I would guess Amtrak looks at various items on whether to detour or cancel a train. The UP has handled the California Zephyr many times when the BNSF route has been blocked by either a derailment or planned track curfews for maintenance projects. I've had a few of them, using a UP pilot engine for the ATC cab signals which have since been discontinued. (I posted my experience of my first detour on here, if it's still available.)
On some routes, the detour may tie up Amtrak equipment that they don't have to spare. It probably makes more sense to cancel or annul portions of a train, bussing passengers over the annulled sections.
Jeff
With the plant rationalization moves all the carriers have made since the days of Carrier oprated passenger trains, the multiple parallell routes between passenger Origin/Destination pairs has practically been eliminated.
The second element that enters into the potential for detours is CREWS. Amtrak crews will not be qualified on any detour route and, at the least, will require Carrier pilots on the detour route. The carriers have 'right sized' their T&E work force for their own operations and likely don't have sufficient manpower to provide the required pilots. On the Amtrak side of things, they likely don't have the T&E manpower to permit their trains to operate on detour routes. Carrier engineers are not qualified on the operation of Amtrak engines and thus would need an Amtrak engineer to be on board for the detour move.
Third, carriers endeavor to have the operating property operating at maximum train capacity. From the experience of 26 years of Dispatching - it is very easy to overload individual railroad segments - once overloaded it can take hours, days or weeks to get the segment fluid again. (some management personnel don't think it is possible to overload line segments - thus the extended periods of gridlock congestion). All it takes to gridlock a line segment is one train for which there is no crew to operate for a period of time.
Carriers have just as much trouble when it is necessary to detour their own traffic, however, the difficulty goes one step further - the detour route might not have a clearance profile that the detouring carrier trains can use. Maximum height Autoracks and Double stacks are 20 feet 2 inches high - not all routes can handle these cars.
Amtrak's biggest issue is that they don't have sufficient equipment to operate their daily schedules On Time if one set of equipment gets seriously delayed, for whatever the reason. Amtrak has the option of 'trying' to run the sets of equipment back on time; or they can annull a trip for a day and originate the eqipment On Time the following day.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Railroads can't just send their trains over a different route. Crews have to be qualified on the territory, and if not, then pilot crews must be brought in and paid for by someone. Alternate routes may not be up to standards needed for passenger train speeds, and I'm pretty sure Amtrak has to run on routes equipped for PTC. As painful as cancelled trains are for the affected passengers, it is probably the best business decision in most cases.
It used to be when a host railroad had a big derailment, Amtrak detoured the long way around. Now, Amtraks are simply canceled. That must really make points with Amtrak customers!
Such may be caused by freight railroads now trying to save money instead of sparing no expense to reopen the line.
Railroader input would be enlightening!
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