Don,
You’re right, it is cool and a potential big help with my almost daily commute on Amtrak.
Thanks!
- Erik
Will try it tomorrow to see which way trains 21 & 22 the Texas Eagles go. Many Thx IGN
Way cool!!
Looks like the locomotives “squawk” every 5 minutes or so - pretty good resolution for tracking trains.
Don, this sounds like the brief shipboard experience of one of my mechanical engineer colleagues working for a small defense contractor.
This was during the 70’s during the low point of our military, both from a funding and a morale standpoint. Said contractor was on board, dunno, it might have been the USS Ranger – an aircraft carrier but not one of the big ones.
Story told was that they had only one screw (Navy lingo for ship’s propeller) going – kind of like a two-unit Diesel consist down to one unit because of an engine failure. One screw wasn’t enough propulsion to land and take off airplanes, which is the primary mission of the carrier. So what the Captain did was use the fancy radar he had, that was working thank-you-very-much, to seek out a storm where the winds were naturally high enough – he pointed the ship into the wind and launched and landed his airplanes.
Needless to say, this resulted in a very rough and unpleasant “cruise” (also Navy parlance for a time spent aboard an operational ship, in the case of this contractor, for Navy business in installing or maintaining some part of the ship). That and that his sleeping quarters were forward, below deck, and under the catapults that made a lot of noise all night long.
Just as with our (once upon a time) underfunded Navy, our underfunded Amtrak won’t come close to running trains on time. It is that with the GPS, you can keep track of their lateness to the minute and go get dinner, etc. So it is sort of like the fancy electronics in the Navy making up for not being able to keep all their engines going.
Like subway and commuter stations where the sign boards and electronic voices from the PA indicate that 'the next train to Timbuctoo will arrive on track one in 28 minutes; the next train to Podunk will arrive on track two in 14 minutes…please stand behind the yellow line…and thank you for choosing…"…
I just checked and it is following the California Zephyr’s rerouting around Colorado-there is a marker wandering through Wyoming, nowhere near the lines on the map. Looks kind of comical.
At this time (4:35 pm), the map shows #6 (California Zephyr) in Denver–and it is scheduled to arrive at 6:38 pm–the detour across Wyoming cuts the time in transit from Salt Lake City considerably.
Two weeks ago, the passengers were carried between Grand Junction and Denver by bus, since the Wyoming detour was not available. My bus arrived in time for the first class passengers to be checked in and board by about 5:00 pm–and we were able to eat dinner soon after boarding (lunch was on the passengers).
I wonder: does Julie check this report when someone calls and asks how a particular train is running?.
Well, considering that the CZ is going across Wyoming until the washouts east of the Moffat Tunnel are taken care of, the map is fairly accurate.
Maybe a bit less frequently than that. I was using the website to track #565 while I was riding it through the south end of Carlsbad an it showed the train as being in Sorrento valley.
- Erik
I was watching the Crescent this AM, it looks like it was updating every 15-20 minutes. Still, not too bad.
Another neat thing is that it displays speed. Saw a few Acelas on the south end of the corridor at 134-135 mph. Neat!
I notice that some of the + signs are beige, blue or green. When I click (either right or left) on the + sign, nothing gets displayed - even with my pop-up blocker disabled. IE9 browser.
It appears that those + signs are the train status. Green is on time. Orange/beige is late. Gray is 'no info". They don’t “expand”, but the same color coding is on the flag when you get the pop up from clicking on the train “arrow”.
Thanks for the link, Oltmannd. Yeah, yeah, “No. 99, 2 hours late at The Boonies” and all that, but I just looked at Amtrak #29, The Capitol Ltd, westbound. It was 13 min. down at Harpers Ferry, WV but on time at Cumberland, MD. That’s a lot of curvy, mountain running on one of CSX’s busiest lines. California trains running on UP are looking good, too. Amtrak isn’t always “All late, all the time.”
It been kind of neat to look at. The last few days it has been down. Anybody know why? Thx IGN
It’s on their home page now - and it just worked fine for me…