Passenger Trains > M&E

I have always wondered why Amtrak just threw up their hands and walked away from ALL M&E. I understood that some of it was to the point of being ridiculous like 20 boxcars on the end of the SWC, but a couple of cars of bulk mail or express on the head end CHI-LA or CHI-SEA etc. would have to have done something to help the bottom line. Economies of scale apply to railroads in a huge way and it seems counter intuitive to give up revenue (hello PSR). And it wasn't like the class ones are trying for any of that business. My employer has been running away from it for 50 years and we employees always wondered why the class ones were raising such a big stink with AMTK over M&E when the carriers couldn't give a rats ass about that sort of business, and this was even before EHH and his PSR monster took over North America. Sheesh.

I think they just wanted rid of all MHC, box cars, and road-railers. They were maintenance headaches, and the first two were not as track-worthy when empty. They also required more motive power and more running time, which were hidden costs of providing M&E service. 

When the Three Rivers was in its 180 day countdown period, it was down to 1 locomotive and 1 hour was removed from the schedule, and was more reliable than the Capitol Ltd.. I think it should have remained that way. M&E revenue was gone, but so were some costs. What I heard was that above-the-rail operating cost recovery would have gone from 95 to 65%, still not too shabby comapred to trains like the Cardinal and Sunset. 

Would todays USPS even be interested in using rail to move the mail?
Letter volume is way, way down. Small packages from Amazon is what keeps them afloat today.

My understanding of what happened is that with the mail-handling railcars needing to be replaced, Amtrak sought a long-term commitment from the U.S. Postal Service to handle its business and USPS opted not to make such a commitment. As a result, Amtrak did not order the rolling stock and put a sunset to its M&E business.
 

I thought it was 2nd, 3rd class, and Bookrate mail, not 1st class letters, that Amtrak carried.

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> I thought it was 2nd, 3rd class, and Bookrate
> mail, not 1st class letters, that Amtrak carried.

Amtrak most certainly was not handling 1st-class mail.

Except on the Northeast Corridor when they operated a train that was ONLY mail and express.

I think the real reason, after all was said and done, is that no one at Amtk gave a shit.   Making it work would have been a lot of work, and there's no incentive program, other than personal pride.   No one gets paid to work harder or do a good job.   I worked for the NWS once upon a time.  Started out all bright eyed and bushy tailed, and quickly learned that no one cared....

95% with M&E, compared to 65% without, is huge. 
And if there would be 20 MHC cars on a train, great.  The only ppl who complain about too much business is ppl who dont want to work, imho

A number of years ago on a cold January night in St. Paul, a few pallets of a magazine that must've been published around there were loaded into #7's baggage car for the ride west. I got off in Havre, MT and never did see the publication unloaded before  Montana.  They must've pushed on to Spokane or the coast. I've wondered if they retained that contract.  It required a fork lift loading and would've needed one on the other end also. I want to say that was ongoing during 2014. It was a fair amount of paper & ink.

pdt Wrote:
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> 95% with M&E, compared to 65% without, is huge. 
> And if there would be 20 MHC cars on a train,
> great.  The only ppl who complain about too much
> business is ppl who dont want to work, imho

The numbers I remember, but don't have that e-mail anymore, is direct costs would have gone from $20 million to $16 million; revenue from $19 to $11 million. So $4 million savings to the bottom line by killing 40/41, which is also the amount Amtrak spends on the Chicago misconnect bill annually, which increased when they lost use of 41 as a mop up train, and compromised the schedule of 48 to compensate. All overhead costs west of Harrisburg are now dumped on the Pennsylvanian and Capitol Ltd. 60% of 40/41 passengers transferred to/from other Amtrak trains in Chicago. With that capacity lost, so is the revenue on those connecting trains. So the real savings was negligible. 

 

Who said mail volume is down, what is the source of your information?

pdt Wrote:
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> I think the real reason, after all was said and
> done, is that no one at Amtk gave a shit.  
> Making it work would have been a lot of work, and
> there's no incentive program, other than personal
> pride.   No one gets paid to work harder or do a
> good job.   I worked for the NWS once upon a
> time.  Started out all bright eyed and bushy
> tailed, and quickly learned that no one cared....

Got a couple of those badges.

If I remember correctly, the demise of the mail/express service also involved that host railroads being Really Upset because AMTK was stealing the business that should have been theirs. That they couldn't match the performance was considered to be irrelevant.

Second, all the hew business had to go on existing trains. Performance was terrible. Trains took a lot longer to come out of a speed limit change or slow order. Terminal handling in some places was somewhere beyond sub optimal. Station dwell could get to be somewhere above excessive. Cars that wouldn't stay on the railroad was the crowing touch.

AMTK should have negotiated an additional train similar to secondary trains or mail trains of Olden Tymes, giving the host railroad a division of the revenue. AMTK proved that there was a market, in fact too much of a market.

Some of the existing AMTK trains could have accommodated express and mail in a couple of additional baggage cars without serious performance deterioration, also sharing that revenue with the host railroad. Maybe the host railroad would treat those trains a little better too. That it didn't happen goes back to your first sentence.

TAW
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/19 19:27 by TAW.

When I was working for Amtrak during the M&E years, I saw so much WASTE with the M&E operation, budjet  money used for food for Dinner and Lunches , because of Lax oversight.

Money spent on Bags of Sand to add weight to some of the Boxcars, which tore open and made a mess and became worthless , or using a Retired employee to aquire a Custom built Loading ramp, for something available from a regular Vendor........LOL

As a fairly regular passenger during the years with M&E and road railers, I, for one, did not like the added 10-30 minutes screwing around adding or deleting M&E cars.  The absolute worst was at Albany and the Lake Shore Ltd.  They consistently spent more than an hour screwing around with the additional cars.  One would think they would have the string of cars to be added already assembled and in a stub track with a switcher on the back end to simply add them to the rear of the train once the 449/49 combination was done.  But NOOOOOOOOOO...... As I recall, they used the locos from 449 to first add that section to the train, then run around assembling the M&E cars and finally adding them to the rear of the train, and then running around the entire consist and hooking on to the front and leaving town.

Arrival in Chicago was a similar zoo.  First, we'd drop the M&E cars in front of the shops, then back up over the river and 22nd St interlocking until the locos could take the "Y" track to the west.  Then we'd wait and wait and finally get permission to back into CUS. 

No thanks!  I'm glad to see that circus long gone!

In any rational [ ie, for profit ] organization the labor cost for the transloading at both ends would have killed it.  There was also tremendous exposure for L&D charges such as pilferage or spoilage.
SZ

M&E seems to me to be another example of modern corporate mentality in the U.S. If any money has to be spent or serous planning done in the pursuit of revenue then it’s “business we don’t want” This goes beyond railroading to almost any sector of business in th USA and this attitude scares the hell out of me. What business do we want? I was raised by generations that said having to much business was a good problem to have. Now my employer is happy that we are mothballing locomotives, laying off Carmen, MICs, TE&Y, MOW and even non-agreement.... my head hurts.

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BRAtkinson Wrote:
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> No thanks!  I'm glad to see that circus long
> gone!

Thanks. That corroborated my memory of the situation.

TAW

I was happy pre 1997 because they had it going great, no thanks to EEE's article in Trains, That's when it got bad!

Posted from Android

Why couldn't M&E work on the NEC (or even Keystone or parts of the Empire Corridor), tracks owned by Amtrak where there is a competitive edge over getting people from point A to point B faster than by car or plane even? No evening M&E trains could work on the NEC to get things to and from Washington DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Stamford/Hartford/New Haven, and Boston? 

If any train comes close to breaking even on basic accounting principles, it should be the Auto Train - lots of revenue on the head and and on the rear. It also just took a hit on reducing F&B costs. The Auto Train is supposed to be going after stronger high end revenue (sleeper car revenue), but I guess that still remains to be seen. Auto Train presently just has a dual purpose - move people and their cars. That's about all it can do. Unfortunately, all the rear-end traffic is loaded with cars for those on the head-end, but as a train that goes to point A to point B, it too would be a great train for M&E, but its just not feasible due to its already long length of a train. 

Original M&E plans of the 1990s failed for MANY reasons. Logistical planning, streamlining of operations, securing contracts that would help Amtrak and appease the freight RR's, among other things, all needed better supervision and incentives built to ensure people gave a $h!# as someone else rightfully noted. The BS of putting trains together and pulling trains apart while delaying those passengers onboard was a huge negative and exposed Amtrak's underbelly that passengers were just not going to put up with. Gunn touted M&E was gone and trains would be getting "in and out of Chicago much faster than what they had done before." That was a huge marketing positive.  

ProAmtrak Wrote:
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> I was happy pre 1997 because they had it going
> great, no thanks to EEE's article in Trains,
> That's when it got bad!
>
> Posted from Android

Warrington and Ellis published an M&E growth plan that was a pipe dream and wish list. Some people bought into it - this was going to "save Amtrak." But the freight RR's and other stakeholders were never brought into the conversation successfully. The Skyline Connection, the new England States, the Crescent Star, a re-route of the Sunset Limited, a train through southern Ontario to connect East Coast and Midwest. Great on paper, but none of this had a wishful chance of coming together, particularly in trying to get new routes or re-routes on totally new trackage or trackage that didn't even exist!