hI
i am new the blog thing. I have question about amtrak. have thay doubled the service on the EMPIER BUILDER. I was looking at the Amtrak track your train and saw two west bound EMPIER BUILDER TRAIN #7. One is in RED WING MN right now and the other is near Portage WI. Is this do to the lack of air line flights ?
On longer routes, there may be more than one 'train' travelling at a time -- this was more observable in the days of daily Pullman service with slower travel time, where there might be several trains corresponding to sequential daily departures, each with the same direction and train number. What I suspect you see here is a previous "Builder" that has gotten severely delayed, with the 'next' one now operating and present on the railroad. (Where there might be a real railfan headache is if the second train passes the first one en route...)
If you can look at the time/location histories of the two trains this may become clearer.
This raises another issue, which I find I don't know the answer to. Some of the popular trains in the 'Golden Age' had so much patronage that they were operated in 'sections' -- separate sequential consists all operating as "the same train". That has of course long been a dream in most long-distance passenger service -- but should Amtrak ever need or want to do such a thing, how would the multiple sections be denoted on the Train Tracker service? Logically this would be through the same expedient used 'back in the day' -- to use the current example, you'd have "!st 7" and "2nd 7" (or whatever more depending on the number of 'sections') to distinguish them ... provided the datatype in the tracker allowed more complex 'strings' of characters and not just numbers in the train-number field...
CSX has specific symbols for things like that on the freight side. Usually it's the same numeric, with a different letter preceding (I think it's "S" for second - I could be wrong).
CSX uses "P" for all passenger movements - they could probably find another letter or two for second or third sections.
All CSX symbols actually include the date of the start, so having several "Q000's" on the system at once isn't a problem, because today's (the 5th) would be Q000-05, yesterday's would be Q000-04, and the day before would be Q000-03. For a long run, all three could conceivabley be on the railroad simultaneously.
I can't speak to any of the other railroad's symbol systems.
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mn rail hI i am new the blog thing. I have question about amtrak. have thay doubled the service on the EMPIER BUILDER. I was looking at the Amtrak track your train and saw two west bound EMPIER BUILDER TRAIN #7. One is in RED WING MN right now and the other is near Portage WI. Is this do to the lack of air line flights ?
I also looked at #5--and its track also shows four trains. Apparently there is a very large bug in the system.
Johnny
tree68CSX has specific symbols for things like that on the freight side. Usually it's the same numeric, with a different letter preceding (I think it's "S" for second - I could be wrong). CSX uses "P" for all passenger movements - they could probably find another letter or two for second or third sections. All CSX symbols actually include the date of the start, so having several "Q000's" on the system at once isn't a problem, because today's (the 5th) would be Q000-05, yesterday's would be Q000-04, and the day before would be Q000-03. For a long run, all three could conceivabley be on the railroad simultaneously. I can't speak to any of the other railroad's symbol systems.
The normal CSX prefix letters for non-bulk commodity trains are Q R and S. At one time R was the prefix for all such trains. Sometime thereafter the Q was introduced to signify quality on the premiere trains, shortly after that the customers whose freight was not being handled on the Q trains begain to complain that they were being discriminated against. Not long after that Q became the standard prefix for all such trains.
At the time I retired, Q was the standard train. R was used to denote a scheduled numbered train that was operating with different route than the Q train of the same number. S trains have a different blocking scheme than does the Q version of the same number. At the time of my retirement X versions of a particular train number were the second sections of that train. While there was a potential to have all of the prefixes in use on a particular schedule number, in practice this never happened.
Examples;Q173-05R173-05S173-05X173-05The dash if for clarity only and is not a actual part of the train identity.
Depending on the length of the run, it is possible to have multiple days trains on the railroad at the same time - depending on the operational fluidity of a subdivision it is POSSIBLE to have more that a single days trains on that sub at one time. When that condition exists, it becomes extremely important for all concerned to understand which day's train is actually being instructed on any mandatory directives.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
DeggestyI also looked at #5--and its track also shows four trains. Apparently there is a very large bug in the system.
Concur, Johnny. Right now there are a lot of Builder, Zephyr, Chief and Sunset trains showing on the tracker with April 24-25 departure dates. I don't know first hand if those are incorrect, but as Damon Runyan would say, "That's how the smart money would bet."
ChuckCobleigh Deggesty I also looked at #5--and its track also shows four trains. Apparently there is a very large bug in the system. Concur, Johnny. Right now there are a lot of Builder, Zephyr, Chief and Sunset trains showing on the tracker with April 24-25 departure dates. I don't know first hand if those are incorrect, but as Damon Runyan would say, "That's how the smart money would bet."
Deggesty I also looked at #5--and its track also shows four trains. Apparently there is a very large bug in the system.
Deggesty ChuckCobleigh Deggesty I also looked at #5--and its track also shows four trains. Apparently there is a very large bug in the system. Concur, Johnny. Right now there are a lot of Builder, Zephyr, Chief and Sunset trains showing on the tracker with April 24-25 departure dates. I don't know first hand if those are incorrect, but as Damon Runyan would say, "That's how the smart money would bet." I wonder what kind of bug found its way into the system. I would say that if you look a train up right now you should not simply look at the map, but should also click on the individual icon to see what date it represents.
I wonder what kind of bug found its way into the system. I would say that if you look a train up right now you should not simply look at the map, but should also click on the individual icon to see what date it represents.
Just looked at Dixieland Software's Amtrak map - at this instand 1600 ET there are 3 days #5 currently in motion, as well as 2 days of #6 as well as two days worth of #7 and #8.
http://dixielandsoftware.net/cgi-bin/getmap.pl?mapname=West
I forget the exact train numbers but one time I was on CSX's Q000-07 following right behind Q000-06 between New Castle and Cumberland.
Mark Vinski
I prefer https://asm.transitdocs.co, m/map which shows the train number with the icon. Amtrak shows an icon with a direction arrow which may be confusing you to think there are four #7's when two are #8. Transitdocs also shows delayed trains with other colors (yellow, red, & black which indicate more than 30 min, more than an hour delay, and a service interuption). Currently, #98 is shown in black on transitdocs and when you click on it, it shows delayed 5:23 late at Orlando. Also, with transitdocs, a listing of all stops and whether it was on time or how late it was. It was 5 min late @ DLB and 5:12 late @WPB. I find the info much more meaningful.
Oh by the way, the correct spelling is EMPIER EMPIRE
Memory may be faulty but in the days of mail trains --- The empty mail trains which were speed limited returning from LAX as second sections would have been numbered 1006 as 6 left out ahead. Often when Antrak has to run a regular train at a different time the trains will get the 10xx or 1xxx number Examples that lately have occurred are 1098 and 1092 from MIA.
A third section which I have never observed could not be a 2xxx as Acelas are in that group. Maybe a 3xxx ?
mvlandswI forget the exact train numbers but one time I was on CSX's Q000-07 following right behind Q000-06 between New Castle and Cumberland. Mark Vinski
When I was working CSX adjusted their Operating Plan on a weekly basis. The plan got changed to adjust for the various MofW Curfews and other known situations that affected operations happening around the property. In the changes it was no unheard of for changing a particular schedule from operating shortly before Midnight to operating slightly after Midnight, therefore, in the push to 'Operate the Plan' at points in time it wasn't that unusual to find Q000-day to be operating just ahead of Q000-day+1. That happening was not something that was normal.
Every train or job working on CSX must have a unique identifier as defined in their 'Car and Train Movement' computer system. When Amtrak identifies to CSX that they intend to operate any form of extra service - that service gets assigned a 'P' number from the 900 series + the day of origin. On CSX 900 series numbers are assigned sequentially as the need for them arrises - the don't apply to any specific origin-destination pair.
blue streak 1Memory may be faulty but in the days of mail trains --- The empty mail trains which were speed limited returning from LAX as second sections would have been numbered 1006 as 6 left out ahead.
When did Amtrak or, presumably, ATSF run mail trains from the Los Angeles airport?
Mail trains out of the LA area would, if anything, have involved a railroad location, like one of the yards or perhaps LAUPT itself.
I'm also reasonably certain that trains don't run out of the Miami airport itself, even if there's some justification for running M&E for some ground intermodal on high-speed rail (as there is for Federal Express between some origin-destination pairs in the NEC).
I am almost certain that Santa Fe's fast mails - #7 & #8 - ran only to the LAUPT.
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