Good Evening how is well all doing tonight fine and dandy. On this end. This afternoon well i was going across the 27th st. Viaduct i got to see the empire builder just sitting on the tracks. It was sitting on track 1. Like it was sitting for a red light or maybe the train went into emergency for some reason but my question is that the train was only about a mile from the station. It was sitting there from probably 4:00 until 4:30 when i went to go and get on the freeway to go back to base. But unfortanlly i did not have my scanner so. I unable to hear the amtrak dispatcher and find out why the train stopped only a few short miles from the station. So if anyone knows anything on this please pass it on. The other thing I got to see today was a Csx train sitting right behind my work sitting for a red light two Csx engines. And a string of Csx grain cars. But by the time i left work the train had gotten a green light and left for the yard on the edge of downtown milwaukee. Thanks for any insights on this.
Well, at least it was on the tracks. It is not a good thing for a train not to be on the track. Impeads the safe and timely performance of duty.
Sounds like there was either a dispatching problem where the dispatcher could not tell where the train was so had everything come to a halt or there was a track problem between the train and the station that required fixing before travelling over that section.
Maybe it was on time?
CC
Where was it (city / state)?? When I took the Empire Builder to Chicago a few years ago, we sat for an hour or more about a mile from the station in Chicago (with the kid ahead of me throwing a tantrum and throwing things at other passengers and such while his parents tried to look the other way). The Builder arrives in Chi-town at the evening rush hour, and Metra or whatever they call the local commuter train line owns the tracks serving the depot, so they only let the Builder come in when it won’t interfere with their commuter trains.
One Saturday morning a couple of years ago I observed the AmTrak east-bound Sunset Limited sitting just short of a grade crossing at Mescal, Arizona, for nearly 4 hours. I later learned that a rail grinder was working the track between there and Dragoon, a distance of about 40 miles.
To make it even more serious, when I mentioned this to a person who knows AmTrak schedules a few days later, he said if it was going east, it was Friday’s train and was running a day late.
About five years ago I was riding No.22, the northbound Texas Eagle, when we stopped and sat for 20 minutes or so just south of Bloomington. I was sitting in the diner across from the conductor who told me that because it was Sunday and there was little freight traffic on the line that we were ahead of schedule. Rather that pull into the station and block the downtown grade crossings until its scheduled departure time, the train stopped and waited outside of town. Incidentally on that particular day the Eagle arrived at Union Station in Chicago 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. Perhaps the EB stopped and sat for similar reasons.
Mark
The Empire Builder that I rode between Red Wing & Milwaukee stopped for 25 min. at Minnesota City due to an electrical fault in the secondary unit.
If it was heading twords the station, it is possible that the train was early (Amtrak, early???) and trains CAN NOT arrive at a destination before it’s scheduled arrival (per the FRA). So, it could be sitting there because it was early.
Phil
When the late,lamented Broadway used to come thru Akron sometimes the eastbound and westbound would arrive at nearly the same time.They didn’t want 2 trains at the platform,so usually the westbound would hold before the station until the eastbound left.
usually grain train or hopper trains are low priority so they would have to wait outside of a yard.if its a csx run through train maybe they had to wait to get back down to csx.csx is a bit crowded now.
stay safe
joe
Passenger trains can always arrive early. They cannot depart early!
Passenger trains cannot depart ahead of the scheduled time for the obvious reason that late arriving passengers would be left behind. I am not aware of any rules or restrictions against their arriving ahead of schedule. Im my prior post I mentioned arriving in Chicago on the Texas Eagle 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled time.
Mark
The Train was going westbound it looked like from the angle that. I saw it from it was on track number 1 and it had to what seemed 3 engines but. I could be wrong and of course it had no mail cars on the end like the olden days.
This was also true for “time freights” (freight trains that were scheduled in the system timetable).