Finally!!!, Depart Dallas as always 3:40 p.m.
New arrival in Chicago is now 1:44 p.m. change from 1:52 p.m......I'll take it!!!
Lets continue this trend please and cut more fluff from this at least 5-6 hour padded schedule. Understood UP has it's challenges but it cannot possibly be that bad with just an overnight schedule.
CMStPnPFinally!!!, Depart Dallas as always 3:40 p.m. New arrival in Chicago is now 1:44 p.m. change from 1:52 p.m......I'll take it!!! Lets continue this trend please and cut more fluff from this at least 5-6 hour padded schedule. Understood UP has it's challenges but it cannot possibly be that bad with just an overnight schedule.
Overnight is when railroads come alive with freight. Daytime is when they talk about what happened last night and plot how to give MofW track time.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I think you will find the truth of that statement depends upon what railroad and where.
charlie hebdoI think you will find the truth of that statement depends upon what railroad and where.
MofW rarely have 'scheduled' work at night - thus operations get planned around giving MofW track time during daylight hours. Passing trains through work areas knocks chunks of work time from MofW activities.
BaltACD charlie hebdo I think you will find the truth of that statement depends upon what railroad and where. MofW rarely have 'scheduled' work at night - thus operations get planned around giving MofW track time during daylight hours. Passing trains through work areas knocks chunks of work time from MofW activities.
charlie hebdo I think you will find the truth of that statement depends upon what railroad and where.
Again, it depends on what railroad and what location freights are to be found at day or night.
charlie hebdo BaltACD charlie hebdo I think you will find the truth of that statement depends upon what railroad and where. MofW rarely have 'scheduled' work at night - thus operations get planned around giving MofW track time during daylight hours. Passing trains through work areas knocks chunks of work time from MofW activities. Again, it depends on what railroad and what location freights are to be found at day or night.
Sorry - they all operate under the same principles - with the size of major gangs, the specific locations on their systems change from week to week. Some subdivisions may get a increased level of business to make up for business that is being rerouted from subdivisions that have major maintenance being performed.
Most industries that get rail service, don't want railroads on their property and disrupting their production when their production happens in daylight, non-weekend, hours; thus most rail service gets performed under the cover of darkness. Carload industrial jobs bring the results of their work back to their serving yard, where normally during daylight hours it is switched to either create outbound trains or outbound pickups for through trains.
Bulk Commodity trains (which include Intermodal and Autoracks) operate to the sound of their own drummers - which can be at variance with other commercial operations.
Eight minutes sooner! Holy cow. CMStP&P, you'll have some serious time you'll need to kill in the Windy City now.
Still in training.
Something has changed. Prior to 11/20/21, the Texas Eagle was late a lot into Chicago. Since then, it has been late only two times, 43 min and 10 min. with the rest being early.
Jim200 Something has changed. Prior to 11/20/21, the Texas Eagle was late a lot into Chicago. Since then, it has been late only two times, 43 min and 10 min. with the rest being early.
Northbound it gets into St. Louis about 5:30 a.m. and then crawls slowly into the station with frequent stops until about 6:30 a.m. They can easily pick up 3 hours of padding in St. Louis with better dispatching or adding a little track capacity, in my view. Drop the station stop in HOPE, AK for lack of ridership. There is more padding prior to arrival in Dallas as well which requires us to hold sometimes at Texarkana or Marshall. So if I had to take a wild guess they can drop 4 hours from the schedule between Dallas and Chicago with more careful management of the train via UP or if UP would ask for some track capacity improvements. Who knows how much padding they have between Dallas and San Antonio, heard from one rider it was probably another 3-4 hours.
Amtrak needs to pay more attention to LD train schedules in my view. The Texas Eagle is the clearest example of what should be a decently fast train that is held back because of a lazy and complacent management by both Amtrak and UP.
Think of it though, 6-8 hours of padding for an overnight train? How did management slip so far? Also, if UP is that careless with getting passenger trains over the road, think of the slip-ups they are probably making with freight schedules.
Just think of the schedule being tightned if Alton - STL had improveents. Now the MacArthur bridge is beiing replaced which will also tightened the schedule.
BaltACDSorry - they all operate under the same principles - with the size of major gangs, the specific locations on their systems change from week to week.
I guess my eyes are imagining all these UP freight trains I see in broad daylight, along with Metra and frequent MOW equipment.And the freights also run at night, as you said.
charlie hebdo BaltACD Sorry - they all operate under the same principles - with the size of major gangs, the specific locations on their systems change from week to week. I guess my eyes are imagining all these UP freight trains I see in broad daylight, along with Metra and frequent MOW equipment.And the freights also run at night, as you said.
BaltACD Sorry - they all operate under the same principles - with the size of major gangs, the specific locations on their systems change from week to week.
I am not saying there is NO daylight operation, I am saying it is several orders of mangnitude less than what happens after Winter sundowns.
blue streak 1Just think of the schedule being tightned if Alton - STL had improveents. Now the MacArthur bridge is beiing replaced which will also tightened the schedule.
I understand bridges are expensive to replace but just looking at this from an operations perspective......slow order the whole structure because you want to defer the expense of replacing it? C'mon, put those Billions in revenue to better use.
I hope the replacement is better designed now that there is no road bridge, they might be able to straighten out some of those curves and make the bridge higher speed and far less speed restrictive.
The bridge is at its end of its useful life for freight as well. Right now only one track at a time can be used so no 2 way traffic at same time. Wonder how often a freight or Amtrak as to wait for the bridge to clear for on coming or same way traffic to clear?
blue streak 1The bridge is at its end of its useful life for freight as well. Right now only one track at a time can be used so no 2 way traffic at same time. Wonder how often a freight or Amtrak as to wait for the bridge to clear for on coming or same way traffic to clear?
There is always a train waiting to cross in either direction when I am on the Eagle crossing that bridge so I agree it is heavily used. I was unaware only one track can be used at a time.......even more silly to let that condition continue. We'll see what they replace it with. I think it should be three tracks if they are serious about HSR into St. Louis From Chicago.
Here are pictures of replacement of first span. Note how more robust the iron work of new span. Also the bridge support earthquake upgradings for the other 2 span are not complete so 2 other spans cannot be installed yet.
Merchants Bridge Construction | Photo Credit: Walsh Construc… | Flickr
TheMerchantsBridgeRehabilitationProgram110217Final[1].pdf (modot.org)
Here is video of planned work. there is actual drone video of first span but this is annimation TheMerchantsBridgeRehabilitationProgram110217Final[1].pdf (modot.org)
The replacement spans will allow 286k cars and maybe 315k cars. As well both tracks will be useable at same time.
The Mcarthur bridge will need some work.
Built St. Louis | The Industrial City | MacArthur Bridge (builtstlouis.net)
The replacement
Note also that they are filling in the long western approach span, so there will be little speed reduction aside from the curve.
Overmod Note also that they are filling in the long western approach span, so there will be little speed reduction aside from the curve.
I think they should have just replaced both spans vs trying to patch them up again but oh well, at least there will be a capacity improvement and a slight speed improvement.
I meant the long approach viaduct on the west side of the river, which is being filled in rather than just rebuilt with a ballasted deck.
The capacity enhancement from the rebuilding will be enormous. Traffic on the former spans was restricted to about 5mph and only one train at a time; with the ballasted bridge decks the speed will be higher with no capacity restriction. The limiting speed would now be that imposed by the curve in the west approach viaduct; in any case speed above ~40mph would not be necessary for most "PSR" traffic.
I understand the MacArthur Bridge will be getting a comparable rebuilding when the Merchants is done.
If you read the project close you will find that all three spans are to be replaced. Evidently each span is being built way up the river one at a time. Cannot remember but sometime in 2nd Q of 2022 middle span which is still under construction when complete will be installed. The piers still need earthquake upgrades similar to the two piers already complete.
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