Just got a suprise! I am riding the Crescent northbound in two weeks New Orleans to Philadelphia. Just thought I would check how late it is to Phila. today to see how it might be in two weeks. What a shock to see it was in DC when it should have been in Phila., and not only that it was ahead of schedule! Guess what, the schedule changed yesterday. According to Amtrak “In cooperation with Norfolk Southern, the primary host railroad carrier for the Crescent, a new schedule has been developed to improve customer satisfaction and on-time performance.” WOW! Northbound the Crescent leaves NO at 9:15 instead of 7 AM., 2 hours and 15 minutes later. But, it arrives in Phila. at 4:37PM, 4 plus hours later than before. Sounds like a lot of padding to me. Oh well, I can hardly wait to arrive into Phila. during rush hour. We’ll have to see how this new schedule pans out in the long run. (Southbound it appears there is only about a half hour added).
Even in the ‘Glory Days’ of private passenger service - there were no ‘run time’ schedules. When schedules are made to be published to the public there have to be some allowances for unforseen, but relatively normal happenings.
When operating on single track railroads - allowances have to be built in for expected train meets - the busier the railroad the more meets have to be accounted for.
I believe a significant part of NS’s route from New Orleans to Arlington, VA is single track.
See Bob Johnston’s TRAINS analysis “Lengthened Crescent schedule diminishes it’s usefulness.” In my first post I was so used to getting into NO around 8:30 that I forgot to notice 9:05 pm is a hour and a half later not a half an hour from the old schedule.
Increasing the capacity of a rail line to accommodate a once-a-day train that lost $45.5 million or an average of $270.67 per passenger before depreciation, interest, and miscellaneous charges in FY20 would not be a good business decision.
Even so the frieght railroads have declined significantly since the days of the private passenger train and can’t even run their own freight trains on time to schedule, even if the freight train is a “hotshot” they bust the schedules frequently because of lack of investment in their own track infrastructure and the general attitude that profits matter over speed and reliablity.
I remember a while back when Santa Fe was attempting to run the “Super Chief” from Chicago to LA as a hotshot intermodal train. My goodness, all Santa Fe track for 98% of the route and they could not reliably adhere to the “hot shot” schedule over any length of time. Their attempts to charge a premium for traffic carried by the train ultimately failed because it would not stick to the timetable there was always somewhere on the line things would get gummed up and the train would lose it’s schedule.
Look at the Milwaukee’s Thunderhawk and XL Special, geesh, we are talking empty track and empty schedule of competing trains from the Twin Cities to Seattle for the most part and still it ran late in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The crisp frieght railroad management of the 1950’s and before in the time keeping department is long gone and I don’t think we will ever see it again as long as railroad management doesn’t see any money to be made in speed or reliability of schedule. I don’t think you will even see it under PSR. Railroad management just does not care anymore and the customers can go pound dirt if they don’t like how things have slipped.
Agree, and I hold up CP’s outstanding record of hauling Amtrak trains on it’s Chicago to Twin Cities mainline to compare with any other Class 1 in the country. Is CP mismanaged? Or is it just the former Milwaukee Road employees that care? Hate to paraphrase Al Pacino in the movie “The Irishman”, it says something to shippers when your late with a passenger train and they are on the passenger train.
I still remember my long ago experience on the Rocky Mountaineer (RM) on the great circle route over the Canadian Rockies. CN vs CP. Guess which host railroad blew it substantially by at least half a day and blamed track capacity and we all know the RM average speed and schedule…should not have been that big of problem to handle the RM and CP did not have even a small fraction of the issues CN did with time keeping. Of course the RM ride was just a single data point in time so who knows what the annual record is. Then there is the record of the VIA Rail Canadian…guess whose track?
The present Crescent schedule seems to be working. I hope it continues. The later departure from New Orleans IMO needs changing. Either return to the old 0700 time or even better 0600. 0600 allows an ATL departure of 2015, CLT - 0215 make Carolinian conection almost always, Charlottesville - 0730, arrive WASH - 1030 can do business for day, NYP 1500 before rush.
Leave the southbound schedule the same. That will require Amtrak to adjust the crewing of the train. The Meridian - NOL turns to the next morning’s departure of 19. So even now if 19 is very late then the departure of 20 will be delayed even with the present schedule. That is #20’s departure is still dependent on 19 not being too late. 1381 miles to cause a nex day’s departure of #20.
Since Amtrak is already planning on making ATL a mini hub it may be time to use NOL and ATL as crew locations for Crescent to enable this more reasonable schedule.
More opinion: Bad idea unless they plan to spend $100 million fixing the station and the track arrangements. Or just move the Atlanta station to a better area that serves the public better. The current Atlanta station is crap and can barely handle one train a day efficiently from what I read. The station itself is not worthy a city the size of Atlanta.
I agree completely. I used the Atlanta station years ago, and even then it was more like an old stop on a transit line than a major city station. Of course, with the Amtrak service, that’s probably all it needed to be. But if Amtrak wants to provide more and better service, it may need to get Atlanta to chip in to expand the station or build a better one in a better place.
I agree completely. I used the Atlanta station years ago, and even then it was more like an old stop on a transit line (which it was) than a major city station. Of course, with the Amtrak service, that’s probably all it needed to be. But if Amtrak wants to provide more and better service, it may need to get Atlanta to chip in to expand the station or build a better one in a better place.
It was a Southern Railway suburban stop. Most locals called it Brookwood Station, though officially it is Peach tree. To call it crap is ignorant. It’s too small and needing a better location, but it is a very attractive Italian Renaissance architectural style with palladian windows!
If you’ve ever been there, ignorant or not, you won’t notice the windows or the architectural style.
You will notice the stairs, the tiny parking lot, the stairs, the tiny building, the couple of vending machines, the stairs, the poor seating, the stairs, etc.
Spot on! I have been there several times and found the architectural style to be very appealing. I confess to not knowning much about architecture, but appealing is appealing even for the uninformed.
I look at the whole package when it comes to terminals not just the gift wrap. I think Joilet Union Station isn’t exactly a model station either but they sure spent a lot of money preserving it for another use…whatever that use is.
I note, pointedly, that they don’t go into detail about the stairs.
As a kind of neoclassical Amshack, Brookwood ought to be an inspiration for architects looking to build more postage-stamp excuses shoehorned into unlikely plots to ‘serve’ major metropolitan areas unwilling or unable to afford more convenient or commodious facilities.
I had never realized the pun on ‘tolist’ before and I thank you (I think) for bringing it to my attention. [;)]
Slide it down the tracks a little ways to behind Atlantic Station, commercial and retail development. Use the vacant land there or buy out a small company for tear down. Room for 4 or more tracks, a decent sized building, parking structure nearby and room to build another. So back to the original point. They could do better on location, track space, etc before they attempt to make that tiny station a hub and create more issues.
