Passenger Trains > State of good ?????

The Pennsylvanians used to have good on time records, but lately they have had some issues; like being cancelled for a hyped up storm and NS 
autorouter sticking them behind slow trains. 
On Friday no. 43 left Harrisburg station late so they could unstick frozen doors. Then they got stopped at the Rockville interlocking because the 
dispatcher wasn't able to lock up the crossover switches. The Amtrak conductor got off to look at the switch but didn't see anything obvious, so 
they had to wait for the NS maintainer. It was almost two hours until they got going. They were over an hour late at Pittsburgh, but the passengers
connecting to the Capitol Limited made the connection. 
On Saturday no. 43 left Harrisburg 26 minutes late and then had to stop at the Harrisburg fuel pad and got 1688 gallons of fuel because they didn't 
fuel the engine in Philadelphia! 
On Sunday they left the station on time, but had to wait at the switch from the station track to the NS because NS had left an empty coal train that 
had been waiting for hours out right ahead of them and they had to run on restricting signals until they could get around at the Banks interlocking. 
This time they got to Pittsburgh 3 minutes early. 
1. No. 43 with plenty of fuel on Saturday on the old "Middle division". 
2. No. 42 arriving at Harrisburg on Sunday (early!) 
3. No. 43 on Sunday looking at a restricting signal. 

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How do they forget to fuel the locomotive?

One would think that, after all the problems Amtrak has had with fueling locomotives correctly, they would have insisted on larger fuel tanks on the next batch of engines they buy, but no.....so they will still struggle with unnecessary delays.

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

By your title, you seem to suggest that all of these problems were due to Amtrak maintenance issues.  By my count, you raised four problems, two of which were clearly the fault of the host railroad.  Of the two Amtrak issues, I'm not sure it's fair to blame over the frozen door.  That can happen to any railroad under the right weather conditions, no matter how efficient the crew and maintainers.  That leaves the lack of fuel, which is clearly an Amtrak error.

Just a normal day on the railroad...dealing wih others' mistakes.

But then, none of us can walk on water unless it's frozen.  How many of your mistakes were anonomously fixed by someone else?

You forgot to blame the frozen door on the NWS.

I've never seen a frozen door on the older Budds. They just shovel out the snow, turn the handle and pop the trap.  Seems the newer cars (well, not new anymore) weren't designed for Winter. 

aronco Wrote:
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> One would think that, after all the problems
> Amtrak has had with fueling locomotives correctly,
> they would have insisted on larger fuel tanks on
> the next batch of engines they buy, but no.....so
> they will still struggle with unnecessary delays.
>
> Norm
Due to the 135 ton weight limit on 4 axle locomotives the fuel tanks tops out at 2200 gallons.

Posted from Android

Thanks to that they can go further on a tank compared to when they had the F40s!

Reminds me of one of the times the MBTA broke down. They sent the train out of North Station to Fitchburg even though the engineer told them there was not enough fuel to get to Fitchburg, forget making the return trip back to Boston! Trainmaster told them to take that set anyway. They made it to Belmont and ran out of fuel.