Passenger Trains > The Amtrak Material Control Problem

A common issue with Amtrak is something that Saps Morale, causes trains to leave with Bad Order Equipment. It leads to a Waste of Manpower,and Money

It is common in Chicago, LA, NOL and many more places, perhaps the Whole System

Material Control is tasked with keeping Parts available to Keep Cars and Locomotives rolling and in Good Repair

Say you are assigned to Running Repairs on Amtrak TS # 11 and have a Air Conditioning problem on a Super Liner I car, a Quick fix , maybe change out the A2 Card , it's 3RD shift at 8TH St

You head over to Material Control (MC) , on foot, walking as fast as you can, and hoping no one is looking for you to hook up Amfleet Trains

At MC the Clerk, tells you that item is NIS ( None In Stock ), A Common Problem !
So, you look on your paperwork and use your Handy 5 Finger Discount card and go shopping
Hi Ho Hi Ho, To Pick A Part We Go

At night roaming around in a Dark Car is Dangerous ! , 1st car checked, None, 2ND, none
Forget it, Sign it off NIS and Move on

Next Car is the Diner , both Grimes Coffee Makers are Bad ( At one Time Amtrak had their own people repairing these), but someone thinks it is cheaper to ship them out to a Vendor

They are a Known NIS item, the Diner is a Wheel Pit Bad Order and gets Priority , so you Borrow 2 Coffee makers from another car to be replaced later, since your burning time

You would laugh and shake your head, if you knew of how many different Coffee Makers Amtrak uses, and the Parts needed for each is tough to find many times if you can

The Diner is reported for not having Racks in the Refrigerators or Freezers ( A Long Time Issue ), so the Five Finger card will solve that issue

The Sleeper has a Bad PA (Not the one you wish LOL )Public Announcement unit, ....Again Amtrak had Radio Techs to repair these, and Every Morning all the Bad ones were sent to a On site Radio Shop and at end of shift made available to use
But these get shipped to Wilmington, Delaware and shipped back, love Amtrak Managers who think this stuff up

All I know is these are a Chronic NIS item so you hope you " Find " one soon

With the Then New Super Liner II cars come cars that have VERY few Parts common to Super One Cars

Answer ? Try to Standardize on Material ( Parts ), let Local Employee's do Repair on parts instead of shipping what few Items you have to the other side of the country
Many more things were suggested by Labor, but the company always said no




Yes, it's about Saving Money
Amtrak uses something called " BAM "( Bad order Awaiting Material ), how this works is, that a Car is Bad Order, not making Money, it needs a Amfleet I Decellostat, ( Repaired in Wilmington, DE ) so a BAM Request comes from LA and Wilmington, Flies it out West, Great
Sad was seeing Boxes of Rags shipped out from Back East, when those are available just down the street......LOL

Many times all of this blows up in your Face, the Super Liner you borrowed a relay from, winds up on a train and it won't work because a Relay is missing

Right now Chicago is under Focus, but trust me, these issues are System wide

I do Miss watching Both of the Desert Wind Trains , stopped side by Side on the Main Line in Oro Grande, Ca so the inbound Train #35, can Give #36 Coffee Makers, Oven Racks, Silverware and many other things

What A Way To Run a RR

I remember when Amtrak in partnership purchased the Surfliner equipment with spares . . . In an attempt to recapture capital, Amtrak sold the spares back to Alstom . . . Only to have to buy spares back at a price over what they were originally acquired.

Three words:

reliability centered maintenance


works well on Acela with Amtrak staff and parts store rooms

Where's Joe?

...I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime!

-Des

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Three words:
>
> reliability centered maintenance
>
>
> works well on Acela with Amtrak staff and parts
> store rooms

In my 22 Years, almost every year, a New and Improved Maint system would be rolled out

Who can forget Right And Ready ? and it's cousin Ripe and Ready

Or Cuplet Maint , oh all the Different idea's, all the shifting the Manpower around,

About 1986, a New Plan to improve getting Train #36 The Desert Wind out better, involved inspecting and working on the inbound equipment at LA Union Station
Sounded Great, so jobs were shifted to the Depot, but the process had many Problems
Their were No inspection Pits for the Carmen to get under the Cars,
If the Train came in OT and no one spotted the Train to 480 Ground Power, we were screwed as the Roundhouse wanted their Road Motor
If #35 came in late then we wound up working in the Dark, and all parts were at 8TH Street .
One of the Biggest problems with working #36 was Train # 11/14

We would put a ready to go # 36 together and go home, TS #11 would come in with a BO Car, made worse by a Late #11 and TS 36 would give up it's Coach cars and it's Sleeper or Dorm
Day shift came in to find TS 36 full of BO cars off #11 and only a few hours to make repairs

Wait, this sounds just like Chicago, minus the Snow and Cold

When I was in the Navy aboard ship, a common term was "cumshaw" when acquiring parts and other items.
John

chugchug Wrote:
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> Where's Joe?


Which one? Floridajoe or Joe Boardman?

Thanks miralomarail for showing that the problem isn't just lazy workers at 14th St.
I think this is going to take some people in upper management taking a hit by cancelling trains and being public and honest about the lack of funds to keep a spare parts inventory.

hazegray Wrote:
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> chugchug Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Where's Joe?
>
>
> Which one? Floridajoe or Joe Boardman?

Aren't they one in the same? :)

There used to be a rule that you laid out sheets, blankets, towels, and toilet paper in the sleeping cars at night. The little soap squirter bottles were also quite popular in New Orleans. If you didn't put out expendable items to steal, the night people would vandalize the equipment or worse. Eventually camers and security gates were put up to keep "civilians" out of the area in the daytime, but it did nothing to stop the ingress and egress of "homeless people" at night. This is also the reason the little video players were taken out of the Crescent's viewliners. It also apparently happens at Sunnyside on the other end of the Crescent's journey.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/14 07:51 by NewRiverGeorge.

When Amtrak started up 40+ years ago, the problem was that there were multiple railroads' cars to start with, that were only barely compatible enough to connect the generators from one car to the next. As the equipment varied in age from about 15 years to 25 years old at that time (1945 at the earliest, I'm guessing), from then-gone builders, trying to keep ANYTHING running long enough to get to the endpoint of the trip was more 'art' and duct tape than anything else. Motive power was an even bigger reliability problem!

The problem? Too many vendors, too many unique designs for each railroad, too many parts to keep in stock, if they can be found! Amfleet was a MAJOR step in ridding Amtrak of the plethora of parts, revisions, substitutions and whatever else that was being done just to keep the trains rolling. As the SDP40s came on line, far-beyond 'worn out' Es, Fs and whatever else went to the scrappers. As much as the 'old folks' such as myself remember those 'golden days of yesteryear' when trains had names and were spotlessly maintained by a customer-oriented crew, the only way Amtrak has survived was to have large(ish) orders for cars, thus standardizing the fleet over the years to only a handful of ho-hum (to us) look alike equipment.

Unfortunately, once all the Heritage Fleet cars had been retired and Amtrak had what? 4 or 5 car types to deal with (plus a mix of diners and baggage cars), parts were generally more available when needed than 800 miles away in Baltimore, for example. But the 'whiz kids' of today that are running the show have never learned of the after-purchase 'costs' of now having a fleet of about 10 different car types that I can think of and the costs associated with having enough parts inventory to keep 'em rolling.

I forget who said it years ago, but it's so true: "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it". Welcome to repeat...repeat...repeat...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/14 09:55 by BRAtkinson.

Passengers shouldn't have to bring duct tape with them. But sadly, it's almost a necessity to either keep the curtains closed, block out the PA (one of the good things if its busted) or keep a rattling door in place. Yikes.