Passenger Trains > Late Departing Lakeshore...Again !

With the good weather we are having it's surprising the Lake Shore Limited
will depart Penn Station tonight some 2 hrs., 20 mins late at 6:20 pm.
Estimated time of arrival in Chicago tomorrow is 11:40 am instead of the
scheduled 9:45 am.

The train left 58 minutes later than the original estimated time.
Departure was at 7:18pm(original estimates was 6:20 pm) and the
scheduled departure is supposed to be 4:00 pm. So, anyone connecting
to this train who arrived Albany on the connecting train from Boston
today will have a minimum 3 hour wait in Albany. I wonder if
a locomotive at Penn Station had problems or perhaps a passenger
car which needed repairs.

And no reason why 49 was late out of the gate!

And to add insult to injury tonight's eastbound left Chicago
Union Station 1:25 late. Not a good day for either Lakeshore.

Message delivered over the PA at NYP Station was this train was "delayed in Sunnyside Yard due to servicing and maintenance of equipment." This equipment had at LEAST a 12 hour layover at Sunnyside Yard - yet it still had servicing and maintenance issues. Yesterday's inbound/eastbound Lake Shore (3/29), arrived I think less than 2 hours late on (that would be around 6 p.m. or so). So this train set could have been tended to between around 7 p.m. (3/29) until 3:00 p.m. (3/30).

Is this proving the assumption that Sunnyside doesn't seem to deal with problems of train sets at the time they arrive into the yard? Rather protocol is for Sunnyside to wait too long to do inspections/servicing of said equipment. This train has been pretty consistent on leaving NYP late westbound on Thursdays and Fridays.

And Amtrak expects to get this train out on-time with a new later westbound departure time from Chicago (10 p.m.), leading to a later arrival time in Sunnyside (6:45 p.m.) snowballing into less time for Sunnyside to service the equipment etc.

Interesting concepts!

Something tells me the Lake Shore Limited's departure at 10 p.m. eastbound out of Chicago is not going to work in the long run.

Sunnyside has been a hellhole for all of Amtrak's tenure. The place has never worked. The last train of the day gets whatever is left of the equipment in the yard, or cast off from earlier trains. Amtrak has never had a decent night shift at Sunnyside or Chicago. The equipment sits there and rots from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

late engines for 48

ok - the late engine bit started at least last week, with several other Empire corridor trains being late due out of NYP and Albany due to no dual mode engine. So do we have a shortage of in-service dual-modes? The 4:40 p.m. Empire Service train has been late a few times this past week or so due to no dual-mode engines to handle it or the Lake Shore. One day I thought they were going to try and combine the Lake Shore and 4:40 p.m. Empire Corridor train out of NYP. Hmmm....and the turbliners with their dual mode capability are rotting away in storage. If they operated, the Genesis dual modes could be freed up somewhat. But I am not even going into that debate.

Moreover, NJT and Amtrak were planning on leasing some Amtrak Genesis dual modes to NJT on weekends for their pilot NYP-Atlantic City service. However, I've since seen NJT doing test runs with a NJT electric on end and NJT diesel on the other - so maybe they have thought twice about this?