OAKRIDGE, Ore. — Amtrak service between the Pacific Northwest and California has been severed after the passenger railroad announced this week that it would no longer be busing Coast Starlight passengers around a collapsed Union Pacific tunnel in Oregon, the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune reports.
For now, the Coast Starlight will only run between Seattle and Eugene, Ore. on the north end and Sacramento and Los Angeles on the south end.
Amtrak started busing passengers around the collapsed tunnel on May 29, but spokesperson Marc Magliari tells the newspaper that “It is simply not sustainable to take people overnight on chartered buses.”
Northbound, the train usually departs Sacramento at 11:59 p.m. and arrives in Eugene at 12:36 p.m. Southbound, the train departs Eugene at 5:10 p.m. and arrives in Sacramento at 6:35 a.m.
On May 29, part of a tunnel near Oakridge on the Cascade Subdivision collapsed, affecting about 40 to 50 feet of track. [See “Tunnel collapse shuts down UP in the Cascades,” Trains News Wire, May 30, 2018.] The collapse occurred while maintenance was being conducted on the tunnel but no one was injured. UP officials said earlier this week that the tunnel will not reopen until June 23 at the earliest.
As long as you were notified of the situation before you reached Sacramento I don’t see the problem. You spend the night in a hotel in Sacramento and then pull a Fred Frailey and fly on to your destination the next day. You will still get there before the train in most cases. If flying doesn’t work rent a car.
Presumably, “The Coast Starlight” consists of only coaches with dining and lounge cars on both segments.
In June 1965, the westbound “Sunset Limited” was temporarily truncated from Los Angeles to El Paso due to flooding in Arizona when my mother and I rode it from New Orleans to Houston. The train still carried the usual five Pullman sleepers as El Paso was an overnight journey from New Orleans.
David: You are correct. A bus situation Klamath Falls to Eugene would in effect require five sets of equipment of some kind, but before the tunnel collapse, Amtrak was indeed doing it this way. I don’t know for sure, but I heard that the Seattle-Eugene train was coach-only without all amenities, though I don’t know the specifics. And, if the equipment wasn’t available, busing Klamath Falls-Portland would allow the north end to be protected with one set. If I recall correctly, train 11 was stuck behind the collapse at Eugene.
One other point about no Coast Starlight service between Seattle and Eugene: Amtrak has at least one set of Coast Starlight equipment in Seattle apparently doing nothing but waiting for the tunnel to be open in over a week.
On Wednesday. a truck sideswiped the westbound Empire Builder near Devils Lake, North Dakota. The damage to the lead locomotive was sufficient that it needed to be set out at Minot and a BNSF locomotive added as a replacement. As a result, the train became very late – so late that the equipment could not protect the on time departures of trains 8 and 28 at Seattle and Portland for Thursday. So, Amtrak terminated train 7/27-12 at Spokane, and originated train 8/28-14 there, with a bus bridge from Spokane to Seattle and Spokane to Portland.
However, had innovation and a concern about passengers on long distance trains been in effect at Amtrak, the dwelling set of Coast Starlight equipment could have been used to run on time sections of trains 8-14 and 28-14 from origin, and would have allowed the passengers on trains 7-12 and 27-12 – already severely inconvenienced – to continue to their destinations on the mode of transportation they paid to ride. The inbound equipment on that late Empire Builder – or subsequent Empire Builders – could have been used to backfill the Coast Starlight set when the determination is made to again operate it all the way from Seattle to Los Angeles.
So, on the one hand, Amtrak doesn’t want to use chartered buses to haul passengers “overnight” when it comes to the Coast Starlight (even though Klamath Falls to Eugene isn’t overnight), but busing for a 125 AM departure in Spokane is preferable to running a train.
Deep within Amtrak is loving this.
So if the Tacoma News Tribune reports something, TRAINS, THE magazine of railroading just regurgitates it without factchecking. There is no Coast Starlight service between Seattle and Eugene. That was the case when Amtrak was busing between Eugene and Klamath Falls, which was not an overnight trip. Magliari has more spin than a washing machine.
The roue through Bend has limited capacity and would delay the train so much that equipment rotation would be threatened at Seattle and Los Angeles. But there’s no reason (well not a good reason) for not busing EUG-KFS.
Detours are possible. Freight RRs do it all the time to get around derailments, washouts, etc. The problem here isn’t the availability of the physical route, it’s all the other stuff.
In this case, what is BNSF’s price to take a train that ususally runs over UP? Is that covered by the basic agreement BNSF has with Amtrak?
The train would need BNSF UP pilots. That’s not a huge deal. But you also need an Amtrak crew – probably one more than you currently use. Doubtful the crew base has the personnel.
You will delay the train into Seattle using the detour. Can you still turn the equipment or do you need one more set (you don’t have laying around….)
You’ll miss the entire Willamette Valley. Are you going to bus folk from Portland back down to Albany, Corvallis, Eugene or what?
None of this is rocket science but it is awfully hard to piece together on the fly.
I know the freight roads actually have disaster plans in their back pocket. The “what if this bridge goes out, or this yard floods” plan. Perhaps Amtrak should do the same.
Please pardon the correction, Charles, but there is an alternate bypass. It is the one that freight trains are using through Bend, OR as previously reported. The problem with it is that a bunch of Amtrak folks would have to get busy on the phone and arrange trackage rights, rearrange schedules, etc. It is much easier to just cancel trains, cancel buses, sit back, light up a cigar and say “Solved that problem!”.
At first I was furious about Amtrak’s lack of willingness to provide service. However, being over night there is a great difference between a sleeping car and sitting upright in a bus seat. So, yeah, this might be prudent. However, the question unasked and unanswered is what is UP goin the move quickly to repair the tunnel if it is even possible to move quickly? Or is this a conspiracy between the Federal government, the airline industry, and UP to further erode Amtrak service?
14 ran between Klamath and Eugene between 8 am and 12:30 pm. That is hardly overnight. Southbound runs were from 5 pm to 10 pm, which gets late in the evening, but still far from overnight. More straight up lies from Magliari.
In other words, our rail; system is very fragile. It doesn’t take much to shut down rail service, whereas typically there are numerous alternate routes if a highway is severed.
Mark Meyer, Wouldn’t operating the starlight between Seattle and Eugene require 2 trainsets?
By Terminating the train at Sacramento , rather than Klamath Falls , they save one train set on the Southern end. I guess it depends on where each train set was when the tunnel collapsed.
So which is it? Busing from Eugene to K Falls or Sacramento? A big differenceb. While Magliari may be twisting the facts, that’s what he’s paid to do. Even Cliff Black did it The guy to call on the carpet is Amtrak’s VPO and to a lesser extent Delta Dick. Since Gunn left there has been a steady erosion of the will to deal with service interuptions.