ALBANY, N.Y. Amtrak has suspended passenger train service in upstate New York west of Albany through today due to severe cold and heavy snow.
All Empire Service trains west of Albany, including Utica, Syracuse, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Toronto and intermediate stops, is cancelled. Amtrak plans to arrange bus service in lieu of the cancelled Empire Service trains.
The daily Chicago to New York City Lake Shore Limited train has also been cancelled between Chicago and Albany.
Brings to mind “Empire Builder” Big Jim Hill who left the comfort of his private car when his train got caught up in a blizzard, grabbed a shovel and started digging out the train with the crew…“long ago and far away…things like that don’t happen nowadays…”
I was having similar thoughts this morning when I heard on the radio over breakfast that they were closing some schools due to the kids having to stand our in the cold (-13F at 6:30 a.m. this morning) waiting for the bus…boo hoo, I WALKED to school (about three quarters of a mile each way) in that kind of weather back in New York back in the 1950’s and 1960’s with no problems other than being cold but I was all bundled up by Mom. These days kids (and adults for that matter) don’t seem to have the common sense to dress properly for the weather.
Well since its close to -50 up here today, I doubt there will be any trains running. Wont rail snap at a certain temperature? And Yes, school is closed.
I cannot ever recall that ever happening when the line was operated by Conrail - at least after the '78 blizzard in Buffalo. CSX is strictly a fair weather operation.
csx has that section of track now.with the lake effect snow etc etc.they are going to run their trains first before any amtrak trains. back in 86 when conrail had the line our westbound train was held up because of extra traffic on conrail.
Actually the cab heater is not that effective on an 1860’s style steam locomotive. About the best you can get is 40 degrees F about ambient. Thus at -50, cab temperature will be a balmy -10. Remeber the back of the cab has to be open to allow shoveling. Also at those temps. water starts freezing in the tender and feed lines. No water - bad scene. Our historically accurate Rodgers has steam lines to keep the tender lines warm and a steam hose to warm tender water. Cold weather causes lots of things to go wrong on steamers.
oh yes it happened when Conrail ran the show. Also NYC. Either cancelled or very very delayed. The problem is a combination of a lot of snow (in the feet per hour range) (it’s called lake effect) and a lot of wind. Gets into the switches (particularly in the Buffalo area) and raises holy whatnot with operations. Switch heaters can cope, up to a point, but when that lake effect gets really cranking they are actually worse than nothing, as the snow melts just enough to form ice – which has the consistency and general properties of a poor grade of concrete.
What I really love is that bit about busses replacing the cancelled trains.
Don’t look now, Amtrak, but the combination of heavy snow and near-zero visibility is causing 18-wheelers to jackknife on the NY Thruway. Or were you planning to route them south - say to I-40?
Or, as I like to joke to my cutomers from warmer climates (that are genrally areas of earthquakes or hurricanes, I might add) when they exclaim that I must be nuts to live where it gets this cold (minus 18 as I’m typing but we have had a slight warming trend over the last few days), “A little 30 below zero keeps down the riff-raff” LOL!
OK. But compared to CSX’s attitude of throwing in the towel at the hint of a bad forecast, at least Conrail made the attempt to keep Amtrak moving. I don’t ever recall a time when ALL the trains west of Alb-Renss were cancelled due to weather.
