C’mon 1,612 passengers boarding a year so far? Why is this even an Amtrak stop? Amtrak should establish minimum patronage requirements before they accept a new station stop. Now I am reading they are going to add yet another station closer to St. Louis…Texas Eagle is slowly becomming a Milk run, in my opinion.
One of many such stops. In ARK, there are also: Arkadelphia 1305 and Malvern 1760. In NC, Gastonia gets 1508. On the 3-day per week route of the Cardinal, you get really low numbers: In WV, Montgomery 639, Alderson 432 and (not kidding folks) Thurmond produces 295. In New York state, the town of Port Kent produces 727. And in PA, N. Philadelphia had a paltry 832.
On the WI CHI-MSP 2nd train thread, one low use station popped up, but with larger numbers. Perhaps those interested can track down others? Go the Amtrak State Fact Sheets.
With these kind of numbers, is it any wonder that much of Amtrak is regarded as a joke?
Excerpt from Nevada County Depot and Museum
James Loughborough was born near Shelbyville, Kentucky, on November 2, 1833. His father served as the land-agent for Illinois and Missouri. Loughborough gained experience in land work by leaving college at the age of nineteen and becoming a clerk in his father’s office. During the Civil War, he joined the Confederate forces and served as a colonel on the staff of General Sterling Price. He was also a prisoner of war for a time. After the war, he practiced law in St. Louis and superintended the land sales for both the Cairo and Fulton and the Iron Mountain railway. His work took him to Little Rock, so he moved his family there. He served in the Arkansas legislature from 1874 to 1875 where his work on the state debt helped improve the financial credit of the state. He died suddenly on July 31, 1876, at the age of forty-three. The city of Hope, Arkansas, was named for his young daughter.
Excerpt from Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis (1899)
If every town that had a history connected to someone in its naming were an Amtrak stop…
I would say any stop with less than 5,000 should be a flag stop. Or if it is a reservation required train, require advanced notice (even as little as 3-4 hours before departure) or the stop is skipped (assuming no one gets off at that station).
I am more concerned about the Cardinal which has many stations with tiny riderships and the train is a waste of money and e
What I would do is put in a on demand local van service to another Amtrak station from Hope and add a surcharge to the Amtrak tickets for it. Close out the Amtrak service to Hope entirely.
Agree on the minimum Passengers threshold. I don’t want to sound like one of the “passenger train nostalgia” folks on here but time schedules do matter. Not only to me as a point to point passenger but I am fairly sure it is more disruptive of frieght operations to have an Amtrak train stopping every 30-40 miles…not only once but twice because the folks in Hope were too cheap azz to put in a full length platform. I would think the frieght railroads would prefer Amtrak to just keep running as much as possible.
I would also cut the stops after midnight to around 5:00 a.m. unless it brings on a lot of people, that would speed up the train time across the route at least an hour or hour and a half. Would be nice for the Texas Eagle to arrive in Chicago at noon instead of 2:00 p.m.
Amtrak does need more flagstops on their schedules or at least use a thruway bus and eliminate some of the intermediate low volume train stops.
Right, because that would mean that the Texas Eagle southbound would roll right through Little Rock without stopping, really making the train totally useless to the state of Arkansas. While I would prefer to arrive home from a trip from the north or leave on a trip southward at a more civilized time than 3:10am, I’ll take it over no train at all.
Presumably you would allow us to keep the northbound Texas Eagle stop since it’s at 11:39pm, but what’s the use of a train that can only take you in one direction?
Any time I ride the Texas Eagle, there’s a good-sized crowd getting on and off in Little Rock, so I’m apparenly not alone in taking the train around here.
As for when to arrive in Chicago, I’d prefer to arrive in the morning, having left Little Rock the previous evening. I’d love to see track speeds increased and schedules speeded up. In the end, I prefer to arrive at all though.
If I were to drive, it’s 10 hours of constant on, plus time to stop at rest areas and for food every so often. And I don’t arrive rested and get no work done during that time. Amtrak takes marginally longer, and I arrive rested and have had time to get work done on the train.
BTW, last time I took the Texas Eagle south from Little Rock, I don’t really recall any stops during the night. Slept right through them, I guess. Woke up somewhere in east Texas.
Little Rock should be retained, as it served 19,676 passengers last year. Some poster pointed out last year that the majority of LD train passengers in the West do not ride endpoint to endpoint (not verified). So perhaps if trains like the Sunset and Eagle were segmented (shorter corridors, such as StL-DFW or SA) better arrival times could be managed. And if the demand were there, daily frequency could also be increased.
I’d be all for making Saint Louis the terminus of the Texas Eagle. That should allow for better times between Dallas and St. Louis, in my opinion. With all the corridor trains between Saint Louis to Chicago. Not much of a hassle to switch trains in Saint Louis. Amtrak won’t do it though because it wants the centralized hub to be Chicago for LD trains.
And they shouldn’t. Transfers suck. I speak from experience. Passengers from Philly and most of PA have to transfer to get to Chicago. I missed my connection. If the Texas Eagle terminated in St. L, you couldn’t go directly from Texas to Chicago and you’d have to transfer twice to get from Texas to the Northeast.
Amtrak is stuck in the past. I hope someone can find the data source for the contention that most Western LD passengers do NOT ride endpoint to endpoint. If that is true, then a logical reconfiguration would make enough sense that even Amtrak could recognize the implications.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t a significant number that do.
https://www.narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/trains_2015.pdf
The Southwest Chief had a ridership of 362,999 in 2015. While most do not go end point to end point, 14.9% traveled over 2000 miles (approx. 54,000 passengers). The second most popular city pair is Chicago to LA (behind Chicago to Kansas City). Similarly, the California Zephyr had 371,089 with 11.8% over 2000 miles (over 40,000). And most of these endpoint to endpoint pairs bring in huge revenue.
Ideally you’d be able to travel from coast to coast without changing trains but one change of trains is still decent. I certainly would not want to go from Philly to LA having to change trains more than 2 times and possibly missing a connection and getting stranded.
I don’t think the concept of long distance travel is a thing of the past. I think certain trains should be a thing of the past and other trains that were a thing of the past should be brought back to life.
I suspect if you delve into the ridership of most all Amtrak trains you will find most ridership is not end point to end point. End point to intermediate point, intermediate point to intermediate point or intermediate point to end point are the options. Transportation for individuals has to accomidate the many variations. The days of a majority of users going from end point to end point by train are long gone.
In my experience of riding trains I can only remember two occurences of riding a train end point to end point - The Panama Limted from Chicago to New Orleans and the Gulf Wind from New Orleans to Jacksonville. All other uses of rail passenger service in my lifetime has involved movement to, from or between intermediate points.
Segmenting sounds good on paper, maybe. When I ride the Texas Eagle, I don’t however see the majority of passengers on the train get off at St Louis (in either direction). So if most passengers are actually going past St Louis, then why force a change of trains on them?
Earlier this year when I was going from Little Rock to Los Angeles, I had choices with Amtrak:
I could take the Texas Eagle to St Louis, River Runner to Kansas City and Southwest Chief to Los Angeles
or one-seat ride from Little Rock to Los Angeles on the Texas Eagle/Sunset Limited
or Texas Eagle to San Antonio, there physically changing trains to Sunset Limited.
Guess what I chose? Right, the one-seat ride.
Thanks for some data, even if it is from a group with an agenda. It does show (as BaltACD says) that on two trains the large majority of LD passengers in the West are not endpoint to endpoint.
Interesting to note that the Southwest Chief is the fastest train to the West Coast time and distancewise from Chicago as well. I wonder if that makes a difference as well on where end point to end point ranks in number of riders as a percentage. I’d take the SWC over the CZ because of the speed. Don’t really care about scenery all that much if an alternate train is significantly faster. They could tighten the schedule of the SWC I feel and make it even faster if they had the money.
At that distance, I don’t think that speed is going to make that much of a difference. If it was an issue, people would fly and save even more time.
The Texas Eagle has so much fat in its schedule that it probably can add several more stops and not have them impact its end-point on-time performance.
If Number 21 departs Dallas on-time it arrives in Fort Worth around 12:30 to 12:45 p.m. However, it is not scheduled out of Fort Worth until 2:10 p.m., which means it sits in Fort Worth for more than an hour. Moreover, if Number 21 departs Austin on-time, it usually goes into San Antonio an hour ahead of schedule.
Speaking of the Texas Eagle, I was planning a trip to San Antonio from Springfield IL. The schedule seems to indicate it takes the train almost three hours to traverse the 63 miles between San Marcos and San Antonio. Is this possible, or am I reading the schedule wrong? I thought perhaps the times represent padding on the part of Amtrak, as a way to decrease the number of late runs. To me, three hours to go 63 miles is unacceptable.
I am not sure how long it takes to get through the various interlockings in San Antonio, but I do not doubt that the padding allows for such. I was asleep by the time we came into San Antonio, (both times I went that way) so I have no real answer.
San Antonio is a through station for the Sunset Limited, but is more or less a stub station for the Texas Eagle.