News Wire: Congestion, flooding disrupting 'Southwest Chief,' 'Texas Eagle,' 'California Zephyr'

[Brian Schmidt]

CHICAGO — An early morning track closure Friday because of flooding at La Plata, Mo., has temporarily shut BNSF Railway’s Chicago-Kansas City, Mo., route used by the Southwest Chief. The Chief joins the Texas Eagle and California Zephyr i...

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/05/31-amtrak-service-suspended-on-part-of-texas-eagle-route

[MikeF90]

A BNSF service advisory notes that part of the Marceline sub (southern transcon) is out of service but should be restored today:

https://domino.bnsf.com/website/updates.nsf/updates-service-consumer/85353D7D7E801A678625840B00664BC3?Open

Other subdivisions are more severely impacted, see the above link for details.

[JPS1]

Brian Schmidt

CHICAGO — An early morning track closure Friday because of flooding at La Plata, Mo., has temporarily shut BNSF Railway’s Chicago-Kansas City, Mo., route used by the Southwest Chief. The Chief joins the Texas Eagle and California Zephyr i...

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/05/31-amtrak-service-suspended-on-part-of-texas-eagle-route 

Amtrak is eliminating the St. Louis to Fort Worth segment of the Texas Eagle through at least June 7th.  Sections of the train will run from Chicago to St. Louis and from Fort Worth to San Antonio.      

Amtrak should make the change permanent.  It should partner with Texas to use the extra equipment, if any, to improve the service along the I-35 corridor between DFW and San Antonio.  More frequencies and faster schedules could draw more people off of I-35 and onto the train.  

[CMStPnP]

I can see why they cancelled the Texas Eagle.   A lot of places in Arkansas the ROW is only ballasted maybe 12-14 inch above the top soil.    One heavy prolonged downpour and that line is in trouble, in my view......You don't really need a river just low lying topography.    Two weeks ago I was in KC and the KC mule was also annulled and it's trainset was sitting idle at KC Union Station (with a new Simens loco at the front).

[JPS1]

An Austin bound passenger from Chicago next week can cancel h/her Amtrak reservation on No. 21, which has been suspended through June 7^th, and fly to Austin, take bus, or rent a car.  Or h/she can take an alternate route through Newton, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth. 

 

The Southwest Chief departs Chicago at 2:50 pm and arrives at Newton at 2:45 am.  The bus for Oklahoma City departs Newton at 4:00 am.  So, our traveler gets an opportunity to hang around the Newton Station for 1 hour, 15 minutes in the middle of the night.

 

The bus is scheduled to arrive in Oklahoma City at 7:35 am.  The Heartland Flyer leaves at 8:25 am, which means the wait in Oklahoma City is just 50 minutes.  The Flyer is scheduled into Fort Worth at 12:27 pm.  But our trepid passenger should not worry about being on-time.  Last year the Flyer’s on-time percentage at its end points was a blazing 43.7 percent. 

 

The Fort Worth to San Antonio section of No. 21 is scheduled to depart at 2:10 p.m.  Although the time of arrival for the Flyer and the time of departure for the Eagle are problematic, there is good news.  The Fort Worth Central Station has a nice Subway restaurant. 

 

Why anyone would accept this routing is a mystery, but I suspect there are some hardcore train riders that will do so. 

 

If the stations between St. Louis and Fort Worth can live without the Texas Eagle for more than a week, just how important is the service?

[blue streak 1]

JPS1

If the stations between St. Louis and Fort Worth can live without the Texas Eagle for more than a week, just how important is the service?

 

With that logic  can you apply that to the NEC PHL <> NYP after the 188 derailment?   Sort of confusing.  Let us get congress off its duff.  That is if congress can ignore all the political wildness !

[JPS1]

blue streak 1

 JPS1 If the stations between St. Louis and Fort Worth can live without the Texas Eagle for more than a week, just how important is the service?

With that logic  can you apply that to the NEC PHL <> NYP after the 188 derailment?   Sort of confusing.  Let us get congress off its duff.  That is if congress can ignore all the political wildness ! 

Well, I did not realize.  So Trenton, Newark, and NYC are only served by one Amtrak train a day, and they were without service for more than a week because of the Train #188 accident.  Learn something new every day. 

[CMStPnP]

JPS1

Why anyone would accept this routing is a mystery, but I suspect there are some hardcore train riders that will do so. 

Amtrak has stated in the past that to it's surprise the Amtrak thruway bus connection between OKC and Newton, KS has fairly heavily patronage.   Amtrak can't figure out why either since it runs in the middle of the night.   However, Amtrak used the bus patronage in part to form the basis of approaching the states to ask for subsidy to support a train as a replacement and they seemed to have convinced them since Amtrak will attempt to replace with a train in FY 2020 which starts in October.........if the Feds come through with the funding in time.

[blue streak 1]

The STL - Kansas City route looks like UP is worried.  Note the map and notice one route out of service and the other yellow.  Closely monitoring.

https://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/@uprr/@customers/documents/up_pdf_nativedocs/pdf_outage_map.pdf