Passenger Trains > Reduced Capitol Ltd. consist

Did anyone spot the new, reduced-consist Capitol Ltd on the Hyndman video
this morning?

Train 30(20):

Two engines
Two Sleeping Cars
Cross Country Cafe
Coach Baggage
Coach

Baggage Car, Transition Sleeper and two Coaches dropped; Coach Baggage
replaces one coach and Baggage, Cross Country Cafe replaces full Diner
and Sightseer Lounge.

Cross Country Cafe serving regular dining car menu and
regular Sightseer Lounge menu, in the respective ends of the car.

Reduced consist to continue until the middle of the week before
Thanksgiving.

This evening's Train 30(21) has been reported from a computer readout
as having the Transition Sleeper...six cars.

Comment on the reduced consist by a regular Capitol Limited rider:

> I am a regular user of trains 29-30 between Washington and Chicago.
>
> My experience is that the coaches are rarely sold out, except at peak
> travel seasons, such as mid-June - mid-August. In off peak periods,
> there are often a few sleeper rooms unoccupied. Also, the diner
> easily handles the demand in the off-season, and I would be surprised
> if everyone cannot be accommodated in the diner-lounge.
>
> Unfortunately, I must suspend my travel on the Capitol Limited until
> such time as the Norfolk Southern meltdown is resolved. My trips are
> for business purposes. I have no problem with a delay of an hour or
> so, but 5-8 hours makes the trip worthless.
>
> So my choices are to fly out of Trenton, or out of Philly or
> Newark.

Looks to me like the delays have been somewhat less than 5 to 8 hours recently.
Is 2 to 3 hours acceptable?????

One 62 seat Superliner coach bag car and a full Superliner with 12 lower level seats. Grand total of 136 seats. Not many.

Posted from Android

cashfare Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One 62 seat Superliner coach bag car and a full Superliner with 12 lower level seats. Grand total
> of 136 seats. Not many.
>
> Posted from Android


Ah, but some posters can now truthfully write that the train is sold out!

Last winter I rode the Capitol Limited to Chicago from Cleveland and it had just two coaches then. Of course it also had the Sightseer lounge and the dining car. So, having two coaches is not necessarily unusual during times of less than peak demand.

GenePoon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Comment on the reduced consist by a regular
> Capitol Limited rider:
>
> > I am a regular user of trains 29-30 between
> Washington and Chicago.
> >
> > My experience is that the coaches are rarely
> sold out, except at peak
> > travel seasons, such as mid-June - mid-August.
> In off peak periods,
> > there are often a few sleeper rooms unoccupied.
> Also, the diner
> > easily handles the demand in the off-season, and
> I would be surprised
> > if everyone cannot be accommodated in the
> diner-lounge.
> >
> > Unfortunately, I must suspend my travel on the
> Capitol Limited until
> > such time as the Norfolk Southern meltdown is
> resolved. My trips are
> > for business purposes. I have no problem with a
> delay of an hour or
> > so, but 5-8 hours makes the trip worthless.
> >
> > So my choices are to fly out of Trenton, or out
> of Philly or
> > Newark.


Report from another regular Capitol Limited rider:

I too am a regular user of 29-30 between Washington and Chicago. While I find the delays agonizing (although they seem to be easing as of late), I still find the Capitol Limited a better alternative than flying. My trips are also for business purposes. The eastbound even if on time gets into Washington after lunch, so there is usually no time to do any business that day anyway, and the delays simply give me more time to work on the train. The westbound is a little more problematic, and has caused a certain amount of difficulty, but I would never (whether flying, driving, or taking the train) be so foolish as to schedule my business so tightly that a few hours would make a difference. On some occasions, if the day of the week works, I have taken #51 back to Chicago--if business goes after 4:00pm you can't take the Capitol that day anyway. It's a pleasant way to decompress between public commitments.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 06:58 by Ptolemy.

Usually I find Mr. Poon's quotes from "unknown" persons worthless--but NOT this time.

One sentence really stands out, and beautifully captures the damage NS has done to Amtrak's business:

***** "I have no problem with a delay of an hour or so, but 5-8 hours makes the trip worthless" ****

Since the NS (and BNSF) meltdown has rendered SO MANY Amtrak trains "worthless" to the public, for a VERY long time, we can only hope the affected trains can recover.

Also, here's hoping the STB becomes aware of the damage inflected on Amtrak's business by the freight railroad's service failures; and uses their power to render financial assistance to Amtrak.

Joe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 07:41 by floridajoe2001.

Ptolemy's quote sounds like it was written by a railfan. The businessperson I quoted is not only a railfan, but
his business is with a railroad company that runs passenger trains.

Westbound he allows an overnight hotel stay
before the meetings he must attend (no "Amtrak was late" excuses) but if the Capitol arrives
as late as it had been doing, he misses some pre-meeting get-togethers, for which he would have
to skip another day at his regular work to spend another hotel night in Chicago.

And did you notice where he now flies from? If the Capitol misses its connection to the
Pennsylvanian, he finishes his trip with a few hundred miles on a bus.

It is not all Amtrak's fault. But for him, until the present situation improves, and it appears to be
on the way to doing so, Amtrak will have to forego his full, refundable fare and his usually top-bucket
Sleeping Car charge (he actually saves money by flying though all else being equal, he would
rather not). This is what transforms the train from a good, recommendable, usable conveyance for
business travel, into Novelty Transportation where the timetable is fiction. The Pennsylvania
Railroad would be embarrassed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 07:54 by GenePoon.

As part of the subject, I agree with other posters who have said that the Capitol cuts back to 2 coaches regularly during off-peak periods. I think this includes October and November and again in January through much of the Spring.

What appears to be new is operating 2 sleepers and the report that the crew is now in the 2nd sleeper. That will remove about 5 rooms from the inventory.

I'll certainly miss the lounge car. That's the best part of a ride on the Capitol, especially if one of the attendants is thoughtful enough to turn off the fluorescent lights upstairs. There's still plenty of lighting available from the overhead aisle lights and the reading lights. I wish Amtrak would make that the standard on Sightseer lounges, turning off the overhead fluorescent lights. It allows viewing outside, and with the reading lights and aisle lights there's still enough lighting for pasengers to walk, or sit and chat or read.

To; Gene Poon

Ah! "Novelty Transportation". You haven't used this negative sound-bite in a long time.

This is how you defined Amtrak--long before these delays happened. Correct?

Joe

No, I don't think Gene Poon defined "Amtrak" as novelty transportation. But he has defined long-distance trains (and undependable short-distance trains) as that on a few occasions, and I have to agree.

When a train operate with 132 seats and 1 1/2 sleepers, and it takes 5 on-board employees, 4 Engineers and 6 Conductors/Asst Conductors to staff that train, and when it requires 3 (or now 4, I guess) sets of very expensive capital to provide the service once a day to those few passengers, and the schedule is fiction, for whatever reason, then, yes, it's novelty transportation.

If you disagree, what do you say to the thousands of small towns in this country who subsist without a passenger train? And do you really believe that a once-a-day Amtrak long-distance train provides economic value to the town it stops in? Havre, MT, maybe, with the local caterer making some money providing food to the train, but Del Rio, TX? Anniston, AL? Wendover, UT? And really, do you think that Miami or Ft. Lauderdale cares if Amtrak comes or goes? Or Southern Pines, NC?

I don't like the lack of public-transportation options for all of the thousands of towns in our country who don't have it, but I don't think that Amtrak provides a meaningful service on its long-distance routes.

There's a photo of the Silver Star on the posting about the Long Bridge. 2 engines, 4 coaches, lounge, diner, 2 sleepers and a baggage car. Crew is accommodated in the revenue sleepers. 59 seats per coach, maximum of 236 coach passengers. I'll guess that there are 8 on-board employees, so that removes 8 of the 24 roomettes from sale, leaving 4 bedrooms, 16 roomettes and 2 Accessible rooms. Crew changes at Washington, Raleigh, Hamlet, Jacksonville and Winter Haven, I think. 31 hours between New York and Miami. 4 sets of equipment. It's a tremendous amount of capital to transport the number of passengers who can be handled on 2 jets that can probably make 2 round-trips a day between New York and Miami.

I love trains. I ride trains. But, yes, for most of the vast expanses of our country, they are novelty transportation. And for those in the Northeast, where there are frequent trains, the leisure traveler faces a difficult decision in whether to pay Amtrak's fares, even on the Regional trains. Right now, at 11:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, the trains for the 90 miles from New York to Philadelphia cost $136 for an Acela Express, $54 for a Keystone, and $93 for a Regional. A dollar a mile for the Regional! At 2:00 p.m., the Acela fare goes up to $153. I'm glad that Amtrak can command these fares, but it's not for leisure or family travel.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 08:45 by knotch8.

floridajoe2001 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> To; Gene Poon
>
> Ah! "Novelty Transportation". You haven't used
> this negative sound-bite in a long time.
>
> This is how you defined Amtrak--long before these
> delays happened. Correct?

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

This was how a railroad official defined a specific Amtrak train when it
was suffering delays equal to those on the Water Level Route over the
past few months. That may have been before you showed up here. The
problem predates your 2001 arrival.

-GP



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 08:55 by GenePoon.

GenePoon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ptolemy's quote sounds like it was written by a
> railfan.

It was not. But of course I think you believe that anyone who prefers the train is a "railfan." Is anyone who prefers to fly an "airfan"?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 09:20 by Ptolemy.

There are so many posters on here who whine about the low body counts on other Amtrak trains, saying they should be cancelled and nobody would care. Do those same posters feel the same way about the Capitol Limited now that the truth is told about how few people really ride it? We already have a perfectly good (Cardinal) train between Chicago and Washington DC, so why do we need two? Etc. Etc.

Thinking that a fully packed superliner coach might be sounding almost a little bit too much like a modern airliner. What next, start charging for luggage? Stay seated while the train is in motion (since there is nowhere else to go and there will be no standees allowed for the restroom due to security concerns)?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 09:17 by NewRiverGeorge.

To: Knotch8

You did a good job of stating how few long haul trains Amtrak operates; but you fail to see the cause being Amtrak's starvation budgets.

See the disconnect?

Joe

PS: don't forget the opposition of the freight railroads (remember the U.P. and a daily Sunset?)

Ptolemy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


> Is anyone who prefers to fly an "airfan"?

For the most part, those that prefer to fly are called the general public.......


All jokes aside, "airline geeks" seems to be the preferred term.

Posted from iPhone

I don'tt think most of those that ride the NEC are called railfans either. It has something to do with the LD aficionados it would seem. I also have not heard the clientele of the Auto Train referred to as railfans by too many people for that matter. But somehow, some think that those that ride the Silvers are in that category. So it is unpredictable.

While Amtrak's long distance trains probably don't carry that many passengers traveling from end to end -- I don't have the statistics, but they are most likely out there -- I do know that there are many times rather large crowds traveling along subset distances of the full route. SF Bay Area to Reno is one, Denver to Glenwood Springs is another in which I have often observed full coach loads of folks boarding and alighting.

Many of the in-between segments, such as Reno to Salt Lake City, may not pick up much traffic, but I certainly appreciate the availability of a daily train from Emeryville to Glenwood Springs, and in most years have at least 3 or 4 roundtrips on this route.

One passenger 3 times per year is certainly not enough to support a full train, but only in the most off-peak of off-peak travel periods do I find the coaches quite empty. And regardless of time of year, it seems that the sleeper-nights are at least 80% occupied.

I've ridden the Capital a dozen times in the last 4 years, and it always has a healthy passenger load. There is a lot of turnover during the night.