CHICAGO — Amtrak’s Empire Builder departing Seattle on Aug. 30 got off to an on-time start, but was spotted over Labor Day weekend exiting Rugby, N.D., 13 hours, 29 minutes late at 1:18 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 1 instead of 11:49 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 31. It would lose more time because a borrowed BNSF Railway freight locomotive is not geared to attain 79 mph maximum speeds. The straggler rolled into Chicago Union Station Monday at 6:53 a.m., 14 hours, 8 minutes off the advertised. At least at that hour, Amtrak was spared the need to find holiday weekend Windy City hotel rooms for a trainload of passengers.
What happened? Both of the train’s ALC42 Charger locomotives became disabled east of Ephrata, Wash. Including the need to secure replacement motive power and most likely transport a fresh operating crew to the site, the train lost more than 9 hours stopped overnight.
Both the Surface Transportation Board are currently collecting mountains of data exploring reasons and responsibilities for delays to the Sunset Limited and Crescent, respectively [see “STB to end discovery portion …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 20, 2024, and “Buttigieg: Justice Department lawsuit …,” News Wire, Aug. 1, 2024]. And Amtrak meticulously slices, dices, and categorizes a monthly “Host Railroad Report” that attributes causes of delay minutes by route and host.
The Builder breakdown, on the other hand, is one of the final entries in a register of lengthy delays compiled by News Wire nearly every day during August. Instead of drawing general conclusions from eyes-glazing tables, this information is necessarily anecdotal and far from complete. For instance, no attempt was made to include electric transmission, heat, or flooding-related impacts that affected dozens of Northeast Corridor trains on multiple occasions [see “Weather issues disrupt Amtrak, NJ Transit…,” News Wire, Aug. 18, 2024].
Entries were gleaned from personal accounts, publicly available real-time system snapshots, and the Amtrak website’s “train status” advisories. The latter messages, also relayed to ticketed passengers, usually don’t explain the reason for delays, and never exact details if “mechanical issues” are singled out.
Before delving into delays, it is important to note that Amtrak originated more than 9,000 departures during the month—almost 300 per day. The overwhelming majority departed on time from their origination point and many encountering setbacks of any kind overcame them with recovery time, or padding, baked into their schedules. Nevertheless, lengthy delays inconvenience passengers and can adversely affect future ticket revenue while dramatically increasing operating costs. The object here is to shine a light on specific geographical and operational areas that need attention from Amtrak and hosts while also providing a “heads up” to potential travelers.
The 94 instances logged during the month were based on at least one hour of delay versus the schedule between stationsm or a half-hour delay departing an initial terminal. For this report, we’ll double those thresholds to focus only on en-route interruptions of at least 2 hours and terminal delays of 1 hour.
Slow-speed segments
Certain long-distance trains repeatedly succumbed to freight train interference or slow orders that dealt a blow to punctual timekeeping. Intense weather conditions, particularly heat restrictions in areas subject to wide year-round temperature fluctuations, were also responsible.
Southwest Chief:
Barstow, Calif., to Gallup, N.M.: Eight times during the month;
Hutchinson, Kan., to La Junta, Colo.: Seven times.
Heavy freight interference on BNSF Railway’s Transcon stymied nearly every Chief to some extent. A 4-hour delay to westbound No. 3 on Aug. 8 in Kansas was attributed to “crew issues, rail congestion, speed restrictions, and passenger issues that required [emergency medical] assistance.” Some Chiefs got nailed in both segments. There were also a half-dozen delays of an hour or more in the Lamy, N.M.-Trinidad, Colo., section. Because the east- and westbound passenger trains meet where there are few passing sidings (even though they are the only trains on the line), cascading setbacks may push meets out of their scheduled slot east of Lamy.
Empire Builder:
Williston, N.D., to Shelby, Mont.: Five times.
“High temperatures may require trains to operate at lower speeds,” is the advisory on Amtrak’s website meant to explain precautions taken to account for heat-induced rail expansion potentially causing sun kinks. This kind of delay occurred all over the system in August, but the Builder suffered the most when temperatures rose into the 90-degree range for hundreds of miles on the northern plains. The month wasn’t as bad for Nos. 7 and 8 as earlier in the summer, but delays usually compounded if the day’s westbound train were significantly late arriving into Seattle or Portland, Ore. Scheduled 3 hours earlier at St. Paul, the eastbound Builder followed the Chicago-bound Borealis four times during the month or preceded it by less than an hour five times.
California Zephyr:
Reno to Salt Lake City and Helper, Utah, to Granby, Colo.: 6 times.
Timekeeping improved over both of these segments from earlier months, when there was more track obstruction and freight congestion. However, the Zephyr incurred additional weather-related slow orders on several occasions across Nebraska and Iowa in August.
Many other trains suffered multiple en route delays of 2 hours or more throughout the month. These were the result of pedestrian strikes, crossing collisions, host railroad freight train breakdowns, or Amtrak “mechanical issues.” The list includes Empire Service No. 280; the Crescent; City of New Orleans; Silver Star; Silver Meteor; Cardinal; and Texas Eagle.
Terminal tardiness
Departure delays are the easiest to quantify, since a train either leaves on time or it doesn’t. At least 28 trains during the month departed their initial terminals more than an hour late. These include:
— New York, with at least seven recorded delayed starts of an hour or more. A particularly bad day for Sunnyside Yard shop forces was Aug. 5, when both the Silver Meteor and Crescent left 3 hours, 40 minutes late.
— Washington, D.C.’s five tardy departures were all Acela and Northeast Regionals, but on Aug. 30, the Meteor that departed 1:26 late from New York was 4:41 late leaving Washington after losing 2½ hours during the switch from electric to diesel power.
— Chicago showed marked improvement over previous months, with only four delays longer than an hour. Not included were several instances when congestion-delayed inbound Hiawathas from Milwaukee could not “flip back” on time. Thetally does not include more than a week of Carl Sandburg cancelled trips early in the month when there was a shortage of serviceable Charger locomotives [see “Amtrak to resume second Chicago-Quincy train….,” News Wire, Aug. 8, 2024].
— Seattle, Los Angeles, Emeryville, and New Orleans registered more than two hour-long tardy departures each when inbound equipment arrived in plenty of time and should have been ready to roll. The remainder occurred at remote terminals such as Pontiac, Mich.; Newport News, Va.; Carbondale, Ill.; Spokane, Wash.; and Pittsburgh, where the eastbound Pennsylvanian of Aug. 28 departed almost 4 hours late.
This snapshot omits delays and departures News Wire missed or many that inconvenienced travelers but didn’t reach the stated parameters. But the account attempts to go beyond the antiseptic use of “delay minutes” to portray the real impact of delays on passengers and the need to address them.
