....It seems to me from what I've read, Amtrak did a reasonable job against a difficut situation. My comment would be simply, passengers {anywhere}, would be more reasonable if they could just get some info at these kinds of situations. Of course, there will always be some {in any group of people}, that can't be pleased no matter what is being done for them.
Winter guarantees no ones sure passage in certain locations and diverse transportation modes.
Edit: More accurate info {seemingly}, avail. farther down in this forum that have allowed me to amend my comments. But I still say there are no guarantees what can happen in hard Winter conditions.
Quentin
Well, I hope Amtrak's funding gets increased....................to pay for all the upcoming lawsuits.
Mailman56701 wrote: Well, I hope Amtrak's funding gets increased....................to pay for all the upcoming lawsuits.
You mean the UP Railroad, not Amtrak cause all this mess, the UP Railroad.
conrailman wrote:You can't please everyone in this world always 1 or 2 people complain about every little thing in life.
WOW, aint that the ever loving truth!
conrailman wrote: Mailman56701 wrote: Well, I hope Amtrak's funding gets increased....................to pay for all the upcoming lawsuits.You mean the UP Railroad, not Amtrak cause all this mess, the UP Railroad.
Amtrak's agreement with Class I railroads to use their track includes a hold-harmless clause that places sole liability onto Amtrak and its insurers for wrecks, derailments, delays, or service interruptions, regardless of causation, and especially not weather-related delays. Amtrak will bears the entire cost. Lawsuits for interruption to travel will likely be unsuccessful as the contract for carriage excludes weather-related causes.
RWM
Apparently they did this time unless the photo I saw was a fraud. Looked like a D6R.
The bulldozer is an excellent tool for pushing snow away from the track so that a flanger or spreader has somewhere to deposit the snow that's on the track. Alaska Railroad has used dozers as a regular practice in the Kenai Mountains for at least 40 years. Other railroads have used them on occasion. I don't know if anyone else is now making it a regular practice in the U.S.
......fell through decking to tracks below....
sound so much like someone trying to clear the roof of a snowshed and falling through
Ed
....Why does anyone think they would have to file lawsuits in a situation as such....?? How could Amtrak have prevented this incident, short of not running the train at all. Who has total guarantee to get a certain distance when it involves Mother Nature of Winter....I don't think we've reached that ability yet in ground travel.
hrbdizzle wrote:how you would be able to get a dozer up on the hill.
Dunno how good the road is, but it seems there is something up from I-80
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=39.30999&lon=-120.44593&datum=nad83&u=4&layer=DRG&size=m&s=24
Somebody said that (Lower Cascade) bridge was where the whatever-it-was did whatever it did.
Lawsuit? Really!
While any competent judge would throw it out of court, there are a lot of unscrupulous lawyers and questionable judges around. But in my opinion, anyone who files a suit for a weather related delay should pay a "stupidity fine" of half what they try to get from Amtrak, plus foot the bill for Amtrak's legal fees.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
The link below shows a photograph of the Cat wedged in between the #1 and #2 main tracks at Lower Cascade Bridge after the operator discovered that walkways meant for people do not support 60,000 lb. hunks of yellow steel.
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1594146
I hate to link to another forum, but I have no clue how to post photos on here (and for those who want to help me out, thanks! But please pm me rather than hijacking this into a helpful hints thread not like that other thread that got all cluttered up with helpful people telling me how to turn-on links after I foolishly said I didn't know how).
iowa-rr-fan wrote:What in the world is a D9 doing up there, are they commonly kept around close to clear tracks in the winter or track work in summer, thats a large & heavy machine, you get it stuck & it takes a larger machine to help it out sometimes. Just moving from location to another site would be a job. I was amused by the comments from stranded passengers on national tv, some of them had their feathers ruffled. What would you expect in the northern climate in the dead of winter, cherry blossoms to pass the time ?
Doesn't look like a D9 to me, more like a D6 weighing 37,000 lbs. or a D7 at 56,000 lbs., not a D9 at 107,000 lbs.
I was a passenger on train 5 out of Reno, Friday, February 2, 2008. The story media tells is a bit skewed, as usual. The picture that has been painted is that Amtrak had everything under control and passengers were well tended to. Exactly the opposite is true.
Amtrak spokesperson, Romero, was quoted in almost every paper saying, "She said both trains have heating and lights and passengers were being fed."
Heating? Sounds good, but just not true. I was in the lower compartment of the 511 car with a group of elderly people, one was a hospice patient. Our compartment was so cold that I had to go up and through 3 cars and down into the lounge car to find the lounge car attendant to advise them that our car was freezing and we had elderly people in there. After my second trip over, they finally sent a conductor and attendant with some blankets.
Lights? The whole 5 train was without power, including lights for over an hour while they unhooked the engine to prepare for the return to Reno.
Food? Are you kidding? Well, if you consider a very tiny bowl of beef stew "providing food"...sure, why not. Get real.
Ok, now let me take you on our trip: Train 5 was to depart Reno at 10:34am, it didn't arrive at the station til around noon.
At about 2pm we arrived at Donner Summit, adjacent to and upslope from Donner Lake where we stopped. We were told that the tracks were snow bound and we were waiting for the arrival of a plow to clear the tracks. We sat there for over 3 hours when they finally told us that they were going to roll us back to the Truckee station so we could be in civilization. When we arrived at the Truckee station, we were told that we would be there two hours, then the track would be cleared and we would be on our way.
The "All Aboard" finally came and we moved back on the train like a heard of cattle. After sitting on the train for aprox. another 30 minutes, they rolled us back even further into the train yard just before Truckee station on the Reno side, where they disconnected the engine and we lost all power and lights.
Eventually, they got the engine hooked back up and power to the train. We were amazed when we began to actually move forward...under way at last and on our way home; or so we thought until we rolled back into the Truckee station and stopped again(mind you, to this point there had been no overhead announcements since we reboarded the train in Truckee).
The train finally lurched again and we were underway, but in the wrong direction at full speed in the direction of Reno. My compartment of seniors were growing quite agitated with no information. I made my way to the upper level again, over three cars and back down into the lounge car to see if the attendant there knew what was going on. "Yeah, he said, we're heading back to Reno and everyone is already booked at Harrahs Casino/Hotel for the night. I wasn't too eager to return to my compartment of seniors to give them the news. Several of them thought I was teasing with them. I finally put on the most serious face I could and said, "no, I am not kidding, I'm very serious, we're on our way back to Reno.
After arriving back in Reno, schlepping our luggage back upstairs and standing in a huge line, we each received a voucher to go across the street and book a room at Harrahs. Imagine our surprise when we checked in and when asked what Amtrak was providing for food, we were told that Amtrak was very specific that they were paying for the room only. We had to fend for ourselves.
We were told to return to the station before 8am to catch the 7:55 am bus to Sacramento. So, we got up bright and early, hauled all our luggage over to the station all to find out that the 7:55am bus was full upon our arrival. Now get this, this was not a special bus they brought over just to take care of this, this was the regular train with internet and phone booking taking place. So, since they took a tally of the folks that would need transport that morning, wouldn't you think they would make sure those folks had seats on that bus... well, that would be the mark of an institution who had even semi-decent logistics skills. We finally were able to board a bus at 11:55am and we arrived back in Sacramento around 3:30pm Saturday. Home at last.
In my compartment was a special older gentleman by the name of Tom. Tom was a hospice patient and brought that to the attention of the attendant and conductor after we got them there for the heat issue. After the train had been stuck for over 3 hours on Donner, after disclosing his situation to the conductor, he requested that he be able to go back and lay down in a sleeper car. The conductor said he would get back to him; he never did and Tom did all he could to be comfortable. He was never accommodated.
There is much more, but suffice it to say, Amtrak totally disappointed me with their logistics and lack of customer service. The incident that took place was definantly not Amtrak's issue, the Union Pacific runs the tracks...however, Amtrak handled the whole situation VERY poorly.
....Maverick: A great report. But what a sad accumulation of tales regarding the staff of the train. Sounds like no training is ever employed for such an adventure that can happen. No back up systems for the needs of passengers. How sad it has all fallen to such performance.
One wonders if there is any hope of curing any of the above considering current Amtrak situations.
Again, seemed communication was almost nonexistent.
Doesn't it seem Amtrak should not even attempt to run such routes especially in hard Winter times if their plan "B" is nonexistent.
By the way....welcome to the forum.
Nataraj wrote:Apparently the trains are now running..... the eastbound train 16 hours late.
Well, that was a quick recovery...back to normal already.
I'm an over the road trucker and railfan. Used to run to Port of Oakland every week over Donner. Learned that in winter you better be ready for anything up there, carried a snowsuit, insulated boots, blankets, extra food etc. Doubt of the suits at AMTRAK understand what it can be like on the pass in winter. The old heads on the SP sure did. Wonder if single tracking much of the line has hurt winter operations.
You're allowing logic to enter a discussion about lawsuits; the two don't mix :)
Have no fear, UP will be named too.
Railway Man wrote: conrailman wrote: Mailman56701 wrote: Well, I hope Amtrak's funding gets increased....................to pay for all the upcoming lawsuits.You mean the UP Railroad, not Amtrak cause all this mess, the UP Railroad.Amtrak's agreement with Class I railroads to use their track includes a hold-harmless clause that places sole liability onto Amtrak and its insurers for wrecks, derailments, delays, or service interruptions, regardless of causation, and especially not weather-related delays. Amtrak will bears the entire cost. Lawsuits for interruption to travel will likely be unsuccessful as the contract for carriage excludes weather-related causes. RWM
Such contracts rarely hold up in a lawsuit. When I worked in the ski industry, we had a contract for every person that bought a ticket, about the dangers, their responsibility, etc.
Wasn't even a speed bump in the court.
Unfortunately, I can provide other examples with first-hand experience.
Yep. Doesn't speak well for Amtrak's customer service levels or employee training. Just as I have no sympathy for people who don't understand that there might be weather-related delays / cancellations in the Rockies in winter, I won't accept any excuses from Amtrak for not having a contingency plan for that eventuality. Admittedly, this was a wierd set of circumstances, but not to be prepared is just dumb.
That said, the bus issue, at least according to the news, was because bus companies had sent all their extras to the Superbowl.
I wonder, if it had been the middle of the week instead of late on a Friday, if the reaction / performance would have been any different?
Really! Anybody who thinks that Amtrak could have done much better resolving the situation has little idea about what it takes to run a railroad.
It takes just a little bit more than pulling a cut lever to separate a P42 from the train. Unless the plan is to fry the men doing the work, it is a good idea to shut down the 440 volt HEP plant. Given the weather conditions, it probably took some good sized hammers to break the ice off the brake and power connecters and get the coupler pin to lift. At that point, you get the engined moved so it can run around the train, assumes you have track and switches in place to handle that and then you can go and knock the frozen snow off the coupler at the other end of the train. Get the it authority to get back down the hill and thank the stars that any freight that was following up the hill had a place to move over. Meanwhile people are busting their hump to try to get the right thing done.
What should a contingency plan have? A loop track to throw down to allow for a quick U-turn? Stand by provisions to serve a 4 course meal to a couple-three hundred people? Arrangements to pull the train right up to the hotel check in counter? How about staging a fleet of buses every 100 miles of so, engines warmed up with driver in the seat?
In my life I have traveled extensively by auto, bus, train and plane and there have been times that I have been delayed for many hours with each method of travel. I don't care what FedEx says, if it absolutly, positively has to get there, keep your fingers crossed because sometimes something will happen and it ain't going to make it. The way I see it, the only way to avoid travel delay is stay home or pull out all the stops to invoke divine intervention.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
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