Nostalgia & History > From the vestibule - SP messing around with the Sunset

September 1978
It was tough in the late 70's riding the Sunset Limited especially where I noticed it between Houston-New Orleans.
The Southern Pacific did everything it could to slow it down by sending it into sidings for freights etc.
Amtrak may have sued them later ? - not sure but things certainly improved in later years.
Here somewhere in east Texas the eastbound is headed into a siding with another train ahead of it.
I don't remember but we may have backed out later - that certainly happened sometimes.
We were waiting for SD40 8436 leading a westbound.

Gary

 

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It wasn't just the Sunset limited that got stabbed by SP. The Texas Chief and later the Lone Star were often hindered with aggrieved slow orders and random delays along the stretch between Rosenburg and West Junction.  One of the reasons Amtrak left Houston Union Station was to get the Lone Star off the Harrisburg line in south Houston.   10mph track with switch jobs not clear of the main were common.

Oddly , in that first picture do I see a Yellow Santa Fe locomotive occupying the siding with Amtrak?

gcm Wrote:
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> September 1978
> It was tough in the late 70's riding the Sunset
> Limited especially where I noticed it between
> Houston-New Orleans.
> The Southern Pacific did everything it could to
> slow it down by sending it into sidings for
> freights etc.
 

Re: very late Sunset Ltd. trains in the 1970's, an Amtrak agent friend of mine told me that Amtrak did sue the SP over excessive delays . When I rode Amtrak #1 to LA from San Antonio in the 1980's the train was on time. In AZ there was a SP employee on the train keeping records of any delays . I remember hearing him in the sleeper hallway asking the engineer "How soon will we be at 70 mph? He was carrying a 8x11 notebook to mark the train's progress. 

Hou74-76 Wrote:
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> Oddly , in that first picture do I see a Yellow
> Santa Fe locomotive occupying the siding with
> Amtrak?

I can't tell what that yellow item is.
I thought it might be a caboose but the image is not very sharp.
Gary

wonder if you backed out?

dan Wrote:
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> wonder if you backed out?

I don't remember but probably did.
Gary

Still happens as four years ago I rode westbound #1 and somewhere west of Del Rio I awoke stopped in a siding and after an eastbound passed we backed out and took off westbound around the train ahead of us in the siding.
JB

UP951West Wrote:
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Amtrak did sue the SP over excessive delays . 

Was this the case where the Judge actually went
for a cab ride to see for himself the conditions that
Plaintiff Amtrak was complaining about? 
Or was that another case?

It looks like Gary's train was given orders to enter the yard at Echo, which is between Orange, TX and the Sabine River bridge, where the SP's Lafayette Subdivision mainline crossed into Louisiana.  I zoomed in on that intermediate signal in photo #3 and it looks to says '2 (something) 2 . (something)' and the west end of this yard was just west of MP 252 on the Lafayette Subdivision.  The track layout and the curve west of the signal matches the west end of the yard that was on the north side of the mainline at the west end of Echo. I believe the yellow thing ahead of the Sunset Limited is a covered hopper.  This part of the Lafayette Subdivision was timetable and train order territory according to Lafayette Division ETT #128 effective 4/24/1977 and ETT #132 effective 10/25/1981; Echo had a train order office in both timetables.

See page 30 for a 1982 track chart in the vicinity of Echo and Orange:  https://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/SP/SP%20Track%20Charts/SP%20Lafayette%20Div%20Track%20Chart%201-1-1982.pdf.  Nowadays, there are three tracks, which may all be CTC, that round that curve at Echo.

Here are links to the aforementioned employee timetables:
https://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/2-Zukas/12/SP/1977-04-24SP_Lafayette128-Zukas.pdf  See page 2 of the .pdf
https://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/2-Moore/035/s/1981-10-25SP_Lafayette132-Moore.pdf  See page 3 of the .pdf

Here are coordinates to plug into Google Maps or, better yet, the viewer on the Historic Aerials website: 30.150422, -93.738943 

Matthew



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/24 16:24 by Roadmaster.

Second unit on the westbound behind the SP 8436 appears to be an L&N GP30.

mike woodruff
north platte ne

CPMorris Wrote:
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> UP951West Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> Amtrak did sue the SP over excessive delays . 
>
> Was this the case where the Judge actually went
> for a cab ride to see for himself the conditions
> that
> Plaintiff Amtrak was complaining about? 
> Or was that another case?

I have not heard of this taking place. --UP 951 West

I think a famous incident occurred at Live Oak TX where SP had a local which was parked on the main with no crew. Both Amtrak and everything else couldn't get around it. And calls to the dispatcher went like "Why are you calling me about it? Just figure it out yourself,"

I think the case of SP vs The Sunset Limited (known as WW3) proved that SP was in a continual meltdown with trains were parked everywhere. The investigations revealed that SP had a seriously fouled up railroad all the time.

One thing that is never mentioned when putting Amtrak in the hole is that over all time lost is often less by letting the freight train rip by at track speed.    

On The Coast Line, here in SLO, CA.    The early days of Amtrak before Superliners took over The Coast Starlight it was almost always on time or very close.   While I cannot say anything about how they operated the Sunset Route, over here the SP did a great job of running the wheels off The Starlight and keeping good time.    It did not really start to fall apart until the idiots in Omaha bought SP.     AND,  when the Starlight was hours late AmRoad would cobble together a "stub train" out of Oakland and run it on the Starlight's schedule so that passengers between SFO and LAX would be on time.    The buffs here loved it when that happened as that little train would have a pair of X-SP FP7's and mix of day coaches and a lunch counter diner.   Now where are my Kodachromes of all that??????????

Richard