SEATTLE — The big takeaway from this year’s annual Amtrak Board of Directors public meeting is that the company has momentum to keep growing patronage despite any headwinds that might begin blowing when the Trump Administration and an all-Republican Congress take over in January.
The session today (Wednesday, Dec. 4) was held at a ballroom opposite Seattle’s King Street Station. In addition to a recap of the company’s record-breaking delivery in fiscal 2024 [see “Amtrak highlights ridership, revenue, infrastructure gains …,” Trains News Wire Dec. 3, 2024], presentations by several Amtrak managers revealed a tentative plan for when new corridor trains or long-awaited refurbished long-distance equipment is expected to be placed in service:
— The first new Alstom Acelas are now set to debut in spring 2025. Fourteen of 28 trainsets have been delivered and are still undergoing Federal Railroad Administration-mandated tests. Amtrak’s Karyn Criswell told the meeting, “We are currently preparing for pre-revenue testing.” No details were offered regarding potential modifications that might be required as a result of testing, or the status of expanded servicing facilities the longer trainsets will need at Northeast Corridor terminals
— Amtrak President Roger Harris confirmed to News Wire after the session that the Texas Eagle is slated to see its Sightseer Lounge car return in March and a third Viewliner sleeping car will be added to the Chicago-Miami Floridian about the same time. “We are working through the maintenance backlog as we restore production capacity,” says Harris, adding, “I don’t know the plan beyond the spring and summer schedule but our intention is to keep [the third Floridian sleeper] there. We really need it.”
— Little mention was made of the extended Request for Proposals process to replace Superliners with a new bilevel long-distance fleet, other than that contracts are now expected to be awarded in late 2025. News Wire has learned the final RFP deadline was recently revised at the carbuilders’ request to Dec. 15, 2024, almost a year after it was first issued. In response to a question, CEO Stephen Gardner said the infrastructure bill has funded the fleet replacement procurement. “We would certainly hope,” says Gardner, “that Congress would consider opportunities to grow the long-distance network and provide the dollars necessary to capitalize those routes.” Regarding increased long-distance capacity in the short term, Gardner acknowledged that repairing heavily damaged cars is expensive. “The key to increasing incremental capacity,” he says, “is getting shorter turn times so we have a lower spare ratio. It’s not an easy problem to solve over the next five years.”
— The first of 83 Siemens Airo trainsets will begin arriving in 2026 and will initially be placed in service on the Vancouver, B.C.-Eugene, Ore., Amtrak Cascades, with additional equipment deployed to the Northeast Corridor and other eastern routes the following year. There are options for another 103 trainsets. “We have pricing locked in on those options,” says Criswell. “That’s a huge benefit to us and our state partners.”
Panel addresses Cascades operation
A particularly informative panel discussion involving stakeholders from the Washington and Oregon transportation departments, Amtrak, and Sound Transit that focused on the success and challenges the Cascades have faced. With the addition of fifth and sixth round trips launched in March 2023, the service has broken ridership and revenue records with a hodgepodge of previously sidelined Horizon coaches and cafes and two Oregon-owned Talgo trainsets.
Challenges include poor on-time performance triggered by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific freight congestion. Also, the cab car of the Mount Bachelor Talgo trainset was impaled by a tree in a recent storm [see “Engineer injured, equipment sustains significant damage …,” News Wire, Nov. 21, 2024]. That leaves little flexibility for the remaining seven equipment sets should mechanical issues develop. An Oregon official told Harris he is “optimistic” that repairs can be made to the heavily damaged cab car in early 2025.
As for improved timekeeping, Mark Paparo, Amtrak’s senior director of state-supported services, says he’s hoping a pilot project in Virginia involving the state, Amtrak, and CSX adjusting schedules to eliminate delays can be expanded to the Pacific Northwest.
Amtrak is also working on an initiative to develop pre-clearance customs facilities in Vancouver, B.C., Montreal, and Windsor, Ont. Currently, southbound Cascades must stop at the border for about 10 minutes even though there is a segregated facility at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station. Placing U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel in a Canadian facility would eliminate that delay. Lengthy pauses at border crossings for the Adirondack and Maple Leaf are much worse. But Amtrak’s Rob Eaton says feasibility studies are underway for pre-clearance at Montreal’s Central Station and at VIA Rail Canada’s Windsor station, where Amtrak is seeking to terminate one Wolverine Corridor round trip instead of reversing at Pontiac, Mich.
Food changes coming, board nominees still in limbo
In the meeting’s question-and-answer session, Harris responded to an attendee’s query about onboard food deficiencies by saying, “You will be seeing an evolution of food service in which we will be moving away from what has been characterized as ‘flex dining.’”
When asked about the upcoming administration change in the nation’s capital, Board Chairman Anthony Coscia said, “With every passenger we deliver safely, we are building more support in an environment we don’t completely control.” During an intermission, Coscia told News Wire that board nominees awaiting Senate confirmation face a similar lack of control. Unless action is taken before the end of the year, the confirmation process will need to begin again with new nominees. One already vetted nominee, Elaine Clegg from Boise, Idaho, was in attendance.
Board member and Normal, Ill., mayor Chris Koos went through the nomination process three times before he was confirmed. He stressed the importance of Amtrak trains to his community, telling the group, “The service is so popular that unless you book in advance, you may not get on the train.”
Joel Szabat, a board member confirmed with Koos in early 2023, noted that the Empire Builder he took from Chicago operates over several host railroads. “We have to work with them on safety to make sure the [derailment of a Cascades trainset in 2017] doesn’t happen again.”
What is more troubling, is that Amtrak won’t add more coaches to long-distance trains so as to carry more paying passengers per train. Yes, adding the Sightseer Lounge back on the EAGLE will be awesome! But the lounge car, technically, doesn’t add more paying customers to the total head-count of bodies on the train.
NEC and Regional trains are operating with 4-5 coaches and a lounge. Yet, most long-distance trains are operating with 2-3 coaches. Example, the tri-weekly CARDINAL offers 2 coaches (116 seats) per trip x 3 trips = 348 seats each way per week and is often sold out. Compare that with a Boston-Roanoke, VA Regional with 4 coaches (232 seats) per trip x 7 trips = 1,624 seats each way per week!
It’s no wonder long-distance trains have limited ridership, when customers are constantly turned away due to the service being sold out days and weeks in advance.
If Amtrak management truly wanted to dramatically increase ridership and revenue on long-distance trains, they should add MORE coaches and sleepers to EVERY long-distance train by repairing all damaged equipment and putting it into revenue service. And, operate a full-service dining car (for ALL passengers to use) and a lounge car on every train, to elevate the on-board experience and generate repeat customers.
Jeff, I live alongside the Texas Eagle and I was quite surprised to see that they’ve added the transition sleeper back along with a second full coach. As far as I know they will remain in place through the holiday season. But as you mentioned it won’t be until March that the Sightseer Lounge returns. It runs only a Cross Country cafe diner lite car which has to act as both a cafe for all customers plus a diner for sleeper passengers. With only a single food service car, the feasibility to increase capacity on the Eagle in the meantime is limited and isn’t as sorely needed as assigning a second full coach to the California Zephyr or even the Empire Builder’s Seattle section. Plus they run an additional full coach and a full sleeper on the days when it connects to or from the Sunset Limited. So it’s running one transition sleeper, two full sleepers, and four Superliner coaches on the days it connects to the Sunset. Yet they run only a single food service car to handle this passenger volume potential. It’s running 50% full at the most on the days it runs with the additional cars. If it were completely full, how far would the train make it before the Cafe runs out of food? Meanwhile most Zephyr trips in days leading up to Christmas already have no seats left. The problem is poor decision on management’s part on equipment assignments. This has happened before. Summer 2023 when Amtrak pulled one of the Capitol’s two sleepers to give it to the Empire Builder for a second full sleeper which already had two full sleepers plus a transition dorm resulting in Capitol trips selling out as much as six weeks in advance. I also took the Eagle the week before Christmas in 2019 when planners dropped a third coach from that train to give a fourth to the Southwest Chief! You’d have to be pretty bad at equipment management to reduce capacity on one train just as a travel surge is approaching! It’s happened plenty of times before.
I’m so glad that the Texas Eagle is finally regaining a Sightseer Lounge in the spring. It shouldn’t have been removed from the start!! But I’ll state on the record that Amtrak could do restore it now! Guess how many lounges I saw on the Illinois service trains…. Five, FIVE lounges. Two on the Saluki and three on the Illini. I would be willing to be that the Eagle is getting it’s lounge back only because Superliners are set to be withdrawn from these trains in the coming year as Amtrak’s locomotives get fitted with shunt enhancer antennas! Only when a surplus amount of equipment is available does the Eagle get on board service upgrades and when shortages result in rationing the Eagle is the first to get downgraded. I’ll never forget Christmas 2019 when planners dropped a third Chicago to San Antonio coach. The Starlight I remember ran five sleepers plus a business car. The Zephyr and Chief ran four sleepers, and the Chief even ran a fourth coach during that period. It was an abomination seeing the Eagle run a holiday travel season with only SIX cars!!! They should’ve kept the third coach and added a baggage car at minimum and some years prior a second full sleeper would be assigned to the Eagle during the holidays!
Thomas: The Amtrak pre-clearance presentation didn’t specifically preclude the infrastructure aspect (as you suggest), but since infrastructure has everything to do with the level of service and whether it is viable, it seems like a game of fantasy football to not at least mention the infrastructure aspect. Or, they simply ignored it because it added a degree of complexity they aren’t willing to deal with. Hard to say.
I don’t agree that pre-clearance or customs processing or whatever it would be called is not possible on the Maple Leaf. This suggests that it would also not be possible for services like Chicago-Toronto. These are corridors which are simply too important to deem “impossible” to implement. Multiple multiple frequencies, additional pre-clearance sites and specific travel restrictions between points immediately adjacent to the border would be required. Or: As stated earlier, customs employees assigned to riding the trains performing their duties en route.
That the Amtrak presentation doesn’t envision any intermediate stops between the origin/destination station in Canada and the border doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be one. The best case in point is the existing route to/from Vancouver, BC. With more than two-thirds of the Vancouver metro population residing east and south of the current station, the service cannot meet its full potential without a suburban stop east and/or south of the city, such as in Surrey. A suburban stop with its own pre-clearance facility would most certainly be financially justifiable. Granted – and referencing your remark – it is possible that the examples given in the presentation don’t preclude that there couldn’t be additional Canadian stops with additional pre-clearance sites; I just happen to believe that if that was the intent, they would have been indicated in the presentation, and they weren’t.
Superliner “refresh” won’t do rebuild or replace are the only options at this point. Waiting until late 2025 may be too late if the money is clawed back by the Congressional majority. Replacing the Superliners with a new design will result in chaos since no one seems to be able to design & build even basic passenger cars. Why not just use the current Superliner design with updated technology & design & take bids on that instead of starting from scratch. But that’s probably Amtrak Mgmts grand scheme is for time to run out by either losing the funding for the LD equipment or delaying it long enough so they can eliminate the LD routes through attrition of the current 40 – 50 yr old equipment.
The way to prevent a repeat of the Dupont derailment of a Cascade train is for Amtrak to insist on its own rules for engineer route familiarization be complied with– one engineer and his pilot at a time, not four standee engineers with one at the throttle. The Talgo equipment was in no way to blame for the fatalities but the NTSB as usual was more interested in scoring points against FRA than in dealing with the cause.
Once again long distance service is shortchanged. Maybe AMTRAK will put a couple repaired cars back in service, but management complains about the cost of repairs. At the glacial rate long distance replacement contracting is going, the new cars won’t be available until 2030 or later.
I would be interested in knowing if the Empire train Szabat took to Seattle was on time.
Arrived 37 minutes early.
Interesting, I guess the Amtrak law suits against the host railroads had the desired effect.
I attended the Seattle board meeting. I was stunned by the ridiculousness of the initiative to create pre-clearance facilities for customs. A genuine “cart before the horse” fiasco. There was absolutely no mention corresponding infrastructure improvements that would logically first need to be implemented to make these facilities worthwhile. Attending the meeting was a representative from VIA Rail who seemed completely out of touch with reality, yet there was no one there from the more-logical players in any such discussion: The host railroads.
The presentation mentioned four U.S.-Canada border crossings:
• White Rock, BC-Blaine, WA, currently the route of Amtrak Cascades service. The pre-clearance proposal misses the big problem, which is the 120-year-old New Westminster bridge over the Fraser River. The bridge sees about 45 movements daily, and has a speed limit of 10 MPH. The bridge is the primary route for all CN traffic headed for the busy port area of North Vancouver (with the only alternate route via competitor CPKC). Adding additional daily passenger trains is unlikely without additional bridge capacity. Additionally, a different method of pre-clearance needs to be implemented (once infrastructure will allow additional trains) because a customs facility at Vancouver Pacific Central station suggests that passenger trains operate non-stop between Vancouver and the border. The route cries for a suburban stop, because most of the population in the Vancouver metro area is east of the current Vancouver station in Surrey, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond, Coquitlam and Abbotsford. One alternative method of pre-clearance to accommodate suburban stop might be to have traveling customs agents on trains as the Great Northern Railway did on this route, including an onboard office to accommodate paperwork. If infrastructure was upgraded to allow additional frequencies, then the sheer number of passenger trains would warrant dedicated customs personnel to ride the trains back and forth between Vancouver and the border.
• Windsor, ON-Detroit, MI: The proposal set forth in Seattle was to operate one Wolverine Service train to Windsor rather than Pontiac. At the presentation, no mention was made of the stop in Detroit, but it was specifically indicated that the termination point in Windsor would be the VIA Rail station. This is problematic because the VIA station is a stub-end facility, and would require using the Essex Terminal Railway or new track construction in Windsor. If the current Amtrak station in Detroit was still to be used (it’s located on CN), then this would require an additional 2-mile backup move to access the current NS-CP alignment through Detroit (former Michigan Central). This is so cumbersome, it would be faster to simply offer a connecting bus from the Detroit Amtrak station to Windsor. In reality, much more needs to be considered. For instance, a station site at or near the restored Michigan Central Station site in Detroit would be best for a through Detroit-Windsor operation, and east of the St. Clair River tunnel, a new VIA station could be constructed on CPKC. As east of Windsor, CN and CPKC parallel and even cross at grade, it would be easy to rejoin the current CN route. Or, don’t do Detroit-Windsor at all and keep the current Detroit Amtrak station (on an alignment to the Mount Clemens subdivision and a straight shot to Port Huron) and operate the Wolverine trains through to Port Huron and Toronto via Sarnia (instead of terminating at Pontiac). Wolverine trains and possibly the Blue Water could operate in and out of Ontario, doing the border pre-clearance at Port Huron-Sarnia. If retaining service to/through Pontiac is critical, operate Detroit-Chicago trains via Pontiac and Durand, originating and terminating at the current Detroit station which the current alignment allows. (This would accommodate patrons using stops at Pontiac, Troy, and Royal Oak who mostly are going to Battle Creek and west.) Bottom line: Consider all options (which would require contribution and cooperation from Ontario) for the myriad infrastructure possibilities before attempting a pre-clearance service on an awkward route.
• Niagara Falls, ON-Niagara Falls, NY: Route of the Toronto-New York Maple Leaf. The only mention of this service at the Board meeting was that all passengers need to detrain to be screened for customs, but not mentioned as a potential pre-clearance site even though this crossing would seemingly have fewer constrains with freight operations. (The Maple Leaf is the only train using the Whirlpool Bridge between the two Niagara Falls; CN operates no trains immediately west from Niagara Falls, Ontario, preferring to cross the Niagara River at Fort Erie, Ontario, opposite Buffalo, New York.)
• Cantic, QC-Rouses Point, NY: (Lacolle, QC was mistakenly given as the Canadian customs inspection point at the Board meeting; Lacolle is on CPKC whereas Amtrak operates through Cantic on CN.) Route of the Montreal-New York Adirondack. The 43 miles between Southwark, Quebec (St. Lambert), Cantic, and Rouses Point are problematic. This is the trackage that CN placed heat restrictions upon which resulted the summertime annulments of the Adirondack. The route is unsignaled with low track speeds due to few freight movements. The 5-mile Cantic-Rouses Point segment sees minimal freight traffic and is especially prone to slow track. The presentation at the Board meeting mentioned no plan to stabilize the existing right-of-way or enhance it in preparation for extending the Washington, DC-St. Albans Vermonter through to Montreal. Also, if pre-clearance is done in Montreal, the suburban St. Lambert, QC stop would be eliminated and a potential stop in St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC (population 98,000) could not be created. This would be another candidate for on-train customs agents as I suggested on the Amtrak Cascades route.
MARK —- VIA’s station at Windsor Walkerville (before VIA, CNR’s station) has attracted any number of Americans. Easy to see why – the parking issue. Safe, abundant parking. Which none of the Detroit stations had – Brush Street, Fort Street Union Depot, Michigan Central, or now the Amtrak station in the New Center.
If you can drive to Detroit to pick up a train, you can drive to Windsor Walkerville.
Pre clearance isn’t really possible with the Maple Leaf due to it being a VIA operation on the Canadian side of the border – which is why it wasn’t mentioned. As far as the rest of your post I honestly don’t get your objection. The gentleman who was presenting was presenting on this subject as that’s his area of responsibility. It wasn’t meant to imply that there weren’t other infrastructure needs that are needed for the cross border services. Establishing pre clearance is a long process with tons of red tape and things that involve a lot of jurisdictions so it is totally worthwhile for them to be trying to work their way through all that. None of that is an impediment to or takes away from dealing with infrastructure needs along the route in any way. Those are separate parallel efforts that involve negotiations with the host railroads and getting funding.