The first time this occured was many years ago, when Bob Newman, either Laymon Miller or Bob Hoover, and I were scheduled to attend a Monday morning meeting with Eero Saarinan at his Troy, MI. office, to work on the TWA Idlewild (now Kennedy) airport. Sunday came with a very sever storm, and all flights out of Boston were cancelled for the day . I told Bob Newman, my boss, that I woujld do my best to make the meeting, and with his permission would handle the room acoustics, sound isolation, and noise control aspects of the project, beyond my usual sound system responsibilities.
The streetcars were still running from Harvard Square to North Cambridge, with a Type 3 snowplow clearing the way, the subway took me to South Station, and after a long wait on line, got a a coach ticket to Detroit, with sleeper space in the one through sleeper sold out. The New England States was jammed packed,. with all coach seats taken by the time I boarded. I went to the Detoirt sleeper, asked if all rooms were taken, and he said he had one no-show. The conductor would not sell that room to me, and said he was told to reserve it in case someone wanted it boarding at Albany. I asked the porter of the Detroit sleeper to put my luggage in the empty room or where-ever he could keep an eye on it, and went to the dining car. The Maitre'de was a familiar face, and said, "You know this car if only for people having a meal?" I said:"When do you start serving dinner?" "Six-thirty." "Can I sit here until meal service starts and I can order dinner?" 'Sure, why not." This was in my pre-Kosher days, and I had a good steak dinner. By the time I finished, we were already past State Line tunnel, and I stood in a vestibule until we got to Albany, the old "Union Station," not the Renssalaer replacement. At Albany, I went to the ticket office, showed the clerk my already punched Boston - Detoirt ticket, and said please upgrade me to Roomette No. ?, car 729?" (Don't remember the xact number but had them in my head at the time." Clerk: :The conductor sent you to m e?" : "Of course." So I wnet back upstairs to the platform, showed the new conductor and porter my ticket, at had a decent sleep and did a creditable job of meeting the firm's resposnibilities at the meeting.
More such incidents to come!
That was then... Now it seems like Amtrak is pretty quick to cancel trains if there is even a threat of bad weather. Sometimes this could be because the host railroad is in control.
Dave, I am sure there are many, many stories where the train saved the day due to weather or other circumstances. Railroads had man power at virtually everymile post to keep the way clear, yards full of cars, and roundhouses bulging with locomotives. Railroads were coming down from their high and had all sorts of stock hanging around with nothing to do. As jets continued to soar, and concrete continued to pour, the thought of taking a train waned. And, not unlike many other industries, the concept of duplication, excess capacity, redundency, back up, whatever you want to call it, also dissapeared and things were trimmed to the bare minimum. Not only do the railroads not have the alternate routes available today like yestersday, Amtrak does not have thousands of cars and hundreds of locomotives at the ready; nor is there the next door neighbor to borrow from in a pinch.
Don't get me wrong, Dave, I am anxious to hear your stories about how a train saved the day, made things easier, or just plain made things happen. EL's sometimes Phoebe Snow in the early 60s provided me with snow proof transportation between North Jersey and Upstate New York on several occasions with the Tavern Lounge filled with businessmen who skipped over to Broad St. Newark when Newark Aiport was snowed down.
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.
I agree. In 1963 when I was a kid my aunt visited us from NYC. The day she was to fly back, it started snowing. By the time we got to O'hare, all flights were canceled. So we drove down to Union Station and she got on a train, in her case the Pennsy's General (SRO), like 1000's of others on that and the many other trains to NYC. But that was almost 50 years ago. More recently you hear stories of cancellations and trains from the west coast being delayed 20-30 hours.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
About two or three years agoi, David Horowitz, then Editorin Cief of the Jerusalem Post , was visiting relatives in Chicago. On his way back to Israel, via United to Kennedy, overnight with friends in NY, then El Al, the United plane was diverted to Cleveland because all East-Coast airports were shut down because of weather. At the Cleveland airport, he called hia friends in NY. They told mim to stay at the payp[hone and they would call back. After ten minutes they returned the call and told him the Amtrak code number for a reserved seat, no sleeper space, on the Capitol to Pittsburgh and the connecting train (Pennsylvanian?) to NY. He and a couple off the plane shared a cab with snow chains to the Lake Front Stration. The Capitol was steadily delayed, the inadquate Lake Front station full, but the station agent did his best to keep the waiting passengers in good humor. By the time he got to Pittsburgh the connection had left. Amtrak provided a bus to Harrisburg,. I presume they provided another bus for stations such as Greensburg, Latrobe, Johnstown, and Altoona, but he did not mention that. Anyway, he made a train connection in Harrisbug, went to Jamaica and then to Kennedy,a nd caught his plane to Israel. He had nothing but good to say about the Amtrak people he met. He did note that bus from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg averaged some 57 mph based on rail mileage and the train 35 mph according tot he timetable. He did not say whether the train he caught at Harrisburg was the one he missed at Pittsburgh or an Harrisburg - NY train. Although he was complimentary about all the Amtrak people, he had no comment one way or the other about the comfort of the coach seats, quality of food in the cafe cars, etc. I trust they were at least satisfactory.
Concernng the previous comments, Amtrak regularly accomodates diverted flyers in the NEC by pressing into service standby equpment, extending Boston - NY Acela and regional express trains to Washington, etc. They have regular plans for this sort of thing. It does mean people may arrive in Boston or Washington at 2, 3, or 4 in the morning, but at least they get through. You can check with Amtrak on this.
More to come.
I believe Amtrak is much more likely to cancel service these days than was the case several decades ago. The reasons may be several, but among other things the host railroads no longer have massive ROW maintenance crews to keep the tracks clear in nasty weather.
Amtrak also lacks a pool of equipment that can be used to add capacity to a train on short notice. To take one example, recently there seldom has been a day when at least one long distance train is late in departing Chicago by more than a half hour. I don't know the reason for that, but suspect it is because they do not have any substitute cars for those arriving that require extended maintenance.
I agree. If there is a weather emergency, even if Amtrak can get through, they don't offer enough trains on most routes outside the NEC and southern Cal nor enough extra equipment or working personnel to pick up the slack from the airlines, let alone buses and autos.
The extra equipment issue is a 400# bear. According to AMTRAK fleet strategy plan and ridership projections ( which may be too conservative ) there will not be any spare equipment until about 2018 - 2020. When the capacity finally () exceeds demand and AMTRAK retires the older fleet to standby service then maybe some spare equipment will be available.
However where would you park that spare equipment?. Gunn made the mistake of scrapping the surplus heritage fleet and reducing size of some yards and someone in the future might do the same. The private RRs removed many locations where they parked spare equipment 1950 - 2000. Even AMTRAK'S yards are now close to capacity because of the increase in commuter traffic at such places as BOS, NY Sunnyside, PHL, BAL, WASH ivy city, miami, jax, new orleans, Beech Grove, chicago, LAX, Oakland, PDX, SEATTLE. The 2012 Vision report anticipates yard expansions in BOS, NY, WASH.
where you park equipment requires it to be fairly vandal proof.!
There are good reasons to keep trains, but this one is way oversold. You could fill a book with anecdotes on how the train rescued a traveler, but it looses credibility as a mass alternative. IIRC in another thread someone had a DOT table that showed that airline passenger-miles were more than 10 times rail passenger-miles. With Amtrak running near capacity, they could not hope to handle a ten-fold increase in traffic.
It is a yes and no and yes proposition. In the NEC, Amtrak already has a major share of the market. So when airlines shut down they can direct passengers to Amtrak with some hope they can be acommodated. This is possibly a sudden 15% in business and by reshuffling and smart operations, and the measures I've referred, possibly including borrowing commuter equipment on weekends, Amtrak can handle the extra business. But not in Denver, Twin Cities, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, most major airports. If the Houston airport shuts down there is obviously no way the Sunset LImited alone can handel the riders the airlines would like Amtrak to handle.
And David Horiwitz was accomodated because of savvy friends in NY, not because of a suggestion by United at the Cleveland airport.
However, if all airlines were grounded, and some very important people had to get places, their importance would be recognized by Amtrak, and somehow their train rides would take place, even, in an emergency, with the freight railroads cooperating and giving a higher piority than usual. This did happen on 11.09.01. So Amtrak still has value as a backup.
The main factor driving service cancellations these days is the ability of workers to get to work. You may be able to keep the line open, but if you can't get crews to and from the train....
That Amtrak has been able to keep the NEC open and some trains operating during some of the worst snow storms in recent years speaks quite a bit to the nature of the operating department of the NEC.
Considering the length of commute of many employees these days, it doesn't take much weather to keep people from work. Where you have critical, centralized operations like crew calling, train dispatching, etc., you have to have specific plans on how to deal with weather emergencies such as transport, lodging, etc. to insure you have enough people on hand to keep the whole RR from shutting down.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
In the last days of the New Haven Railroad, possibly during the period by PC had already come into existance but the NH was yet to be included, an airline strike forced my former teacher and boss, Leo Beranek, to resort to a roomette on the Federal returning from Washington. He was lucky to get the roomette, but it was in the middle of summer, and the air-condtioning stopped working. He said he never spent a more miserable night and would not ride a sleeping car again, ever. He did not know whether it was an ex-PRR, ex-NYC, or Hew Haven sleeper. I did point out that it probalby was not a usually assigned car but one added to handle the strike-caused overload, but he was not molified. Someone migh have to treat him to a vacation tirip in the family room in a Park car on the Canadian to change his mnind, and I doubt that is in the cards.
Although anecdotes from 50 or more years ago are nice stories, they have very little to do with using Amtrak today for emergencies for the various reasons bluestreak 1, henry6 and oltmannd have given. But the biggest reason we cannot rely on Amtrak is the lack of a reserve capacity of equipment and crews. having that level of redundancy is too expensive today.
One more story, this time about one my real bouts of stupidity. I had a project in Jacksonvile, and then needed to visit a project in New Orleans. Was told the sleeper on the Gulf Coast Limited was sold out, and thought that I really did not wish to spend the night in a coach. At the airport bough a Delta ticket to New Orleans, takeoff delayed, en route diverted to Atlanta on account of fog or whatever in New Orleans, most of the night in the Atlanta airport before the first flight of the moring to New Orleans. A reclinging seat in the air-conditioned Gulf Coast Limited would have been a far, far better choice. Learned my lesson.
Reserve capacity in rail, air, manufacturing, etc. all but disappeared quite a few years ago when management concluded that it couldn't afford to maintain excess assets that were rarely productive. Part of this may have been brought about by the leveraged buyout craze of the 1980's and by increased activism by shareholders who wanted bigger dividends and saw these unproductive assets as a drag on the company's bottom line.
CSSHEGEWISCH Reserve capacity in rail, air, manufacturing, etc. all but disappeared quite a few years ago when management concluded that it couldn't afford to maintain excess assets that were rarely productive. Part of this may have been brought about by the leveraged buyout craze of the 1980's and by increased activism by shareholders who wanted bigger dividends and saw these unproductive assets as a drag on the company's bottom line.
Yup. Before things consolidated into fewer, larger corporations, it was much harder to squeeze the excess cushion. Now we see that when production gets squeezed in the short term, the producers have pretty good pricing power. In the longer term, they'll still try to grab market share from each other, though.
Ahhh, pretty sure some of you folks are incorrect about Amtrak, they can use Superliners as well as Commuter equipment if they are called upon in an Emergency, they are not restricted to just Amtrak equipment, they can charter other equipment if needed..
I believe they used Amtrak in the evacuation of New Orleans Prior to Katrina, they took 1500 elderly to Memphis. They had 10 CDOT SPV's (converted to locomotive hauled cars) plus Amtrak Superliners from the Crescent. I believe they also ran RT trains to Mobile, AL and to Jackson, MS. The CDOT cars were brought down on the tail end of the Crescent.
I think they got Amtraks Assistance via on the ground FEMA people but not 100% certain.
Also, I suspect the Feds via FEMA can grant FRA waivers for other passenger cars if needed in a pinch. Federal Passenger Rail Regulations can be waivered when needed by the Feds.
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