Passenger Trains > City of New Orleans Follies Yesterday morning

> * Train 58 of 07/28/2014.
> * City of New Orleans
> * +---------------- Station code
> * | +----------- Schedule Arrival Day
> * | | +-------- Schedule Arrival time
> * | | | +----- Schedule Departure Day
> * | | | | +-- Schedule Departure Time
> * | | | | | +------------- Actual Arrival Time
> * | | | | | | +------- Actual Departure Time
> * | | | | | | | +- Comments
> * V V V V V V V V
> * NOL * * 1 145P * 145P Departed: on time.

> * MEM 1 1000P 1 1040P 1001P 1040P Departed: on time.

> * CDL 2 311A 2 316A 321A 325A Departed: 9 minutes late.

> * CHM * * 2 610A * 621A Departed: 11 minutes late.
> * KKI * * 2 713A * 932A Departed: 2 hours and 19 minutes late.
> * HMW * * 2 744A * 1016A Departed: 2 hours and 32 minutes late.
> * CHI 2 900A * * 1108A * Arrived: 2 hours and 8 minutes late.

Amtrak self-inflicted:

Single unit belly up near Kankakee with compressor failure. Amtrak had to
seek the help of evil freight railroad Canadian National, which provided a
switch engine to pull train into Chicago. HEP stayed up.

Hey, how the time my predecessor evil freight company sent me out at tonnage and the air compressor on it seized up, stranding us on single main for hours, and killing 3 trains in the process since none in the area could spare to give us power and we had to wait for it to come 6hrs later....and the crossings blocking a town had people in an uproar, the police threatening us to open the crossings (which obviously we couldnt move)....we need to report that too?

Overlooked, of course, is the fact that Amtrak has an ageing fleet of hard driven locomotives. Mr. Boardman has told us that Amtrak "runs the wheels off" it's equipment to an extent greater than any railroad in the entire world! I remember him telling Mica this; who simply ignored it.

Of course, the practical solution to ageing, intensely used, locomotives is increased funding for maintenance; or better yet, brand new equipment. Try suggesting this to the naysayers, and they will spin it as "wasteful spending"


A better caption for Mr. Poon's Post would be something like: "City of New Orleans Follies Yesterday morning caused by Amtrak's starvation budget"
Then, we could start thinking about a real solution to equipment failures; instead of spinning everything as Amtrak's fault.

Joe

Single unit strikes again! My wife and I were on it a few years ago and our single unit broke down just south of Jackson. Thankfully it was December and not hot. We sat for 5 hours with no power, only the glow of emergency light sticks. They got a freight unit to pull us the rest of the way. They were able to restore HEP somehow once we got moving. We had dinner served about 11 PM in the dining car. Its always an adventure traveling on Amtrak!

I would like to reply to both of the above responses:
FL Joe - If someone could obtain the mean distance between failures on Amtrak P42's vs those on various commuter road power, I would bet tht Amtrak's are higher. The more important issue is the response time to a failure - on Amtrak with each breakdown it seems to take longer to rescue the train that it used to a few years ago. This issue needs to be addressed in order for Amtrak to garner more political support and patronage.
The post about CONO's single unit:
Although it is very frustrating when a breakdown does occur, there are two other factors to consider:
(1.) The CONO has a better on time performance than the SILVER METEOR/STAR, CRESCENT, CAPITOL LIMITED and LAKE SHORE - all of which have two units. I believe that part of the reason is that New Orleans still has some experienced people who care maintaining the power (anyone who knows may correct me on this)
(2.) Recently, when there have been locomotive issues involving one of the two units on the above-mentioned trains, the delays have been surprisingly long. For whatever reason, the crew cannot just show down the offending unit and resume the trip with the good unit in a few minutes.

Andy

> A better caption for Mr. Poon's Post would be
> something like: "City of New Orleans Follies
> Yesterday morning caused by Amtrak's starvation
> budget"
> Then, we could start thinking about a real
> solution to equipment failures; instead of
> spinning everything as Amtrak's fault.
>
> Joe
That isn't the meme Mr Poon prefers. Every incident must always be spun one way and one way only.

Posted from iPhone

twropr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would like to reply to both of the above
> responses:

> FL Joe - If someone could obtain the mean distance
> between failures on Amtrak P42's vs those on
> various commuter road power, I would bet tht
> Amtrak's are higher. The more important issue is
> the response time to a failure - on Amtrak with
> each breakdown it seems to take longer to rescue
> the train that it used to a few years ago. This
> issue needs to be addressed in order for Amtrak to
> garner more political support and patronage.

========================================================

One reason could be that the freights...who have no obligation to keep engines
sitting around just so they can rescue broken-down Amtraks...do not have as many
spare units as they used to. As horsepower has gone up, the number of units on
a train has gone down. No more does one see (for example) ten ATSF units on a
hot freight train out West, as we did when I was growing up. It's a lot more of
a sacrifice to cut out one of three modern units from a fast freight train when
an Amtrak unit takes a dump, than one of ten ALCo Alligators or EMD SD24s.

Another factor: the reliability of modern freight units has gone up. In fact
according to a statistic I found someplace, it's improved substantially just from
the time the Amtrak Genesis units were built, until now. Granted, not every
freight unit is that new, but more and more of them are, all the time. Better
reliability means fewer extra units that the freight railroads will keep around
for their own use in case of a failure, and which they could lease to Amtrak
in an emergency if not needed for their own trains.

Amtrak lost the opportunity to improve diesel reliability when they wrote off
Reliability Centered Maintenance on the diesel fleet. Here was a mechanical
procedure proven on the Acela fleet and previously in the military, yet Amtrak
walked away from it and its much lower cost, compared to going out begging for
free tax money to replace 200-plus neglected diesels. So the neglect continued.

Andy added:

> (1.) The CONO has a better on time performance than the SILVER METEOR/STAR, CRESCENT, CAPITOL
> LIMITED and LAKE SHORE - all of which have two units. I believe that part of the reason is that
> New Orleans still has some experienced people who care maintaining the power (anyone who knows may
> correct me on this)

============================================================

I can't dispute that even though there are relatively fewer Mechanical people in New Orleans
than before. Perhaps being almost a thousand miles from Chicago helps!

Part of the City of NO's better on-time performance can probably be credited to employees of
the Evil Freight Railroad, Canadian National. Before the takeover, when that railroad was
Illinois Central, the City of New Orleans consistently posted an On-Time Performance that was
at or near the top, every month, every year, and far better than what the Silver Service and
Lake Shore could do. A lot of experienced IC dispatchers are still around, showing that they
do know how to run their railroad, even if some of the mandates coming from up top may have
changed.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/14 14:57 by GenePoon.

TO: Gene Poon

No doubt you are using the word "Evil" in a "soundbite" fashion when referring to freight railroads; while hopefully trying to "spin" or "finger point" Amtrak as the cause of their own delays involving the despicable handling of Amtrak trains by the freights.

For better or worse, the Supreme Court will decide if the Freights ARE "Evil" enough for Amtrak to sue for financial damages.

Good Luck, Amtrak!

Joe

PS: also, NARP will be giving testimony supporting Amtrak in a "Friend of the Court" brief. This might help; because the 9 Justices probably don't know a dam thing about railroad dispatching causing delays.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/14 18:40 by floridajoe2001.

To Gene:

Keep on posting. I don't see spin when I see something like this. I see reality. Some folks on this site simply don't want to hear anything bad about Amtrak, no matter what it is or how often it occurs.

As for Tuesday morning's 58, a close relative of mine was the a/c and had to deal with 300+ angry passengers who were less than 50 miles from their terminal for a couple of hours. CN provided the Kankakaee "switcher" as a rescue unit, and they limped into Chicago a couple of hours late.

While CN as a host railroad is a pain in the EOT for many reasons, their dispatchers do, in my opinion, a fair job getting the six Amtrak trains over a single-track, very congested railroad (north of Centralia). There are a lot of "pull in behind two, meet three and back out" meets orchestrated by Desk 6 that help keep delays to a minimum on those really crazy busy days.

Bottom line is that road failures occur too frequently and nobody except the crews on duty on the trains seem to care. The other issues will be around forever, and that is the lack of funding and [seemingly] lack of qualified leadership at the top.

timecruncher