Amtrak's bad day at the office

How’s your week going folks? Don’t ask that of your friends toiling for Amtrak. I’m accustomed to reading about bad things that happen to good trains. But events on Monday, August 6, constitute a lulu, and for the most part are not of Amtrak’s making. I will share the low points with you.

We start with what is not happening,  that is, locomotives not ready for prime time. More than one-fourth of the locomotives assigned to the Northeast Corridor are out of service. The fleet of electric locomotive is in shambles. Of the millions-miles AEM-7 electrics, 30 percent are out of service. The real scandal are the newer HHP-8 electrics, already waiting for the scrap line, with eight of 15 not able to raise a pantograph. The good news is that the stalwarts of Amtrak’s national fleet, the General Electric P42, are hanging in there. The out-of-service ratio for these diesels is 16 percent, or 29 of 191.

Now let’s tour the country. Near Gastonia, N.C., a Norfolk Southern freight derails, 28 cars fouling both tracks. Amtrak first arranges busses to bridge the derailment, ferrying passengers between the northbound and southbound Crescent. When NS says a track should be ready by 4 to 4:30 am, Amtrak cancels the busses, so that the trains can run through. Then NS pulls a Lucy to Charlie Brown the place kicker, pushing back the opening three more hours. Ouch.

Those are just two trains. On Metro North Railroad, a tree falls upon catenary wires near Cos Cob, Conn., shutting down for at least three hours the four-track railroad (Amtrak’s Boston trains are tenants) to anything that isn’t diesel-powered. Hand it to Amtrak, it scrambles. Trains are combined under diesel power (what few diesels could be found in New York or New Haven) and turnarounds are rearranged south of New York to achieve a semblance of normalcy for Acela and Northeast Direct trains. But there’s no denying this is a major disaster. And making it worse, train 169 becomes disabled at New Rochelle, N.Y., where Amtrak leaves Metro North Railroad. It gets its electrical power back after an hour.

But we’re not finished with the NEC. Train 95 from Boston to Newport News, Va., inverts its rear pantograph south of Aberdeen, Md. If you want to know what an inverted pantograph is, write your congressman. A diesel is dispatched from Amtrak’s maintenance base on the other side of Baltimore, but before it can arrive, the other pantograph is made to work and train 95 proceeds, delayed almost two hours. Nine other trains take delays of up to almost an hour.

Let’s not even discuss track and tunnel work on CSX between Richmond and Newport News and between Pittsburgh and Washington, and on Union Pacific between Chicago and St. Louis and between St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., that causes Amtrak trains to be cancelled, delayed for long periods, or temporarily rescheduled. And pleeeeeease, don’t bring up the Empire Builder, which BNSF Railway prides on running right to schedule . . . not. Massive rail and tie programs in Montana once again kill the eastbound train in particular, which arrives (again) too late in Chicago for eastbound connections and causes Amtrak to board scores or people at taxpayer expense for the night. Whew! I am told that this misery will persist until Thanksgiving, to which I raise a glass and declare, more train-watching happiness at no added price! Few passengers will share my happiness at these delays.

What else could go wrong? We haven’t yet talked about the customers, who have their own ways of being unpredictable. On the eastbound Southwest Chief, a woman is taken from the train at Williams Junction, Ariz., to a hospital. She says another passenger, a man, had drugged her. She says she asks him what he had given her and he replies, “Don’t worry about it.” Cops board the train with a search warrant and haul him off on a felony charge . . . whether a prior or one arising from this incident, I don’t quite know.

So how was your Monday? — Fred W. Frailey