Cancelled at various times intermittently between now and June due to UP railroad trackwork…that is the excuse given. I remember not too long ago when they routed trains around trackwork or had specific operational windows when trains could travel on the track. Cancel the train? Unbeliveable.
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According to an Amtrak advisory, the southbound Texas Eagle will terminate at Marshall on 22 days from March 20th through June 10th because of UP track work between Marshall and Dallas. A bus bridge will take through passengers to Fort Worth, making the same intermediate stops as the Eagle. At Fort Worth passengers for points south and west will board cars that will be turned from the northbound train.
On the days the bus bridge is being used, No. 21 will be No. 1021 and 22 will be No. 1022. The bus between Marshall and Fort Worth will be 3021; the bus from Fort Worth to Marshall will be 3022. The through cars will be No. 421 from Fort Worth and No. 422 from LAX. No. 421 will originate at Forth Worth; No. 422 will terminate at Fort Worth.
The schedule south of Fort Worth has been increase by 30 minutes, i.e. Temple at 5:05 pm as opposed to 4:35 pm. The last time around the Eagle from Forth Worth to San Antonio or beyond was consistently late because of the bus bridge. Today’s train is shown as nearly two hours late at Temple. No. 422 was 2 hours, 8 minutes late arriving at Fort Worth.
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Those days ended with the enactment of Staggers giving the carriers the ability to ‘rationalize’ their operating plants - no longer would there be four and five routes between important O-D pairs. With plant rationalization so went the ability to detour one carriers traffic on to another carriers property with minimal delay as the result.
Now that we have SIX Class 1 carriers controlling most of the trackage in the USA (I don’t consider Amtrak a Class 1 carrier for anything except its ownership and operation of the NEC). There are only so many detour possibilities between significant O-D pairs, beyond that the owning carrier like has those line segments full of their own traffic and likely don’t have the capacity to handle detour traffic - either from operational capacity or crew base capacity. Just because rails exist between points doesn’t mean those rails can handle detour traffic.
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