Passenger Trains > Engineer's crew districts Florence, SC to Miami for 97/98

The engineer's crew districts seem to keep changing south of Florence, SC. For the most part, an engineer would run Florence to Jacksonville, FL, Jax to Miami, FL.  Then it seemed to have changed to Florence to Savannah, GA, then Savannah to Jacksonville, FL, then Jax to Orlando, and finally Orlando to Miami. Then it went back to the original way without SAV and ORL as change points. What is the current procedure? Maybe they haven't changed that much, but it seems it has. 

Sounds like the runs were cut in half to bring them under six hours scheduled, so they could be single engineer operations.  More than six hours requires two engineers. BSB  

Unless there was a new agreement with the union, I thought it was a 2nd engineer was required if the trip was over 8 hours. Still, the operation south of Florence, SC seems to keep changing..

There has never been an 8 hour rule.  The 6 hour rule used be a 4 hour rule.  When Amtrak wanted to change it to 6, Mr. Kenny with the BLE assured us it was on paper only, there would be no change.  Took no time to prove that wrong, and I see it's still going on with people and their families being displaced and forced to move all over to keep the job.  Great news to hear we still have a SOP.

Auto-Train, which has two engineers, I believe, seems to make the Florence to Sanford (between Jax and Orl) segment in about 9-9.5 hours consistently.  About seven hours to Jax if all goes well, in my experience.

No intervening scheduled stops

Whatever the case, my question remains......

Doesn't seem like they are saving anything. If they have 4 single engineer districts or 2 longer districts with 2 engineers covering the same distance.  You still have 4 engineers involved. 
I can't see any savings.
Mike

Amtrak math. You and I are not authorized to understand.