Passenger Trains > No. 8(31) Down 13 hours this morning

Lunch served passing scenic Devils Lake. Lost many hours in Eastern Washington. Anyone know why?

BB

The whole thing started to go bad at Everett with a failed P42 I believe.
Got worse from there apparently.

Actually it all started in Seattle where the train departed late with an engine that was giving problems, but Mechanical shined it on and sent it on its way with a good-bye wave and a prayer (apparently misdirected).

It continued to be balky and finally totally quit at Everett. Amtrak could not spare a unit from Seattle (Cascade engines can not be used) and everybody sat around until a BNSF train that could spare an engine, meaning one that was coming off the hill, came along. Meanwhile, BNSF had sent their freight trains on up the hill. The bum Amtrak unit was set out and one of the BNSF units was added in the lead to Spokane where it was cut and an Amtrak unit added.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/19 09:50 by GenePoon.

where is all of the "uproar" when an b/o amtrak motor is the cause of a delay?????

66

"Round file it."

-Richard "Flyboy" Anderson

Posted by Smokesignal

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

goneon66 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> where is all of the "uproar" when an b/o amtrak
> motor is the cause of a delay?????
>
> 66



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/19 09:53 by GenePoon.

Another ONE unit train and another catastrophic failure...........

Sounds like Seattle couldn't find the problem to the unit and no spares? Ariline Boy is realy trying to make Amtrak break even, and moves like this sucks!

Like stated above, it all started with a bad motor. The 201 had a radio failure 5 minutes before departure. The passengers were de-trained and they backed up back to the yard. They took an extensive delay in the yard because no locomotives had been "dailyed", meaning they hadn't gotten their daily inspection. Finally, the 79 was found and rather than cut off the 201, they kept it on and put the 79 on top of it. Already 4 hours lost at this point just trying to find a spare motor, they finally got underway shortly after 8pm where they encountered a number of PTC related issues, thus causing the trip to Everett to take almost double what it normally does. Finally at Everett, the train gave up for the last time. Now the 79 would not load, even after multiple computer resets and an engine restart. And it was discovered a damaged airpipe would mean the engine would have to be taken off, barely an hours running time into its 3 day journey. The original plan was to keep the 79 on the lead and just cut it out and have the 201 do the work since mechanically it was still fine, despite the non-working radio. After another several hours, a BNSF train came off the hill and loaned the doomed train one of their motors which had the job of first setting out the 79 and then returning to the lead with the 201. Once out of Everett, they had a bad trip over the hill, train meet wise, a trend that would continue all the way to Spokane until the train arrived just before 11am the following morning, some 10 hours and 45 minutes late, all because of a simple radio problem. Train 28 from Portland arrived (on time 11 hours prior) with two P42s as well, (presume one of them had some kind of issue as its rare for 28 to have more than one engine.) as train 8 which had the 201 and the BNSF motor. The decision was made not to send all the engines through to Chicago. All of the train 8 power, the 201 and the BNSF motor, were cutoff and just the train 28 power went through to Chicago. The 201 waited to go back to Seattle and the BNSF motor was returned to its owner. Just over 11 hours behind schedule, train 8 (31) finally left Spokane around 11:30am. At the time of writing this, the train was up to nearly 13 hours late crossing Montana. Word is the train continued to have issues east of Spokane, mainly due to a high number of train meets and PTC issues. 

Getting to Chicago just about now.  There'll be a connection to 22 today.

PTC Issues all the way? And they said this was gonna work, oh yeah sure, gotta love computers!