Those who have been following the thread regarding NS’s meltdown in northern Indiana (for that’s what it is) must be wondering, as I am, a few things regarding Amtrak management.
First, why not turn and service the Lake Shore Limited and the Capitol Limited at Cleveland? Since the problems on NS are west of the Forest City, why not bus passengers from Chicago to their waiting train in Cleveland (or Toledo, for that matter)? Whatever the costs to Amtrak they must be preferable to losing passengers forever who in their anger and frustration vow never to travel via Amtrak again.
Second, why no Service Alert or any kind of warning to passengers on those two trains that they will arrive awfully late? As an example, instead of arriving at NYP at an already-stupid hour of 6:35 PM, #48 pulled in at 4:38 AM this morning. Care to speculate about the mood of all aboard that train? Imagine being dumped on the streets of Manhattan at that hour! How many times was the name of the Lord invoked on #48 yesterday? Similar delays are affecting arrival times on both ends, every day with no end in sight. For the love of Mike, why not just tell people?
I should think that Amtrak’s indifference to the fate of their paying passengers would be grounds for a lawsuit under the terms of the Geneva Convention as well as the Eighth Amendment.
Who should we call in Washington to get these points across?
All too true. Amtrak lacks the ability to come up with creative solutions. But the bigger picture has several components: 1. The meltdown of NS E-W line is the tip of the iceberg of impending systemic inadequacies. 2. Trying to run any kind of rational passenger service on the tracks of a hostile host freight line is not going to work. Incompatible goals and practices.
this poster feels that there may be a way to mitigate this problem. Would any of these work ? There are 3 possible ways ? Most delay seems to be happening west of South Bend ?
Route train onto the South Shore from South Bend to Chicago. Probably a directed service order from the STB & FRA would mitigate any South Shore reluctance ?. A restored connection west of South Bend would speed the transition. St. Charles airline into Union station would only require a back up move. Probably all crews are qualified on that portion since the City of New Orleans uses this route. South Shore should have enough spare engineers for pilots until Amtrak qualified ?
Turn trains at Porter ? Some one who knows the area should let us know if there is parking places there for laying over trains and passenger transfer. Cleaning and catering some what doubtful ?
Turn trains at Toledo. Plenty of platform and station track space and able to clean and cater .
Cleveland not good as parking of lay over trains very limited.
Turn them at Elkhart. There’s a nice balloon track in the yard. Bustitute the gap. Things don’t get too chunky until you get near LaPorte. Or, send them to St. Louis!
Or…a couple of panels of track and a hand throw switch with a circuit controller at South Bend and you could run all the way in to Randolph Street?
Do you really think busing folks to and from Chicago to a train somewhere in eastern Indiana or western Ohio is likely to keep the ridership for very long? No way to run a railroad.
Not sure about that, but if service on NS lines continues to be chaotic and unreliable, with delays of 1-6 hours daily, do you really think many folk other than railfans and the air-phobic will want to book a reservation?
If the delays are mostly between Porter and Chicago the trains could possibly be routed over the old EJ&E from Porter to Matteson and then over the CN following the route of the CNO, Saluki and Illini to Union Station.
Another problem with these large delays in the cascade effect. Yesterday, the Builder left Chicago at 4:25 (2:10 late), the Zephyr at 4:27 (2:27 late) and the Chief left at 4:23 (1:23 late). The close spacing of the departures indicates they were being held for the arrival of one or both of the eastern trains.
I forgot about that but I suspect a signigicant number of the delays occur east of Porter so the suggested routing over the South Shore from South Bend would probably be a better solution anyway. This would require changing the Capitol’s schedule since it currently would put the eastbound train on the South Shore at the height of the NITD’s morning commuter rush hour trains into Chicago. Present schedules for the westbound Capitol and the Lake Shore in both directions wouldn’t present any such problem.
South Bend to Chicago on the south shore might work very well. Amtrak schedules on NS is ~ 1:30 both ways. The South Shore schedules are 1 :45. Add :15 to get to / from Union station over the St. Charles line will give only a half hour longer. If the connection just west of South Bend station can be used ( or restored ) ?. If NS can notify Amtrak and SS that there will be delays then route the Amtraks onto the SS.
How much single track is on the SS now so Amtrak could follow one of their commuter trains ? Weekends should not be a problem for pilots but weekdays might be a problem ? To prevent SS balking a directed service order from the STB & FRA would speed re route ?
Amtak crews might be able to qualify quickly since there should be at least some extra board crews ?