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Passenger Trains > RPA statement on canceled trainsDate: 01/24/25 10:01 RPA statement on canceled trains Author: OnTime For those who complain that RPA is MIA on this issue all you need to do is go to the RPA website, click on "happening now" then "news" and you will see this statement on the issue by CEO Jim Matthews:January 24, 2025 By Jim Mathews, President & CEO
It was deadly, bitterly, life-threateningly cold this week throughout the U.S. =inheritThe worst of it was in the upper Midwest and our northern states along the Canadian border, but even the South got into the act. The friends I spent my childhood with in the Siberianoid provinces of upstate New York now live in New Orleans, where this week they giddily made a snowman in their front yard. And I got to experience it first-hand this week with a work trip to Eau Claire, Wis., where I awoke on Tuesday morning to minus-31 degrees. It is against that backdrop that Amtrak cancelled many, many trains, a maddening number of trains. I may have missed a few, but by my count at least 27 trains got sidelined by the deep cold: the state-supported (read, “state-funded”) River Runner, the Lincoln service, the new going-like-gangbusters Borealis, the Hiawatha, the Wolverine, and the Carl Sandburg all took a hit, as did the long-distance/National Network Empire Builder, Sunset Limited, Texas Eagle, and City of New Orleans.Passengers, advocates, and yes, state DOTs were all taken aback. Reactions ranged from bewildered to belligerent. Many aggrieved riders noted that commuter services not run by Amtrak somehow kept running. A few DOTs told me they didn’t get enough notice and that, in any case, cold-weather cancellations are coming too often to keep a viable service running. They also want Amtrak to take a harder look at why they can’t keep pipes thawed, coaches running, and locomotives in service when the winter comes, as it inevitably does every single year. When I shared with one of my DOT contacts that forecasts called for 50 degrees below zero in North Dakota, they acknowledged that that’s simply too cold to run: “I’ll give you minus 30, or 40, or something like that. But they’re cancelling sometimes when it’s just zero. Or minus two. And that’s not compatible with running a competitive service.” Indeed. One of our long-time Board members, an experienced design engineer who helped to spec out and design Amtrak’s Viewliners, underscored that very point, telling me that “Clearly there are times that trains should stay home, but not just because it's cold out! Specs for rolling stock cars state operation of down to minus-30F is to be considered normal. Historically, Superliners have run reasonably well at temperatures somewhat below that, like minus-40 on the Empire Builder. ”Now, it’s true that there’s a delicate balancing act here and that in many ways Amtrak will get a punch in the nose no matter which course it chooses. As our own field organizer Joe Aiello wrote last year: “...it is minus-29 degrees in Shelby, Mont., as I write this, with a real feel of minus-53 degrees. How could ANYONE ask someone to wait for a train in that weather? And, God forbid, that train gets stuck behind a disabled freight train that broke down due to the same conditions, or any other reason. What is Amtrak supposed to do then? Remote location, roads closed due to snow, and quite literal deadly air temps – then what? We end up in a nightmare scenario that needs to be avoided at all costs. And if they press on and something like that happens, the online brigade lights up Amtrak management for ‘deciding to leave passengers stranded.’” Yep, we know that’s how that would turn out. Not a great choice to have to make.This week, pressed hard by journalists who cover railroads for some kind of detailed explanation, Amtrakâs top mechanical executive, Gery Williams, addressed the balancing act in a prepared statement drawn mostly from a similar message distributed internally to employees. In that statement, Williams pointed to a combination of passenger and employee risks, mechanical considerations, and requirements from the railroads which host Amtrak’s trains in the upper Midwest, leading the dispatching teams to make decisions “rooted in safety.”“During these weather events, we must strike a delicate balance of serving the few customers who must travel against potentially disrupting service for many more after the ice, snow and frigid temperatures are gone,” he said. “Extreme conditions can take a significant toll on equipment, displace crews and interrupt service for days. He continued, “there are so many factors that play a role in whether to allow trains on a given route:— We want to give customers time to plan and avoid travel on snow-covered roads and prevent them from waiting long, uninformed hours in our stations. Rail operations are often severely impacted, highly variable and notoriously hard to estimate when storms are raging.— We want to give our employees time to plan and avoid the same risks. This helps ensure equipment and crews are in the right place at the right time when demand returns.—Our teams consider the risks of stranded trains, or loss of power that puts the well-being of our employees, customers and first responders at risk, if our trains encounter downed trees or other hazards – especially in remote areas.— And Amtrak must respect decisions made by our host railroads and other partners. They evaluate their own risks, staffing availability and determine what they can support. We adjust.” As a guy who spent 13 years in the fire service, I got a front-row seat to dozens and dozens of instances when someone misjudged their risks and paid a price...sometimes an embarrassing price and sometimes the ultimate price. I’m exquisitely sensitive to the need to balance risks and to do the best to make the right call.But as some of the state DOT officials noted to me, there’s a difference between 50 (or even 30) degrees below zero and just zero (or maybe one or two degrees above zero and a dusting of snow). Passenger railroading really should be nearly an all-weather transportation mode, and that “can-do” attitude is one of the reasons a lot of travelers switch from driving or flying to taking the train. Trains get you there when others can’t.I will never advocate for doing the unsafe thing. I will never press Amtrak to willingly go into harm’s way. Even so, when I was still a firefighter, the safest thing for me to do when I arrived on-scene at a fire would have been to stay on the pumper and watch the house burn. But obviously we couldn’t do that; we had a purpose, a mission to accomplish. And we accomplished it. We did it safely and effectively not by avoiding risk, but by recognizing it, assessing it, and applying mitigations so that those risks were reduced to a level that balanced favorably with the outcome – lives saved, property saved, hazards to neighbors reduced.This week might well have been the right week to cancel trains, as much as it pains me to say that. But everything is a balance, and sometimes we can tip too far in one direction or the other. In recent weeks before this one, we’ve seen trains canceled with temps in the teens, and with just ordinary snowfalls in the forecast. If you have to cancel a train in that kind of weather because you can’t keep the pipes thawed, that’s not a weather problem that’s an Amtrak problem. And that’s a problem the railroad needs to solve, not rationalize.Amtrak’s mission is safe, reliable transportation. Safe and reliable need to be in balance. Reliable and unsafe is unacceptable. Safe and unreliable is useless. Before state DOT partners revolt en masse, it’s probably worthwhile for Amtrak to look hard inside the operation to understand the root cause of why dispatchers don’t feel good about sending trains out in cold weather instead of parking those trains and sending their would-be passengers out to make their trips in some other (probably less safe) way. Date: 01/24/25 10:24 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: PumpkinHogger Not unexpected apologist dribble excuses.
Meanwhile, north of the border, those 70-year old Budds....oh never mind .... Date: 01/24/25 10:36 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: joemvcnj I do not see what point they are making.
Date: 01/24/25 11:09 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: Magritte55 I thought the RPA piece was quite critical of Amtrak's failure to run in the cold. Its point seemed to be, "There are truly paralyzing weather disasters and more or less normal tough days in winter, and Amtrak is failing to run even in latter case."
Date: 01/24/25 11:11 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: joemvcnj But then we have "This week might well have been the right week to cancel trains, as much as it pains me to say that. But everything is a balance, and sometimes we can tip too far in one direction or the other."
Date: 01/24/25 11:43 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: PumpkinHogger Guessing we'll see this copy and pasted in July.
Date: 01/24/25 12:07 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: pdt What a piece of long winded noithingburger. Going on about being a firefighter and freinds who lived in upstate NY? Really?
Is this RPA's mission...to tow the line foe the amtrak excuse machine? Its simple 1. Equipment should be able to operate in temps down to -30 to -40F. 2. Amtk has no confidence in their equipment. 3. When it comes to the "balancing act" Amtk ppl should be able to make the correct call. Thats their job. They are paid to know what to do, not to guess. 4. Since they dont know what to do, and cannot make the tough decisions with any confidence, its "when in doubt, cancel". They are always in doubt, so they always cancel. As usual, the top brass feel they should get bonuses just for showing up, not for making the tough decisions correctly. Its typical lawyers tho.....do what has the lease liability exposure...which is cancelling trains. At least in the airline industry, they have ops ppl whove been around a long time and can make to go-no go decisions correctly, and have plans for bad weather based on experience. Amtrak is just one big deer in the headlights, when it comes to weather. Maybe they could learn from the commuter agencies, altho seems they have no incentive or desire to learn anything. Would be nice if state agencies and RPA would send letters to Amtk officials saying "These are the parameters in which we expect you to run trains. No excuses, no "balancing act babble". If you cant do it, step aside and let someone who knows what they are doing run the show. IMHO. Im just so disgusted with amtk's so called management. Date: 01/24/25 12:11 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: Hou74-76 Well in my opinion, I think this says it all. Amtrak has chronic problems now and they are coping with it by trying to minimize the risk to the majority. My solution, reduce train frequency and get a surplus of rolling stock back up to the point where they can run winter service. While I get it, extraordinary events happen. But the frequency of cancellations or extreme delays has gotten out of hand.
From the RPA: .....In a statement, Williams pointed to a combination of passenger and employee risks, mechanical considerations, and requirements from the railroads which host Amtrak’s trains in the upper Midwest, leading the dispatching teams to make decisions “rooted in safety.”“During these weather events, we must strike a delicate balance of serving the few customers who must travel against potentially disrupting service for many more after the ice, snow and frigid temperatures are gone,” he said. Date: 01/24/25 12:24 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: irhoghead What I read was, "Blah, blah, blah." In my 35 years on the railroad, I never once was told to stay home because of the weather. Whether it was minus 20 or plus 120, you got called to work to run trains. We have turned into a country of absolute "Cover my behind at all expenses" wusses.
And, how in the world has Amtrak not figured out how to protect those cars from freezing up after 53 years of experience running passenger trains? Heads should roll, but they won't. Date: 01/24/25 12:31 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: joemvcnj In the NY/NJ/CT Metro, we have had several 3 degree mornings. Some of the Comet/Shoreliner cars have the same toilet as a Horizon car because it is the same car, run off the same Barre, VT assembly line. I have not heard stories of toilets freezing up and they lay up overnight, outside in suburban terminals.
Date: 01/24/25 12:33 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: PumpkinHogger As MR.ShortlinesUSA said recently:
I have told people many times there is only one takeaway from the pandemic-- "It's OK to suck." Date: 01/24/25 12:40 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: ctillnc I don't regret dropping membership in NARP/RPA years ago, although I was sad about it at the time.
Date: 01/24/25 12:41 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: pdt > From the RPA:
> .....In a statement, Williams pointed to a > combination of passenger and employee risks, > mechanical considerations, and requirements from > the railroads which host Amtrak’s trains in the > upper Midwest, leading the dispatching teams to > make decisions “rooted in safety.”“During > these weather events, we must strike a delicate > balance of serving the few customers who must > travel against potentially disrupting service for > many more after the ice, snow and frigid > temperatures are gone,” he said. All bad decisions can be wrapped in "safety". Date: 01/24/25 13:32 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: PRSL-recall I agree with and am in the same boat as Ctillnc. Between changing names for no apparent reason, changing staff at the time, and now gauging further by observation, I just haven't been motivated to restore membership. Wish it was different.
Date: 01/24/25 14:07 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: Alco251 I an not a railroad employee nor mechanical engineer.
But I consider myself an astute observer of the railroad scene for more than five decades. So I would ask the Amtrak mechanical people (whp must have seen this in the design phase) how on earth they approved the vestibule step arrangement on the new passenger cars, without figuring out that even a minimal amount of snow would probably cause the mechanism to freeze up. Seems to me many railroads understood that 50 years ago and did away with the folding vestibule steps in favor of fixed steps like the Amtrak Horizon cars have.. And as for the Siemens Charger locomotives...same question. They don't seem to like snow. It all begs the question of who signed off on these designs? And is there any active effort being made to correct these and other fundamental design flaws? I think we all know the answer. Date: 01/24/25 14:27 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: Englewood Wow, that was a stern letter ! (sarcasm)
All I saw was an apology for the multigenerational bad decisions and poor management. Of course, trains must be cancelled when the equipment was ill designed and poorly maintained. Date: 01/24/25 14:55 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: webmaster This sums up the RPA membership. "I am cold and frightened"
Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com You must be a registered subscriber to watch videos. Join Today! Date: 01/24/25 16:00 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: NPRocky I mostly like the last paragraph of the statement. The folks in that video look very old. Oh wait, I'm old!
Date: 01/24/25 16:18 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: KurtBWNews Here is a simple idea, which should not require much funding, just organization.
Politely ask VIA Rail how they keep passenger trains using 1950's vintage passenger cars running in such weather. Then copy their policies and procedures. Employ a relentless application of logic when doing so. Somehow, intercity passenger trains managed to run in such conditions, even with steam locomotives. I will admit sometimes they got stuck. But today's situation, IMO, represents operational madness. Date: 01/24/25 16:28 Re: RPA statement on canceled trains Author: jp1822 Am I missing something here........ It's quoted that a number of stations along the Empire Builder route had the coldest temperatures. Many examples were used - Shelby, North Dakota, etc. But yesterday (the 23rd), the day before that (the 22nd), and today (the 24th) the Empire Builders ran in service. Yes, it's true that various Midwest corridor trains and trains on the NEC were cancelled yesterday and today, yet it was colder in Canada and along the Hi Line of the Empire Builder. Last weekend there were Empire Builder, Sunset Limited, were cancelled......But the Borealis and Hiawathas were stymied by failed equipment, some of which is brand new. And Amtrak has sent P42s west to replace some of the nonserviceable ALC42s and Chargers (also new pieces of equipment). The Viewliner equipment seemed to run without issue in the East.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/25 16:34 by jp1822. |