The 'city of broad shoulders' gets a whippin'

Okay, where was I? In A traveling man’s further adventures, I wrote that I flew from Washington, D.C., to Chicago to ride the Pullman Rail Journey train, attached once a week or so to the rear of Amtrak’s City of New Orleans. Pullman is the brainchild of Iowa Pacific Holdings president Ed Ellis, who says its purpose is to recreate the first-class travel experience that the Pullman Company once provided every night of the year. But when I reach Chicago Union Station, all is not well. Almost every train leaving town is late to depart, some trains by many hours. The CONO’s hour approaches and it, too, says DELAYED on the departure monitor. Finally, 90 minutes after scheduled departure, the Fourteenth Street Coach Yard’s only switch engine not yet bad-ordered quits, Pullman is informed, and supervisors say the Pullman cars cannot be attached to the Amtrak train, which leaves without us. That was Thursday. So now, the story continues.

When I get back to Union Station Friday before 4 o’clock, it’s déjà vu all over again. On the monitor, every departing train says DELAYED, and it has been this way all day, I learn. Yesterday’s excuse by the Glass House (control center) was lack of operating locomotives. I don’t know what today’s is.

The hours tick by, past our rescheduled departure time of 8:05 p.m. Yes, our train says DELAYED, too. Eight becomes 9, becomes 10. Curious, I go to Amtrak.com and ask our status;  I learn the City of New Orleans should leave at 11 o’clock and arrive in New Orleans Saturday 18 minutes early.

Eleven o’clock comes and goes. David Ortiz, Pullman’s general passenger agent, is in the Metropolitan Lounge with we nine stoic passengers and in contact with his conductor on the two cars. The train is together, he reports. Then comes word that a brake valve is stuck during the brake test. A few minutes pass and then David shuts off his phone, turns to us, and says: The stuck value is on our car; we’re being left behind again.

But don’t despair, David says. We’ll get you there on the Amtrak train, refund your money, and also give you a free ride some other time. Before he goes to the Amtrak ticket counter, he asks if any of us have issues with riding coach, should rooms not be available. Alone among us, I say I do. David looks surprised (he later says he thought I was joking) and goes off to see what he can do to accommodate us on the City of New Orleans. While he’s doing that, I note that the Lake Shore Limited to New York, due out at 9:30 p.m., is still not in from Fourteenth Street. So I have more than one option.

Back comes David. No rooms are shown as available. He begins handing out the coach tickets. I say to get a refund on mine because I’m not going. Instead, I pay for a roomette on the Lake Shore. No offense, David, I say, but I came here to ride your train; New Orleans is incidental. I’ll just head home and try again some other time. The Lake Shore leaves Chicago more than four hours late, I miss the last train home from the Big Apple by 14 minutes and spend Saturday night in Manhattan, getting the Palmetto out at 7:15 this morning. My wife is in Colorado skiing, but the dogs are glad to see me.

What do I make of all this? Amtrak has a Chicago problem. I don’t know why. Possibly a combination of leadership, staffing levels, and tools to do the job. There was a Fourteenth Street Coach Yard 45 years ago, a primitive slum of a place compared to today’s palatial infrastructure. Yet Penn Central’s demoralized workforce still got the trains out on time, in all seasons. And don’t tell me it’s cold. It’s always cold in Chicago this time of year. Friday, there was no snow or gusty winds, and the temperature reached the mid-teens. This week for me was a repeat of last week, when Amtrak sent the Cardinal out of Chicago almost four hours late yet without a functional sleeping car. It was my bad luck to be in that sleeping car.

Do you think I exaggerate? Here, in consecutive order, is box score for Friday mid-afternoon through evening, the scheduled departure time in parenthesis, followed by the actual time. Omitted are the only two trains (the Illini and the 5:08 p.m. Hiawatha) that actually leave on schedule:

Wolverine (12:50 p.m.) 2:49 p.m. Blue Water (4:00 p.m.) 4:05 p.m. California Zephyr (2:00 p.m.) 5:27 p.m. Lincoln Service (5:15 p.m.) 5:53 p.m. Empire Builder (2:15 p.m.) 6:00 p.m. Texas Eagle (1:45 p.m.) 6:00 p.m. Pere Marquette (4:55 p.m.) 6:30 p.m. Lincoln Service (7:00 p.m.) 8:22 p.m. Wolverine (6:00 p.m.) 8:28 p.m. Illinois Zephyr (5:55 p.m.) 8:41 p.m. Hoosier State (5:45 p.m.) 9:28 p.m. Capitol Limited (6:40 p.m.) 9:40 p.m. Hiawatha (8:05 p.m.) 10:08 p.m. City of New Orleans (8:05 p.m.) 12:23 a.m. Lake Shore Limited (9:30 p.m.) 1:38 a.m.

This is an indictment of Amtrak. You cannot blame Amtrak for all the late arrivals (yes, almost all trains were late arriving) but you can hold it accountable for late initial departures, and this is pathetic. You can’t just blame the weather. It has been a cold, wet winter on the Northeast Corridor, too, and the NEC may have bent at times, but it never broke. And you can’t say the freight railroads aren’t running well, either, because the freight railroads don’t run Fourteenth Street Coach Yard.

One other thing: Screw me once, and I may say it’s happenstance. Screw me twice, and I smell a rat. The last operating switcher died on Thursday? Use the road power to couple the Pullman cars. Stuck valve on Friday? I don’t think the people at Fourteenth Street give a damn. Pullman Rail Journeys is a customer. Pullman should matter.

This has been a hard blog to write. I am struggling to be fair, but you can tell I’m unhappy, even angry. Maybe another point of view would help. So I asked D. J. Stadtler, Amtrak’s vice president of operations, to read this. I said I would publish anything he wishes to say in response. D. J. gets the last word:

“Fred you are absolutely correct, Chicago has been a tremendous struggle for us this winter, the past couple weeks especially. As you know, our goal is to exceed our passengers expectations in Customer Experience. As of late in Chicago, not only have we not exceeded their expectations, we have been far from even meeting them. 

“I could list many reasons for this, be it limited equipment, staffing issues, numerous traction motor failures due to grounding conditions, late inbounds resulting in late outbounds thereby perpetuating the cycle, or any number of other issues. I could explain to you the different things we are attempting to do with GE to improve the reliability of the locomotives, or our evaluations of our staffing levels to ensure that when trains are late coming in we have adequate staff to turn them around quickly, or the fact that we are looking at ways to streamline our quality review processes so that we don’t send out equipment that is not ready to be sent out. 

“I'd be happy to detail those fixes if you'd like, but at then end of the day when you (and others) see a train board that says DELAYED virtually top to bottom, we have not done our jobs, and that is all that matters. There is not one thing that impacts this, but many, and we are looking at everything. We need to do better and we know it, and we are committed to turning things around quickly.”