Some freight lines do better than others.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
BaltACD The Train Dispatcher has a two dimensional playing field of fixed dimensions and characteristics - just because the Train Dispatcher has more trains to move does not give him any more facilities with which to do the job. Other carriers and other territories may vary. Note - AMTK has the same problems on their own territory with their own trains.
The Train Dispatcher has a two dimensional playing field of fixed dimensions and characteristics - just because the Train Dispatcher has more trains to move does not give him any more facilities with which to do the job.
Other carriers and other territories may vary.
schlimm BaltACD schlimm oltmannd schlimmAmtrak basically is holding a gun to the head of the freight hosts: "You give us service for pennies on the dollar because you agreed to do so 43 years ago." So Amtrak gets service, poor service, as anyone would expect when that is the climate between the two parties. I think the frt RRs actually do the best they can. Amtrak is getting the best service possible. That's the problem. I am reposting this: One fact that has kept a low profile for the past 12 months is this: "A federal judge struck down the law that told railroad dispatchers to give Amtrak priority over freight trains. Since then Amtrak’s on-time arrivals have slipped across the country, to just 74 percent since last October."http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/amtraks-sisyphean-struggle-to-run-on-time.html Observation from the Dispatching trenches! Never had heard of either the 'legal priority' or the ruling that 'struck it down'; and such rulings have not entered into the tactical dispatching decisions that get made on my territory. Passenger is given as much priority as the available 'parking' or meeting spaces on the territory will allow. There are times when. for a variety of reasons, there are more freight trains on the district than there are locations to hold them without putting the entire territory into gridlock. Whatever decrease in Amtrak performance that occurs on the territories I am responsible for is because of increased volumes of freight traffic - not because a legal provision has been invalidated. The Train Dispatcher has a two dimensional playing field of fixed dimensions and characteristics - just because the Train Dispatcher has more trains to move does not give him any more facilities with which to do the job. Other carriers and other territories may vary. And in the words of, ie. paraphrasing don oltmann, that is Amtrak's problem.
BaltACD schlimm oltmannd schlimmAmtrak basically is holding a gun to the head of the freight hosts: "You give us service for pennies on the dollar because you agreed to do so 43 years ago." So Amtrak gets service, poor service, as anyone would expect when that is the climate between the two parties. I think the frt RRs actually do the best they can. Amtrak is getting the best service possible. That's the problem. I am reposting this: One fact that has kept a low profile for the past 12 months is this: "A federal judge struck down the law that told railroad dispatchers to give Amtrak priority over freight trains. Since then Amtrak’s on-time arrivals have slipped across the country, to just 74 percent since last October."http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/amtraks-sisyphean-struggle-to-run-on-time.html Observation from the Dispatching trenches! Never had heard of either the 'legal priority' or the ruling that 'struck it down'; and such rulings have not entered into the tactical dispatching decisions that get made on my territory. Passenger is given as much priority as the available 'parking' or meeting spaces on the territory will allow. There are times when. for a variety of reasons, there are more freight trains on the district than there are locations to hold them without putting the entire territory into gridlock. Whatever decrease in Amtrak performance that occurs on the territories I am responsible for is because of increased volumes of freight traffic - not because a legal provision has been invalidated. The Train Dispatcher has a two dimensional playing field of fixed dimensions and characteristics - just because the Train Dispatcher has more trains to move does not give him any more facilities with which to do the job. Other carriers and other territories may vary.
schlimm oltmannd schlimmAmtrak basically is holding a gun to the head of the freight hosts: "You give us service for pennies on the dollar because you agreed to do so 43 years ago." So Amtrak gets service, poor service, as anyone would expect when that is the climate between the two parties. I think the frt RRs actually do the best they can. Amtrak is getting the best service possible. That's the problem. I am reposting this: One fact that has kept a low profile for the past 12 months is this: "A federal judge struck down the law that told railroad dispatchers to give Amtrak priority over freight trains. Since then Amtrak’s on-time arrivals have slipped across the country, to just 74 percent since last October."http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/amtraks-sisyphean-struggle-to-run-on-time.html
oltmannd schlimmAmtrak basically is holding a gun to the head of the freight hosts: "You give us service for pennies on the dollar because you agreed to do so 43 years ago." So Amtrak gets service, poor service, as anyone would expect when that is the climate between the two parties. I think the frt RRs actually do the best they can. Amtrak is getting the best service possible. That's the problem.
schlimmAmtrak basically is holding a gun to the head of the freight hosts: "You give us service for pennies on the dollar because you agreed to do so 43 years ago." So Amtrak gets service, poor service, as anyone would expect when that is the climate between the two parties.
I think the frt RRs actually do the best they can. Amtrak is getting the best service possible. That's the problem.
One fact that has kept a low profile for the past 12 months is this:
"A federal judge struck down the law that told railroad dispatchers to give Amtrak priority over freight trains. Since then Amtrak’s on-time arrivals have slipped across the country, to just 74 percent since last October."http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/amtraks-sisyphean-struggle-to-run-on-time.html
Observation from the Dispatching trenches!
Never had heard of either the 'legal priority' or the ruling that 'struck it down'; and such rulings have not entered into the tactical dispatching decisions that get made on my territory. Passenger is given as much priority as the available 'parking' or meeting spaces on the territory will allow. There are times when. for a variety of reasons, there are more freight trains on the district than there are locations to hold them without putting the entire territory into gridlock.
Whatever decrease in Amtrak performance that occurs on the territories I am responsible for is because of increased volumes of freight traffic - not because a legal provision has been invalidated.
And in the words of, ie. paraphrasing don oltmann, that is Amtrak's problem.
Note - AMTK has the same problems on their own territory with their own trains.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
dakotafred Makes one wonder if everybody, including Amtrak, wouldn't actually be ahead if passenger trains ran at freight-train speeds on the freight railroads. Surely any gain from occasional bursts of 79 mph is dissipated in those long waits for a green light.
Makes one wonder if everybody, including Amtrak, wouldn't actually be ahead if passenger trains ran at freight-train speeds on the freight railroads. Surely any gain from occasional bursts of 79 mph is dissipated in those long waits for a green light.
People don't comprehend the 'footprint' required to operate a passenger trains at maximum authorized speed on a busy district of railroad, no matter if it is single track, double track or more than two tracks.
Moses had a easier time parting the Red Sea, than Train Dispatcher's have in moving Amtrak on a high use freight railroad. The reality is that Amtrak has their own difficulties in not delaying their own trains on their own property.
When you need to have 4 to 6 or more miles of clear track ahead of a train for it to get CLEAR signal indications - the limited 'playing field' of a dispatching district gets that much more constrained. Throw in some terminal congestion, for whatever reasons (track space, crew availability, working power availability) and the playing field becomes that much more constrained.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
henry6And the harder it will be for the US to enter the 21st Century.
Wash Post article on Amtrak NEC OTP. Analysis of all NEC scheduled trains. Couple points.
1. Picture is of a NJT commuter train not an Amtrak train.
2. Amtrak spokesman noted that trips scheduled on MNRR to / from New Haven are given priority to make sure they fit into slots that MNRR provides for those trains.
3. No mention of how commuter trains affect OTP.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/17/here-are-the-best-and-worst-times-to-take-the-train-between-new-york-and-d-c/
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
henry6So Amtrak has a "hissy fit" because a Class One railroad fails to fulfill their side of the bargain or agreement. What if you purchased something and the supplier decided not to give you what you paid for, what you thought you were purchasing? If the railroads don't want to supply the product and service they agreed to at the price they agreed to they should renegotiate or throw Amtrak off the property. IF it violates the Amtrak law, such as it is, then the railroad will pay the penalty of law or public outrage or both.
Your analogy again has little relationship to logic or reality. Amtrak basically is holding a gun to the head of the freight hosts: "You give us service for pennies on the dollar because you agreed to do so 43 years ago." So Amtrak gets service, poor service, as anyone would expect when that is the climate between the two parties. The freights pay the penalties and who benefits? As to public outrage, what century are you talking about? If all Amtrak LD trains d/c'd tomorrow, it would be barely noticed and forgotten by Monday except by a few oldtimers.
Southern gets altogether too much credit for choosing to keep running its own Crescent rather than join Amtrak. It made the cheaper choice, based on the timing of its train discontinuances, some of which had missed the cutoff date after which train-offs counted against your Amtrak buy-in.
Afterwards, Graham Claytor and Southern posed as heroes of the passenger train, but that was B.S.
One thing, besides shedding those horrible losses, that made Amtrak attractive to the railroads in 1971 was that business was so lousy, pre-deregulation, that they had plenty of capacity to indulge it, even at the poor price.
While some railroads were quite eager to rid themselves of passenger train losses, there were others such as SCL and Santa Fe that agonized whether to join Amtrak or do what Southern did and stay out. They ended up turning over their trains because the losses were becoming unsustainable, as well as re-equipping these trains could not be justified. Railroad management is in a different environment today, with business doing quite well. While they would not be too concerned to see Amtrak vanish tomorrow, compared to PTC mandates and crude oil safety, Amtrak barely registers on their radar screen.
Carriers who succeeded in shedding the passenger business before Amtrak did so slowly, painfully and one train at a time. This was surely the case with Henry's Erie Lackawanna. That's what the federal rules demanded. It wasn't a matter of some railroads being "smart" and dumping all their trains before Amtrak or being stupid and still having them around to incur the Amtrak obligation.
Of course, some lines were more aggressive than others in going to the ICC -- Southern and Southern Pacific are two who spring to mind. They seemed to be there all the time, trying to ditch a drain. But they had a lot of them to get rid of, one at a time. Erie Lackawanna was more passenger-friendly, but had fewer trains, and just ran out of them, one ICC visit at a time, before Southern and SP could.
henry6They could get out of running passenger trains by getting out of the passenger business before a set date in the legislation. The EL did that. Or they could stay out of Amtrak by guaranteeing they would run their passenger trains for another year after the Amtrak start up date.
I believe the railroads that opted out had to run passenger services until 1975 and go through the usual ICC discontinuance process.
The Rock determined it would cost them less to keep running the Peoria Rocket and the Quad Cities Rocket at a loss for the required 5 years than to pay to join Amtrak. They finally gave up running them sometime in 1978. I looked at taking the train on a trip from Chicago to Iowa that year, but it didn't work out. Looking back, I wish it had. Didn't realize at the time that it would be gone just months later.
The problem was that the date in the legislation had either come and gone, or was too near to get a train off thru the ICC AND there was no reason to expect a positive, that is train-off, result.
In plain fact, the Government would not let the carriers drop the trains.
Mac
Henry,
Your post of 1:27 PM suggesting that the carriers could have got out of the passenger business like the EL manage to do is entirely fact free. The whole point is that the carriers who still were running passenger trains in the late 1960's could NOT get out of running them. The obvious solution was to exit the business. The ICC would not let them. Look at the history. Do you really think that the freight carriers would not have objected to ATK if they could simply exit a loosing line of business like any other business in America could?
Your claim is basically that the carriers were too stupid to get out of a loosing business. The fact is the Government would not let them.
Streak,
It is much more than maintenance. Roughly 2/3 of the cost is for the very provision of the way. Maintenance is about 1/3.
The most important issue is the capacity that ATK consumes. Depending on the speed differential vs. freight trains, people who know this much better than I say ATK uses about two freight slots for each passenger train. That seems reasonable.
The other issue I did not address is the cost of freight train delay due to ATK. This is very real, highly variable day to day, and would require a shadow trains dispatching program to calculate.
ATK is a real and substantial burden on the freight carriers. I was not kidding about saying that the NITL should be up in arms about the fact that they are paying higher freight charges than the should so the freight carriers can support ATK.
It would be nice for ATK supporters to at least acknowledge the fact.
henry6Someone else's track is the pizza parlor...they have to provide the service their customer pays them for. Amtrak being the customer pays them money with the agreement they run the trains for Amtrak on the agreed upon schedule. If they cannot provide that schedule they should not be paid and even have the trains removed. The public should be notified that such and such freight railroad cannot or will not provide the services being paid for and is to blame for no passenger train. Paying the cost isn't the issue. The issue is that the railroad agreed to provide a service and a given price. IF the price isn't enough, then renegotiate don't obstruct. If you were to order a pizza with mushrooms at $10 but the pizza maker decides that with mushrooms the price is too low, he does not withhold the mushrooms on your order but changes the price for the next pizza.
henry6 The railroads were not looking down the barrel of a gun in 1970 but were holding the gun and the public who used trains were looking down the barrel. The freight railroads got what they wanted, what the demanded, by agreeing to what was proposed.
The railroads were not looking down the barrel of a gun in 1970 but were holding the gun and the public who used trains were looking down the barrel. The freight railroads got what they wanted, what the demanded, by agreeing to what was proposed.
henry6The railroads were not looking down the barrel of a gun in 1970 but were holding the gun and the public who used trains were looking down the barrel. The freight railroads got what they wanted, what the demanded, by agreeing to what was proposed. They were the one's who had the choice. They all could have been like the EL and dropped passenger services before the required dates so they wouldn't have had to participate in the National Passenger Railroad at all. The freight railroads negotiated the deal and then failed to adhere to their own terms. But, that being said, they later agreed to contracts and services which they have also ignored, stiffed the American public if you will. If they don't want to operate by the terms of the agreements then they shouldn't sign the contacts and take the heat from the American public instead. My point is that if they have no intention of honoring the agreements, then they shouldn't sign them. And if Amtrak can't run passenger trains because of railroad's attitudes and ignoring of agreements and terms, then let the railroads be forced to face the music from government and public alike. Then renegotiate and live up to the terms.
Go ahead and keep saying this. The railroads were "holding a gun" when they were on a "glide path to bankruptcy" -- on not just their passenger trains, but also on their freight operations?
There is a whole lot of "ought to do" and "ought to be." The railroads "ought to adhere to their contracts." Congress ought to do more to support Amtrak. The people ought to be willing to pay more in taxes to support it. People ought to take the train when they have other choices.
I suppose there are a lot of things you can have people do by ordering them and directing them. But will they have any enthusiasm for it? You can make people serve you, but you cannot make them serve you with a smile.
Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought, we are still stuck in 1969 when the railroads ought to fulfil their common-carrier obligations to run passenger trains, the ICC ought to deny the train-off petitions, the railroads ought to view their passenger train losses on an avoidable cost, not a fully allocated basis, and so on. Has anything changed?
The mere breath of a suggestion around here that Amtrak employ a railroad liaison person, to find out what Amtrak could offer in trade to get better service from their partner railroads, well, that idea was shot down around here as "pandering to Corporate America." Meanwhile, the Amtrak trains are delayed and all we can do is complain about it.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
PNWRMNM I demonstrated that it costs BNSF $36.84 per train mile on a system average basis to provide and maintain the fixed plant. These figures indicate that the US Govt is paying the rails not more than 2% of the costs they are incurring to support ATK. On the $110 million ATK does pay and 2% the railroads and their freight customers, are subsidizing ATK to the tune of $5.5 billion per year. Mac
I demonstrated that it costs BNSF $36.84 per train mile on a system average basis to provide and maintain the fixed plant. These figures indicate that the US Govt is paying the rails not more than 2% of the costs they are incurring to support ATK. On the $110 million ATK does pay and 2% the railroads and their freight customers, are subsidizing ATK to the tune of $5.5 billion per year.
This line of "they agreed to ATK in 1970" is somewhere between weak and false.
While it is true that the carriers did not raise a stink about having to host ATK at the time, their choice was to be relieved of operating losses now, or absorb them for several years and then take their chances with future train-off petitions.
That is the same moral choice you face looking down the barrel of a .45 when the armed robber says "Give me your money and I will not shoot you. The prudent person will give up his money, but that does not insure that he will not shoot you anyway.
Your moral position is the victim of armed robbery did not report it in 1970, so it is OK to keep robbing him.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.