longer than the platform, need to make multiple station stops to allow boarding and disembarking from each of the individual train cars? Especially for an intermediate station stop, couldn’t passenger be directed to use the doors from only certain train cars?
The Texas Eagle makes two stops at Taylor, as well as several other stations in Texas, if it is entraining or detraining first class and coach passengers.
Taylor has a very short ADA compliant platform. It has a longer non-compliant platform, but the crews don’t use it to load passengers, in part because of the verification process described below. Detraining passengers are permitted to get off the train onto the non-ADA portions of the platform, if the coach attendant opens the door and places a step stool on the platform.
Numbers 21 and 22 have the sleeper ahead of the dinning and lounge cars. The train stops first for sleeping car passengers. Once they are on-board, it pulls ahead and stops again for coach passengers.
The conductor examines each passenger’s ticket before he or she is permitted to board the Eagle. They do it at the ADA compliant platform to cover any mobility challenged passengers. Having the conductor verify each ticket before a passenger boards the train is a TSA requirement. After the conductor looks at the ticket, the car attendant looks at it and directs the passenger to her room or gives the coach passenger a seat check and tells him which car to sit in.
Once the train is underway, the conductor will check each coach seat passenger to be sure that she has placed the seat check above her seat. He is also checking to see who is getting off at the next stop. This takes about 10 minutes.
If coach passengers board through the sleeper, they have to walk through the lounge and dinning cars with their luggage to get to one of three coaches. This can be a minor albeit not insurmountable problem. If sleeping car passengers entrain through a coach, they have to tote their luggage through the dinning and lounge cars to their room, although one would think that the sleeping car attendant could handle this problem.
Another reason for the two stops, so I was told by a UP employee, who may or may not know what he i
On the northeast corridor line at least Amtrak does exactly that. It is common to open doors on only 3 cars and to direct passengers alighting to use those doors. It really is not a big deal.
Certainly, on the Northeast Corridor, you have few passengers who may have to manage two suitcases and a laptop computer through several cars after boarding or before detraining. It can be different for passengers at stations along the way of long distance trains–especially where there is little or no platform at the door of one of the cars. Four and a half years ago, my wife and I boarded the northbound City of New Orleans at Greenwood, Mississippi (a train crew change point). The sleeper was stopped at a spot where the platform ceased to exist, and I do not remember just how the attendant and I were able to get my wife up from the ground to the floor of the car, even with the help of the step. When we last went through Greenwod (two and a half years ago), the situation was better, with more ballast on the ground (we had boarded in Jackson), but it still was not perfect.
If the public really begin to utilize the passenger train services in remote areas that most long distance overnight train tread maybe Amtrak will begin to order cars that have retactable steps.In the meantime maybe those stations that have double stopps will extend their platform with asphalt or provide some stepladders. If this cannot be done then the on board crew can detrain passengers at on point and hand any excess baggage to them or a sttation attendant
Johnny,
You have a good point about boarding problems at certain stations such as Greenwood, Mississippi. However, it seems to me that to accommodate a passenger with a disability it would be reasonable for the train, after others had boarded, to simply back up or move forward enough so the the person could board from the platform.
John
I C,
If we are able to go to the moon it is ridiculous to think we are unable to allow passengers to get on and off a train.
John