Passenger Trains > No. 43 had problems today

Today I didn't get out, but was listening to the scanner as Pennsylvanian no. 43 arrived and departed from Harrisburg.
P42DC no. 43 has been faithfully running between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh since the beginning of September but it
died coming to a stop at Harrisburg, 3 minutes early. They decided not to risk going on with it so they switched to the
"protect engine" P32-8BWH no. 513. NS was given the railroad back to run trains while this was taking place. When they
were ready to go at about 3:23, the NS dispatcher told them that they would have to wait for another eastbound, NS 11R.
The 11R climbing around the sharp curve to the Lurgan line went into emergency due to an airhose problem. That took a
while to fix. They finally left at 4:40 PM and hour and 4 minutes late!
As far as I could tell listening to the scanner, everyone handled their job professionally, safely and expeditiously.
I didn't hear the Amtrak engineer complain about having to run a P32-8BWH, although this same engineer once when the NS
dispatcher asked him what engine he had when he was running one, he said; "It's not much of an engine"!

Considering that the P32 has 1000 HP less then a P42 the Engineer does make a point!

If they left at 4:40PM......they would have been 2 hours and 4 minutes late! 43 on 10/4 got stung by 11R going into emergency twice for air hose problems at the same spot.

Jon

Sorry, I meant to say two hours late! Duh! I was there on the 4th, they were almost 3 hours late that day!
Whenever they get delayed by a freight train the conductor needs to get the train symbol for his delay
report. One day the dispatcher had a whole list of train symbols for them. Actually the NS dispatchers
usually do a good job of keeping the Pennsylvanians on time. The Harrisburg Terminal dispatcher is always
telling trains they have to wait for Amtrak or they'll be following Amtrak. Obviously today it wasn't
their fault.

It still sucks since the delay wasn't gonna be that much worse when 11R arrived, but when it had that problem, all hell just broke loose and how many people on 43 were upset because of that!