CHICAGO — While sub-zero cold and blizzard conditions had begun to moderate somewhat across much of the Midwest toward the end of the holiday weekend, Amtrak has continued to cancel trains on less than 24 hours’ notice for “mechanical” and “manpower” issues, as well as the weather.
A running list of trains not operating continues to be updated on Amtrak’s website, but the information may not always reflect last-minute changes
Empire Builder cancellations, which began Dec. 21 from both Chicago and Seattle/Portland, Ore., were extended on Christmas Day to Monday, Dec. 26 as a result of “manpower issues,” according to the Amtrak Alerts Twitter feed and the Service Alerts section of the company website. On Monday afternoon, Tuesday’s Builders were also cancelled.
Sunday, eastbound Capitol Limited passengers were originally told their train to Washington, D.C., “will be delayed departing due to unforeseen mechanical issues,” but when the train was eventually cancelled, the reason given was “due to severe weather conditions.” Although the westbound Capitol that departed Sunday arrived in Chicago two hours late Monday morning, Monday’s westbound train was cancelled, even though its eastbound counterpart was scheduled to operate.
Other trains leaving Chicago on Christmas night suffered significant departure delays, including:
— The eastbound Blue Water to Port Huron, Mich., delayed over 7 hours to 11:09 p.m.
— The southbound City of New Orleans, delayed more that 3½ hours to 11:42 p.m.
— Southbound Lincoln Service train #307, delayed almost 5 hours to 12:08 a.m.
Monday trains that were canceled on Sunday, after previously being scheduled to operate, included two trains to St. Louis, Nos. 301 and 319; the westbound Illinois Zephyr to Quincy, Ill.; and Wolverine Nos. 353 and 354.
Upstate New York still impacted
The deadly storm that dumped more than 50 inches of snow on Buffalo, N.Y., and disrupted VIA Rail Canada service in eastern Ontario after a Canadian National derailment [see “VIA Rail Canada again cancels corridor service,” News Wire, Dec. 26, 2022] still has Amtrak service shut down through the area. The Maple Leaf and a pair of Empire Service round-trips are only operating New York-Syracuse, N.Y., through today (Tuesday, Dec. 27). The Lake Shore Limited is also cancelled until at least Wednesday.
Anybody remember the good old days when the railroads thought they were getting rid of passengers by giving the long distance passenger trains to the federal government? They had high hopes and expectations that the government could get it right and bury the passenger train.
Only the federal government screwed up and kept running trains.☺
All of the travel mayhem is the result of allowing passenger railway infrastructure to deteriorate in North America. There is too much dependence on airlines and highways.
Without incentives and encouragement by the governments of Canada and the United States to operate passenger trains, the railways found maintaining infrastructure to stay competitive was a herculean task and uneconomical. Meanwhile, airlines have their infrastructure of airports and radar monitoring of flights built and maintained by local and federal governments, enabling profitable flights.
Had as much attention been given to railway infrastructure in the late 1940s as now in the 2020s [almost too little too late], travel would not be gridlocked at airports and on highways. Checked baggage not claimed by airline passengers will likely be shipped to a retail outlet named ‘Unclaimed Baggage’ in Scottsboro, Alabama which is 50 miles east of Huntsville, Alabama and west of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The valuable contents are removed from the bags and sold separately to customers local and national. Bags of good quality are sold as well.
All of the travel mayhem is the result of allowing passenger railway infrastructure to deteriorate in North America. There is too much dependence on airlines and highways.
Without incentives and encouragement by the government’s of Canada and the United States to operate passenger trains, the railways found maintaining infrastructure to stay competitive was a herculean task and uneconomical. Meanwhile, airlines have their infrastructure of airports and radar monitoring of flights built and maintained by local and federal governments, enabling profitable flights.
Had as much attention was given to railway infrastructure in the late 1940s as now in the 2020s [almost too little too late], travel would not be gridlocked at airports and on highways. Airline passengers who fail to claim their checked
And while we’re talking about Southwest Airlines, let’s keep the railroads into our discussion of utter depravity. I’ll never forget the greatest line ever in TRAINS magazine, about twenty to thirty years ago, talking about CSX’s central dispatch in Jacksonville. That CSX couldn’t run trains in Michigan because there was a hurricane in Florida. Atlas shrugged.
Oh, Southwest Airlines. It’s not about the employees. They are uniformly friendly, decent and helpful. I’ve met many really nice SWA employees, whether flight deck, cabin, check-in or gate. Who really made me feel welcome and important as a frequent flier. Just off-hand I can think of about 20 SWA staff if not more, that I’ve had friendly and meaningful interactions with while traveling.
In my frequent flights over the last ten years or so, I’ve been delayed twice. In both cases the airline got me to my destination. Southwest had to divert a plane at Ronald Reagan National Airport, but found another and got me home to Milwaukee about two hours late. This was in 2019. Earlier this year, I was stuck at Denver because a United plane was taken out of service in Houston for mechanical reasons. A substitute airplane was found at Houston and flown to Denver, but had to be repaired at the gate at Denver. For all that, two planes with mechanical problems, United got me to SeaTac Washington only five hours late.
This is the current business model whether airlines, RR’s, hospitals, financial, etc – maximize profits through bare bones staffing so if one person quits, retires, dies the whole house of cards comes down then they use this as an excuse for the poor or limited svcs. But as long as the shareholders receive bigger dividends who cares about the customers they’ll come back they have no alternatives & if they don’t there’s plenty more rubes to be had!
Charles has hit the nail on the head. There is no excess capacity built into our transportation system. And it only takes a few dominoes to make the rest to start falling. As far as Amtrak and Chicago. I would bet the mechanical issues were more human than mechanical. Chicago mechanical does not have a glowing reputation amongst the troops.
Welcome to our Third World transportation network. Like this country which is breaking down and apart so goes our transportation system. It now seems like nothing is dependable or reliable or even weather resistant. Maybe Americans should go into hibernation like the bears and not come out or travel until the spring arrives and the snow and ice melt. By the way it looks the nation’s intercity bus network is almost non exisitant as well. I can’t remember when I seen a Greyhound Bus traveling along the highway. When people couldn’t afford to travel by plane or train, the intercity bus was always there to provide an alternate route to get to where you needed to go. True it wasn’t the fastest way or the most comfortable way of traveling but the bus got through somehow and cheaper too. Better than sitting around in airports for hours and days waiting for a plane or flight that might never fly or canceled. This what happens when the nation depends solely on just one form of transportation to get peopleto where they need to go. A coordinated balanced that uses ALL forms of transportation to get people to where they need to be is needed and of course requires cooperation and cohesion as well as careful planning for all contiingencies to work. After all you wouldn’t send troops into battle without the proper weapons and tools and have a well planned out strategy and offensive to win the battle.
Joseph C. Markfelder
Southwest totally let me down yesterday. I was scheduled to fly to Miami out of Baltimore. When I got there the Board showed about a 90 minute delay for the flight which wasn’t that bad so I checked my bag.
The delay came getting longer and my gate was changed 3 times before the gate’s local board suddenly dropped all reference to my flight. So I went to the boards showing all incoming and departing flights and now most flights were cancelled. But my flight wasn’t even listed on the Board at all! I managed to get a gate attendant at another flight to check my flight. After several tries he was able to tell me that mine was cancelled and then he announced it publicly. [Note: I got 2 phone messages from SW announcing delays but they were always less than what was already shown at the airport. I never did get a message telling me that the flight was cancelled.]
I looked for the smallest line I could find at a ticketing desk in the terminal gates area. There I stood in line for over 2 hours until I could get to the single ticket representative who somehow was managing to hold on to her sanity. She told me I couldn’t get a trip on SW to Miami or Fort Lauderdale until the 30th–I was returning on the 31st! So she canceled my reservation, restored all my points that I was using for the trip, and gave me a $200 travel voucher.
Only 8 of 53 of the inbound flights weren’t cancelled and 6 of the 55 outbound ones weren’t cancelled. All of them were at least 2 hours late.
While all this was going on, there was an announcement in the entire terminal that any bags already checked would proceed to their destination, even if the flight was cancelled. Many people who had been able to secure reservations in the next 2-3 days then left the airport. That turned out to be wrong. When I got my flight cancelled, the lady doing it had told me that I could get my checked bag back by going to a specific part of the baggage claim area. But if I didn’t wait for it last night it would be sent on to Miami as soon as space was available. It took over 3 hours but finally my bag appeared in the last batch of bags to come out for the night. A small portion of my flight’s bags showed up 2 hours earlier but they couldn’t find the rest. It turned out bags were sitting outside on carts at the original boarding gate.
The only good thing in all of this was the SW staff handling all of this were doing their best to try and make things go as smooth as possible. The passengers were not happy but didn’t take it out on them.
I called Amtrak to see if I could get on a train to Miami but they didn’t have anything available until the 30th. I had also tried other airlines while waiting in line but none of them had available seats for days.
I was later told that my cancellation had nothing to do with the weather. The plane had developed problems and it had to be pulled out of service. SW didn’t have another plane available to replace it. So SW and Amtrak both have “big” equipment problems.
Mr. Landey,
On a scale of 1-10, Amtrak is a 3, Airlines, for the most part 1.
Neither care much about the passenger. Love those middle seats.
Welcome to a transportation system which has broken down and totally collapsed. Amtrak barely functions on a good day and is hopeless in bad weather.
Then there’s my favorite airline, Southwest and all my frequent flier points. I gave some thought to flying to Denver for Christmas. Good thing I didn’t, I’d be stuck somewhere with no luggage and no hope of getting home. Southwest sells every seat on most flights and schedules its crews four or five takeoffs and landings each day. All it takes is a pilot to have a flat tire on his way to the airport and the system begins to break down. A blizzard in northern USA means flight cancellations in Austin, Miami, San Juan and Cancun. In fact more flights cancelled than fly.
Somewhere each airline and each railroad has a computer that maximizes every employee and every piece of equipment. Management tells the Board of Directors that the airline or the railroad functions like a $600 Swiss watch. When stuff happens the entire show shuts down.