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Amtrk Senate Debate Locked

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Posted by oltmannd on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:18 AM
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

 If more examples are needed, there's Ivy City - all passenger.  And Harrisburg diesel terminal (all passenger) vs. Enola diesel terminal (all frt).  On the backshop side, passenger cars usually enjoyed their own shop and staffing, although cabooses were sometimes included with the passenger cars.

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:19 AM
An example in the other direction was in the mid to late 1960's when IC closed the 27th Street facility and serviced and maintained the passenger power at Homewood.
The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by MichaelSol on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:39 AM
 oltmannd wrote:
I wish that the GAO would do some serious, detailed benchmarking, or better yet, Amtrak should do it.  It would take some real time and effort.  The GAO's  "get rid of the diners and sleepers" study took the simple approach that the way to cut costs was to cut services.  A good benchmarking study would help find ways to keep and exand services while cutting costs.

As a long time and reasonably frequent user of Amtrak who happens to think their food services are dismal, I have always thought that their food service should go the other way and they could make some money; develop a reputation, offer some "named" meals, and make these things real diners instead of the cookbook recipe and cattle car "community" seating used so they can minimize the hours of operation of the diner. As it is, I notice on the Empire Builder that few take advantage of the diner. The seating is frequently backed up, the community seating is purely for the convenience of the staff not the customers, and they always seem like they are in a rush to get people out. The food is merely "OK", and not worth too much effort. A first class facility with a third class attitude.

And here's a benchmark: I doubt that even as much as 20% of the passengers take advantage of breakfast or dinner on the Empire Builder because of the wait times, the short dining hours, and the awkward seating policy.

Amazingly, I have never seen a survey ...

 

 

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Posted by oltmannd on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:15 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
I wish that the GAO would do some serious, detailed benchmarking, or better yet, Amtrak should do it.  It would take some real time and effort.  The GAO's  "get rid of the diners and sleepers" study took the simple approach that the way to cut costs was to cut services.  A good benchmarking study would help find ways to keep and exand services while cutting costs.

As a long time and reasonably frequent user of Amtrak who happens to think their food services are dismal, I have always thought that their food service should go the other way and they could make some money; develop a reputation, offer some "named" meals, and make these things real diners instead of the cookbook recipe and cattle car "community" seating used so they can minimize the hours of operation of the diner. As it is, I notice on the Empire Builder that few take advantage of the diner. The seating is frequently backed up, the community seating is purely for the convenience of the staff not the customers, and they always seem like they are in a rush to get people out. The food is merely "OK", and not worth too much effort. A first class facility with a third class attitude.

And here's a benchmark: I doubt that even as much as 20% of the passengers take advantage of breakfast or dinner on the Empire Builder because of the wait times, the short dining hours, and the awkward seating policy.

Amazingly, I have never seen a survey ...

You have a point.  There is nothing very special about the diner.

I've rarely seen many coach passengers make it past the lounge car for meals.  I think they all want to save a buck or two on meals.  Or, maybe they just snack their way along all day.  I know that's what I did on some of my all day treks from Philly to London Ont. in the past  (there was no other option!)

I know they're trying out an open all day/all day menu version of the diner on a couple of trains (Cardinal and City of New Orleans?)

I've always wondered if they wouldn't be better off just bidding it out to a national chain restaurant.  The one that you have to pay the least to take the bid wins - and then they can try to make as much profit as they can.  Logistics and cooking belong to the vendor.  Whether you have a grill chef or not no longer is an issue of national politics!

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by TomDiehl on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:42 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

BTW, did the "Statistics of Railways of the United States" actually compare the costs?

ICC Accounting required the reporting of cost of maintaining all passenger equipment as a separate accounting category as well as reporting the numbers of such passenger equipment. In a similar fashion, the cost of maintaining and repairing diesel-electric locomotives is reported as a separate accounting category, as is the number of units being maintained/repaired.

As of 1950, these were mature technologies and improvements in costs of maintenance and repair since that time were incremental, not transformational, and represented the same kind of productivity improvements over time that all mature technologies enjoy as small improvements occur in service and technology: better gasket materials, improved metallurgy, improvements in bearing design, improved electrical controls, etc. Experience suggests that mature technologies enjoy these productivity improvements at about the same rate.

In this fashion, similar technologies become "linked" insofar as statistical relationships that can be used to examine the known cost of one technology, and derive the unknown cost of another technology. The validity of this analysis is established by linear regression analysis and identification of a correlation which identifies the reliability of the relationship.

In this conversation, I did not, in fact, have any idea what the relative costs were. So, since it is an interesting thought, I looked at the Statistics of Railways of the United States, looked to three separate years 5 years apart, compared the cost of diesel-electric locomotive maintenance to the cost of passenger car maintenance, and saw that Don's figures were very conservative, no doubt intentionally so for the purpose of discussion, and that the consistent ratio looks to be about 3:1. I did this using MILW Road's figures which looked to be a useful representative of Amtrak in terms of combinations of heavy commuter traffic, night trains, and long distance trains.

This process is called "substitution" and uses a "surrogate" to identify the probable measure of an entity that we don't have a direct measure of. We use "surrogates" all the time. For instance, the definition of a second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom, referring to a cesium atom in its ground state at a temperature of 0 degrees Kelvin. Next time someone asks for the time, defer until you can get the results from your particle accelerator at absolute zero.

Obviously, we use motors, gears, and ratchets to create a surrogate measure of "seconds" because of the obvious difficulty of performing, or even understanding, the direct measurement, which in turn allows us to fairly accurately estimate minutes, hours, and days. The surrogate is acceptable, and in fact preferable, to attempting the direct measure.

Industries routinely use "industry average" surrogates, through publications such as Dunn & Bradstreet, to assess the effectiveness of their relative performance. Amtrak is a toughy, since there isn't anything like it. However, we do have millions of miles of similar performance, using similar equipment, on identical territory, over a number of years. We have a current class of equipment which is related in technology terms to the Amtrak class. We have a surrogate: the diesel-electric locomotive.

And that is what I measured. Don simply added a generous measure of doubt in favor of the railroad passenger car -- he said as much -- thinking that it would reasonably provide an unchallengeable measure of the problems with Amtrak's equipment maintenance and repair costs.

Well .... I think it did.

 

 

First, the easiest one. Since I've worked with Cesium (and Rubidium) oscillator clocks, these are used as a high accuracy and stability frequency reference.  Time, being the inverse of frequency, is easily derived from the output of these oscillators. To call the simpler digital or mechanical clocks a surrogate for the atomic clocks would imply the atomic ones are the older ones. It's actually the other way around. The earliest "clocks" were simple hour glasses. The decision to use one rather than the other is based on the level of accuracy required and the cost. Obviously an atomic clock costs more than a digital Timex. How this relates to statistics is a real stretch. Unless you're trying to say using a surrogate yields a much lower accuracy.

In your second and third paragraphs above, you seem to be running in circles. First you say that both passenger car and diesel locomotives are "mature technology" with incremental improvements based on past improvements. Then you talk about linking similar technologies as far as statistical relationships to derive the cost of an unknown technology. What suddenly became "unknown?"

But we do agree on the point that we really have nothing with which to compare Amtrak in the current enviornment. Any comparison may be an interesting exercise in statistical methodology, but the accuracy of such numbers is easily called into question.

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Posted by TomDiehl on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:46 PM
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

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Posted by MichaelSol on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:01 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
But we do agree on the point that we really have nothing with which to compare Amtrak in the current enviornment. Any comparison may be an interesting exercise in statistical methodology, but the accuracy of such numbers is easily called into question.

Unless railroad passenger car technology has changed dramatically, it can still be compared with its companion technology, the diesel-electric locomotive for which an established statistical relationship exists in terms of maintenance costs, and from which one can be used to assess the probable and reasonable costs of the other. In this case, we can plainly see that Amtrak is way overstaffed on mechanical forces by historical standards.

To argue otherwise, without any statistical evidence at all, is what is "easily called into question."

 

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Posted by oltmannd on Thursday, December 13, 2007 6:43 AM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 7:44 AM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
But we do agree on the point that we really have nothing with which to compare Amtrak in the current enviornment. Any comparison may be an interesting exercise in statistical methodology, but the accuracy of such numbers is easily called into question.

Unless railroad passenger car technology has changed dramatically, it can still be compared with its companion technology, the diesel-electric locomotive for which an established statistical relationship exists in terms of maintenance costs, and from which one can be used to assess the probable and reasonable costs of the other. In this case, we can plainly see that Amtrak is way overstaffed on mechanical forces by historical standards.

To argue otherwise, without any statistical evidence at all, is what is "easily called into question."

 

You didn't answer the original question of whether the maintenance costs were actually compared in the Statistics of Railways of the United States, or if you did the comparison.

The point called into question is how do you define the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive to the maintenance costs of a passenger car as "companion technology" in any era?

If you're going to take that view, then we should be able to compare the maintenance costs of a passenger car with the cost of growing grapes. I'm sure there's statistical data somewhere on that.

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 7:50 AM
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

Page 2 of this thread, the 6th post.

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Posted by oltmannd on Thursday, December 13, 2007 9:45 AM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

Page 2 of this thread, the 6th post.

You're referring to "...the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has....."?

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 11:33 AM
 TomDiehl wrote:

You didn't answer the original question of whether the maintenance costs were actually compared in the Statistics of Railways of the United States, or if you did the comparison.

 MichaelSol wrote:
12/11/2007:

I looked at the Statistics of Railways of the United States, looked to three separate years 5 years apart, compared the cost of diesel-electric locomotive maintenance to the cost of passenger car maintenance ...

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 11:52 AM
 TomDiehl wrote:

The point called into question is how do you define the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive to the maintenance costs of a passenger car as "companion technology" in any era?

The "point called into question" is why you believe that a heavy, complex, hard working machine with thousands of moving parts costs less to maintain than a bunch of seats bolted to a platform.

 

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:03 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

The point called into question is how do you define the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive to the maintenance costs of a passenger car as "companion technology" in any era?

The "point called into question" is why you believe that a heavy, complex, hard working machine with thousands of moving parts costs less to maintain than a bunch of seats bolted to a platform.

 

Number one, I didn't say one cost more or less than the other to maintain. I said there was not enough similarity between the two to make such a comparison. THAT was the point.

Number two, if you think a passenger car is "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform," you truly have no idea what is is you're riding in, and what "makes it tick."

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:05 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

You didn't answer the original question of whether the maintenance costs were actually compared in the Statistics of Railways of the United States, or if you did the comparison.

 MichaelSol wrote:
12/11/2007:

I looked at the Statistics of Railways of the United States, looked to three separate years 5 years apart, compared the cost of diesel-electric locomotive maintenance to the cost of passenger car maintenance ...

The question was, did this publication actually perform such a comparison within its pages, or is the comparison made by you from two separate sets of statistics.

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:13 PM
 oltmannd wrote:

I know they're trying out an open all day/all day menu version of the diner on a couple of trains (Cardinal and City of New Orleans?)

I've always wondered if they wouldn't be better off just bidding it out to a national chain restaurant.  The one that you have to pay the least to take the bid wins - and then they can try to make as much profit as they can.  Logistics and cooking belong to the vendor.  Whether you have a grill chef or not no longer is an issue of national politics!

Interesting, I was thinking about something like this on my last trip on the Builder. I had just put up with the surliest dining car crew in my experience; they were on the third day of what must have been a very long trip. Kind of like having Nurse Ratchet, Jack Nicholson and Anthony Perkins all running the dining car. I thought, well, why not have a private contractor come on board the WB Empire Builder at Wenatchee, load a pre-loaded pantry that inserts quickly into the side of the dining car -- like airplanes do it, and serve Breakfast into Everett, layover in Everett, and handle dinner in the same fashion for the Eastbound Empire Builder. Somebody else comes on board at Libby for the EB Breakfast run, detrains at Havre. I suppose there would be a union problem with this, but there just has to be a better way on the LD trains to serve "food".

 

 

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:18 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

You didn't answer the original question of whether the maintenance costs were actually compared in the Statistics of Railways of the United States, or if you did the comparison.

 MichaelSol wrote:
12/11/2007:

I looked at the Statistics of Railways of the United States, looked to three separate years 5 years apart, compared the cost of diesel-electric locomotive maintenance to the cost of passenger car maintenance ...

The question was, did this publication actually perform such a comparison within its pages, or is the comparison made by you from two separate sets of statistics.

I said "I looked at ...". I think it's clear.

 

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:36 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
Number one, I didn't say one cost more or less than the other to maintain. I said there was not enough similarity between the two to make such a comparison. THAT was the point.

Number two, if you think a passenger car is "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform," you truly have no idea what is is you're riding in, and what "makes it tick."

There is enough similarity that 20% of Amtrak maintenance has to be similar to the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive because that's exactly what Amtrak is maintaining.

And no, disregarding railroad affiliations going back 50 years and a pretty good academic and professional engineering background, I don't need to know the secrets of what makes a railroad passenger car "tick". There are years and years of statistics available regarding the maintenance costs of modern era, modern construction, railroad passenger car fleets. Those numbers hold all the secrets we need to know for this exercise.

Those costs show a high degree of correlation with the costs of maintenance of the diesel-electric fleet, in proportion to a particular ratio. Unless there has been a significant change in the nature of maintenance for either fleet, you have offered no reason whatsover to believe that the statistical correlation has changed.

 

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:39 PM
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

Page 2 of this thread, the 6th post.

You're referring to "...the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has....."?

From the post in question:

"There's a small mountain of people in mechanical ~4000.  By comparison, NS has about 1000 and the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has.....and NS has to inspect and lace up a few hundred thousand frt cars a week, to boot."

So the "by comparison" first came from you.

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:41 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

You didn't answer the original question of whether the maintenance costs were actually compared in the Statistics of Railways of the United States, or if you did the comparison.

 MichaelSol wrote:
12/11/2007:

I looked at the Statistics of Railways of the United States, looked to three separate years 5 years apart, compared the cost of diesel-electric locomotive maintenance to the cost of passenger car maintenance ...

The question was, did this publication actually perform such a comparison within its pages, or is the comparison made by you from two separate sets of statistics.

I said "I looked at ...". I think it's clear.

 

Yes, it's clear such a comparison wasn't made in the publication, it's strictly yours.

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:47 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
Number one, I didn't say one cost more or less than the other to maintain. I said there was not enough similarity between the two to make such a comparison. THAT was the point.

There is enough similarity that 20% of Amtrak maintenance has to be similar to the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive because that's exactly what Amtrak is maintaining.

But the figures quoted do not compare Amtrak's personnel maintaing the diesel-electric locomotives to the NS (or BNSF) personnel maintaining diesel-electric locomotives. You're assuming the 20%. And we all know where the word "assume" comes from.

The figures quoted was the TOTAL number of Amtrak's personnel maintaining all rolling stock to the NS (or BNSF) personnel maintaining all rolling stock. That's where the comparison loses validity.

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:58 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

Number two, if you think a passenger car is "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform," you truly have no idea what is is you're riding in, and what "makes it tick."

And no, disregarding railroad affiliations going back 50 years and a pretty good academic and professional engineering background, I don't need to know the secrets of what makes a railroad passenger car "tick". There are years and years of statistics available regarding the maintenance costs of modern era, modern construction, railroad passenger car fleets. Those numbers hold all the secrets we need to know for this exercise.

It's almost surprising that with all the education and experience you claim, you still call a passenger car "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform." It makes people wonder about these claims. Unless your experience was with a tourist railroad running converted flatcars, which are pretty much "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform." I don't recall seeing anything like that on Amtrak's roster.

And with all that background, you claim not to need to know the secrets of what makes a passenger car tick. (BTW, it's no secret)

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Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:01 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:

Those costs show a high degree of correlation with the costs of maintenance of the diesel-electric fleet, in proportion to a particular ratio. Unless there has been a significant change in the nature of maintenance for either fleet, you have offered no reason whatsover to believe that the statistical correlation has changed.

The question is the basis for the corerelation itself between the costs of maintaining locomotives and passenger cars. The only place I've ever seen these compared to one another is on this thread.

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:05 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

You didn't answer the original question of whether the maintenance costs were actually compared in the Statistics of Railways of the United States, or if you did the comparison.

 MichaelSol wrote:
12/11/2007:

I looked at the Statistics of Railways of the United States, looked to three separate years 5 years apart, compared the cost of diesel-electric locomotive maintenance to the cost of passenger car maintenance ...

The question was, did this publication actually perform such a comparison within its pages, or is the comparison made by you from two separate sets of statistics.

I said "I looked at ...". I think it's clear.

 

Yes, it's clear such a comparison wasn't made in the publication, it's strictly yours.

Yes, I said that. It shouldn't take two pages for you to reach that conclusion: it was contained in my first post on the topic. It was a question for which you already had the answer.

I relied on cost of maintenance records generated by the Class I Railways of the United States for railroad passenger cars and noted that there was a statistical correlation with cost of maintenance records for the diesel-electric fleet.

This is no doubt because equipment maintenance tends to require the same subset of costs for support: wrenches, screwdrivers, and people with appropriate mechanical skills. A standard railroad passenger car of a given age and use has a pretty well-defined maintenance cost. A standard railroad locomotive likewise follows a standard maintenance cost curve remarkably closely. As you realized after getting it backwards earlier, the passenger car fleets did not typically share facilities with other railroad operations, which lends support to the idea that Amtrak should resemble, not contradict, the experience of Class I Railways passenger operation maintenance costs.

I cannot see that you rely on any data whatsoever, nor offer any evidentiary support for your proposition.

 

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Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:06 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:

Number two, if you think a passenger car is "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform," you truly have no idea what is is you're riding in, and what "makes it tick."

And no, disregarding railroad affiliations going back 50 years and a pretty good academic and professional engineering background, I don't need to know the secrets of what makes a railroad passenger car "tick". There are years and years of statistics available regarding the maintenance costs of modern era, modern construction, railroad passenger car fleets. Those numbers hold all the secrets we need to know for this exercise.

It's almost surprising that with all the education and experience you claim, you still call a passenger car "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform." It makes people wonder about these claims. Unless your experience was with a tourist railroad running converted flatcars, which are pretty much "a bunch of seats bolted to a platform." I don't recall seeing anything like that on Amtrak's roster.

And with all that background, you claim not to need to know the secrets of what makes a passenger car tick. (BTW, it's no secret)

That was hyperbole.

Look it up.

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • 3,190 posts
Posted by MichaelSol on Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:25 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
Number one, I didn't say one cost more or less than the other to maintain. I said there was not enough similarity between the two to make such a comparison. THAT was the point.

There is enough similarity that 20% of Amtrak maintenance has to be similar to the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive because that's exactly what Amtrak is maintaining.

But the figures quoted do not compare Amtrak's personnel maintaing the diesel-electric locomotives to the NS (or BNSF) personnel maintaining diesel-electric locomotives. You're assuming the 20%. And we all know where the word "assume" comes from.

The figures quoted was the TOTAL number of Amtrak's personnel maintaining all rolling stock to the NS (or BNSF) personnel maintaining all rolling stock. That's where the comparison loses validity.

I think you are intentionally misreading what has been posted on this thread simply to perpetuate an argument which probably had no point for you in the first place.

There is no reason why Amtrak should have to employ far more employees for its mechanical shops than Class I railways needed to employ for similar service. Given productivity increases, it should be considerably less, it isn't, and that may be one of the problems with Amtrak today.

You disagree, for reasons which are not based on any tangible experience or education, you can cite to no statistical basis for your argument, and this thread is degenerating into one of your multiple postings where you attempt to be "clever" rather than factual.

Perhaps its best simply to say you disagree since that seems to be about it.

Done.

 

  • Member since
    January 2001
  • From: Atlanta
  • 11,971 posts
Posted by oltmannd on Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:00 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

Page 2 of this thread, the 6th post.

You're referring to "...the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has....."?

From the post in question:

"There's a small mountain of people in mechanical ~4000.  By comparison, NS has about 1000 and the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has.....and NS has to inspect and lace up a few hundred thousand frt cars a week, to boot."

So the "by comparison" first came from you.

Back to "Language Arts" for you!  The "by comparison" applies to the first clause (Ns's locos vs. Amtrak locos and cars).  The part after the ..... is a second independent clause. The meaning, and intention, is clear.   And, if that isn't enough, I've clarified it quite a few times since.  But, since I'm bored, I'll do it again.  This time with an analogous situation.

It's like saying "You have more recorded music than me.  By comparison, you have more CDs than I have CDs and LPs.....and you have a whole bunch of cassettes to boot"

I suppose now you're gonna think I'm comparing CDs to passenger cars.Banged Head [banghead]

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

  • Member since
    February 2001
  • From: Poconos, PA
  • 3,948 posts
Posted by TomDiehl on Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:08 PM
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

Page 2 of this thread, the 6th post.

You're referring to "...the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has....."?

From the post in question:

"There's a small mountain of people in mechanical ~4000.  By comparison, NS has about 1000 and the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has.....and NS has to inspect and lace up a few hundred thousand frt cars a week, to boot."

So the "by comparison" first came from you.

Back to "Language Arts" for you!  The "by comparison" applies to the first clause (Ns's locos vs. Amtrak locos and cars).  The part after the ..... is a second independent clause. The meaning, and intention, is clear.   And, if that isn't enough, I've clarified it quite a few times since.  But, since I'm bored, I'll do it again.  This time with an analogous situation.

It's like saying "You have more recorded music than me.  By comparison, you have more CDs than I have CDs and LPs.....and you have a whole bunch of cassettes to boot"

I suppose now you're gonna think I'm comparing CDs to passenger cars.Banged Head [banghead]

Back to basic sentence structure for you. In the second sentence, where is the comma separating the supposedly independant clauses?

Smile, it makes people wonder what you're up to. Chief of Sanitation; Clowntown
  • Member since
    January 2001
  • From: Atlanta
  • 11,971 posts
Posted by oltmannd on Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:11 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 MichaelSol wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
Number one, I didn't say one cost more or less than the other to maintain. I said there was not enough similarity between the two to make such a comparison. THAT was the point.

There is enough similarity that 20% of Amtrak maintenance has to be similar to the maintenance costs of a diesel-electric locomotive because that's exactly what Amtrak is maintaining.

But the figures quoted do not compare Amtrak's personnel maintaing the diesel-electric locomotives to the NS (or BNSF) personnel maintaining diesel-electric locomotives. You're assuming the 20%. And we all know where the word "assume" comes from.

The figures quoted was the TOTAL number of Amtrak's personnel maintaining all rolling stock to the NS (or BNSF) personnel maintaining all rolling stock. That's where the comparison loses validity.

How so?

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

  • Member since
    January 2001
  • From: Atlanta
  • 11,971 posts
Posted by oltmannd on Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:13 PM
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 oltmannd wrote:
 TomDiehl wrote:
 PNWRMNM wrote:

Tom,

 

Your statement of 12/11 that "pre Amtrak railroads did not have completely separate facilities for maintaining passenger and freight cars" is not accurate.  In all the cases that I am aware those facilities were separate.  Think of Sunnyside Yard for example, all passenger.

 

I worked in the 'Coach Yard" in Seattle just before ATK took it over.  It was originally a joint GN/NP facility.  Did work only on passenger equipment.  Freight car repairs were done at Balmer Yard, 5 miles away.  This arrangement was typical.  Skills and supplies were very different as between freight and passenger and mechanical facilites for each were typically separate.

 

Mac McCulloch

Thank you Mac, just the kind of experienced opinion I was fishing for. The main point is your very last sentence.

Why were you fishing for it?  Nobody was ever disputing frt and passenger are different. 

Page 2 of this thread, the 6th post.

You're referring to "...the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has....."?

From the post in question:

"There's a small mountain of people in mechanical ~4000.  By comparison, NS has about 1000 and the number or locomotives and cars Amtrak has is less than the number of locomotives NS has.....and NS has to inspect and lace up a few hundred thousand frt cars a week, to boot."

So the "by comparison" first came from you.

Back to "Language Arts" for you!  The "by comparison" applies to the first clause (Ns's locos vs. Amtrak locos and cars).  The part after the ..... is a second independent clause. The meaning, and intention, is clear.   And, if that isn't enough, I've clarified it quite a few times since.  But, since I'm bored, I'll do it again.  This time with an analogous situation.

It's like saying "You have more recorded music than me.  By comparison, you have more CDs than I have CDs and LPs.....and you have a whole bunch of cassettes to boot"

I suppose now you're gonna think I'm comparing CDs to passenger cars.Banged Head [banghead]

Back to basic sentence structure for you. In the second sentence, where is the comma separating the supposedly independant clauses?

They are INDEPENDENT clauses separted by "and".  DEPENDENT clauses are a whole 'nuther animal.  A sentence is an example of an independent clause.  

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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