Passenger Trains > I guess nobody noticed...

...or nobody cares.

...or it's not worth mentioning.

Amtrak Track-A-Train went down about twenty hours ago...shortly after 0100 PT on September 13.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/20 21:41 by GenePoon.

I hadn't noticed yet. It does look like they have it back up at the moment. 

No still not working 10:30 pm PST.
Dennis

Posted from iPhone

All it does is generate "why is train XX late YY hours at XYZ" posts here on Train Orders.

just getting us ready for tri Weakly service

I suspected something was wrong when it didn't show 5 or 6 on Donner yesterday.

JB - Omaha

I've looked at it several times in recent days; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

It has probably been relegated to the class of the timetable. One of those "unecessary nuisances".

Here it is 11:15 am Monday morning and the tracker is still down on Transitdocs.
However, Dixielandsoftware seems to be trying to keep up.

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA

JimBaker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here it is 11:15 am Monday morning and the tracker
> is still down on Transitdocs.
> However, Dixielandsoftware seems to be trying to
> keep up.

Dixieland uses Amtrak Train Status as its source. Track-A-Train and Transitdocs use telemetry from the controlling locomotive to CNOC.

I quit looking at it 6 months ago. Why track anything unless you use it to bitch about a late train, which is most of them every day. Started watching Flight24 again, more entertaining.

I found it useful to know when I should be watching the various webcams to spot trains as they passed.

But one for which I frequently used Track-A-Train and especially Transitdocs was Virtual Railfan's Cajon Pass...but it has now gone Pay-To-Play.  Others for which they are useful are Plant City FL where the Silver Stars pass twice, once in each direction to/from Tampa; and Skykomish WA.  There isn't an Amtrak station near those, so Amtrak Train Status and Dixieland are less useful.

If you actually ride Amtrak, knowing where your inbound train is can help you avoid unnecessary waiting time in your departure station, know when it's safe to go get a bite and return in time to board, etc. Likewise if you're picking up someone from the station. 

Or to put it differently, Amtrak created the website feature without Trainorders in mind.