Editor’s note: Trains News Wire asked Amtrak last week to comment on the extensive number of train cancellations in the Midwest and on some long-distance routes that began on Friday, Jan. 17, and are currently scheduled to continue through Wednesday, Jan. 22. At the peak on Monday, Jan. 20, at least 27 trains were cancelled [see “Amtrak cancels more Midwest trains …,” News Wire, Jan. 17, 2025, and “More trains added to Amtrak Midwest cancellation list,” News Wire, Jan. 20, 2025].
Today, the company provided this explanation from Gerhard (Gery) Williams, executive vice president, service delivery and operations, which it says is similar to an internal message distributed last week.
Protecting Our Customers and Our Team: Why We Cancel Trains Ahead of Extreme Weather Events
We never want to delay or cancel a train, but sometimes the weather forecasts and other factors make it the right thing to do.
It’s true, Amtrak is often able to provide reliable service when other transportation modes are disrupted. That’s why getting out in front of ice and snow and operational threats is so important now and as we grow. People depend on us. Amtrak is at its best when we anticipate our customers’ needs — and they have made it clear that they want as much notice as possible about delays and cancellations. We’ve received thanks from many who are grateful for the earlier notifications.
It’s also true that 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. Extreme conditions can take a significant toll on equipment, displace crews and interrupt service for days.
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.
I want to commend our planning team for their hard work analyzing all the data, and especially for rooting decisions in safety first when making the call on whether to run our trains across the network.
We are all proud to be a part of America’s Railroad — a cornerstone of our nation’s transportation system. As we expand to serve the next generation of rail travelers, we also seek to continuously improve the safety of our operations and respond to the voice of our customers. It is never easy to make the call to cancel a route. It is also never simply a question of can we roll but rather should we.
The concept here needs to be a big-picture discussion of all factors. It is a difficult decision to make, canceling trains. There are important safety factors. This individual also appears to realize that Amtrak needs to work with their host railroads, and not running a train is their olive branch to give the host railroad time to recover, instead of adding fuel to the congestion fire. Big picture here. In extreme cold, compressed-air braking systems do not function as reliably. And even if your passenger train can hold air, you will be out on the road among long freight trains that may not. Then your delays will really add up, waiting to get around stopped traffic using frozen switches, and having to wait for the previous crew that outlawed to be eligible to work again. As stated, you can’t recrew a train when you are prohibited from driving on roads in the county where that train is stopped. Diesel fuel gels, regardless of which type of locomotive it’s in, and traction motors can only take so much ice and snow being packed and force-fed into them. Head end crews are injured when their locomotive gets treed. And much more important, the passengers onboard need heat, lighting and sanitation at all times. We’ve all read the horror stories demonstrating that people do not know how to behave in public anymore. I mean, nowadays they get cranky when there is no wi-fi, heaven forbid. People nowadays have been taught that they are going to die if they can’t eat something every two hours. Fifty years ago, people were different too. The decisions they have to make must incorporate all of those factors. Every time they send out a train, they run the risk of it turning into a nightmare, so fact-based decisionmaking must happen ahead of time. Even when that happens, sometimes you just run out of luck. “Murphy is the patron saint of railroaders” I say.
It is too easy for us to sit back in our warm rooms and type comments in here. What about the people who have to work on the trains in order to inspect, repair, clean and stock them, out in the open in the cold and the wind? These are hazardous jobs to begin with, and then the temperature plummets and it snows and the wind seems like it’ll never stop. Would you sign up to crawl around the trenches in Rensselaer to play with iced-up coupler pins, frozen air hoses and potentially lethal power cables for eight to twelve hours a day? Or out in the notorious winds of Chicago performing pressure tests and replacing brake shoes that are under a foot of permafrost? Thawing out traction motors? Welding air pipe repairs? Much respect for the ones who do. This time of year, no paycheck is enough to justify that kind of personal abuse. So enough with the “kids these days aren’t real railroaders/don’t want to work” nonsense.
I credit this manager for understanding the risks in play when they make these decisions. A good manager is someone who makes fact-based decisions, even if they will make travelers unhappy or inconvenienced, instead of idealized or emotional “what could possibly go wrong” decisions that get people hurt.
As far as I’m concerned it is not an equipment issue and never will be. It is a leadership of no expectations and those who willing to go along with it.
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Does it require more care, more planning and a lot of small things to keep equipment running in colder temps. Yes, absolutely and even more so you have to listen to people who are actually doing it and what they need. Yes, there is still people out there who take pride and will get it done.
There is not one item but several that may influence Amtrak cancellations.
1. State and / or restrictions on non-essential travel. Non-essential definitions can vary widely. As well, any jurisdiction may change definitions. These restrictions are much more in place now which can prevent airport workers including pilots, RR workers, bus workers, waterway lock operators, even draw bridge operators. With no draw operators bridge is usually closed in place and locked stopping most water operations.
1a. These restrictions also limit a high percentage of passengers so why carry just a few on an empty carriage?
2. more flights are now cancelled due to the very high cost of deicing planes. Present deicing fluid is more environment friendly but is much more costly. As well, recovery locations must be used to reuse fluid. Bet the Houston airports do not have recovery basins. Then lack of workers not able to get to airport as noted in #1.
3. Passenger trains that break down in cold weather incidents cannot be easily rescued. There are not RR crews every ~100 miles with a loco(s) and crews to go get the stranded train.
4. Relief locos are often not readily available. Freight RRs may not be able to steal a rescue loco that would stall the train it was stolen from.
5. Any storm now has the effect of bring down trees on the tracks due to the trees not being cleared away since removal of code lines. Around my location there are locations that may have one or 2 miles of tree tunnels that are only cleared around grade crossings. Too easy to stop a passenger train and the possibility of a tree then striking one or more passenger cars,
Spent 5 minutes perusing what AI wrote for a CYA, slapped his name on it and sent it out. Was out on several lines in central Illinois today that host Amtrak- there were more trains than I could count, plenty of workers out in the cold, etc. Perhaps ATK should just buy rebuilt Dash 9s.
The P42DC (and rebuilt P40s which survive) is a Dash 9 with head end power in a more aerodynamic carbody. Same prime mover, same alternator, same traction motors albeit with higher gearing, same operating software.
So as I figured some of the cancellations may be due to RR’s giving Amtrak notice that they cannot handle the trains due to the weather probably due to the fact that they anticipate problems of their own. Unless you work for the RR or are a customer you may not be aware of the difficulties & the backlog of their own traffic.
Perhaps Amtrak should have purchased surplus CalTrain F40PH’s.
When the F40’s were Amtraks primary motive power, trains were seldom annulled.
As I’ve said before, I rode the Builder from Chicago to Seattle between Christmas and New Years 1976. The Conductor announced -29 below at Fargo. Steam heated equipment no less. As I’ve said before unless Amtrak finds true railroaders to run Amtrak, Amtrak is not long for this world.
While the F40 was a successful design overall, they drank down substantially more fuel, especially in cold weather. Like the P42s that succeeded them, they were old and worn out when they were retired. Just because one train ran with two-year-old SDP40Fs in the winter of 1976 doesn’t mean that it was a big risk at the time.
The real question should be why all the cancellations in today’s world, when AMTRAK could run decades ago. Is the new generation of motive power less reliable than formerly?
Shall I say it? What a load of crap. Give Mr.Williams a pat on the head for being a good company man. I guess the concept of “the mail must go through,” as applied to passengers, died some time ago. R.I.P.
Even the postal service isn’t delivering. In St. Louis, some suburban places didn’t have mail delivery for as week (plus or minus) after the the storm, and some places in the city still don’t thanks to MoDOT just not plowing there, period and now it’s all ice. There was even a plea for volunteers to handle the HUGE backlogs of mail in O’Fallon, Missouri just last week.