# Short Consists of Long Distance Trains



## amtrakpass (Sep 8, 2021)

Here is a link to a recent article on the current short consists of long distance trains. Even if you disagree with the author it is good food for thought I believe. 









U.S., Amtrak: Sabotage!? Why Are Southwest Chief And Other Train Consists Designed For Failure?


By Andrew Selden, Guest Commentator; September 7, 2021 Under federal (and many states’) law it is a crime, often a felony, to sabotage or tamper with railroad property with the intent to (or with r…




corridorrail.com


----------



## jiml (Sep 8, 2021)

It's an interesting theory - almost "conspiracy-like", and I'm not defending Amtrak's recent decisions, however the article completely discounts the widely-discussed reports of both equipment shortages (due to deferred maintenance) and staffing issues. I think most educated observers would allow a few more months of recovery (barring a significant fourth wave of the pandemic) before jumping on this bandwagon.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51 (Sep 8, 2021)

Seem to be a bit out of date, and or cherry picking.

I agree that shorten trains are a problem.

The lack of ability to meet the surge is a management problem, it just a problem that a lot of companies are having at the same time.

The conspiracy theory does apply, but the “just overwhelming on things to do.” Also is valid.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

jiml said:


> It's an interesting theory - almost "conspiracy-like", and I'm not defending Amtrak's recent decisions, however the article completely discounts the widely-discussed reports of both equipment shortages (due to deferred maintenance) and staffing issues. I think most educated observers would allow a few more months of recovery (barring a significant fourth wave of the pandemic) before jumping on this bandwagon.


I agree, they're ignoring several things that Amtrak is doing to improve the sleeper experience such as traditional dining (which they brought back in a considerably better form than Pre-Covid) and refurbishing cars, albeit superficially.

Edit: However they have a point about the baggage car, they should be running it at the front.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51 (Sep 8, 2021)

Are we sure the baggage car was not a one off deadhead movement. I have not seen a the SWC for a bit, but thought it lost the baggage car for some time now.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Are we sure the baggage car was not a one off deadhead movement. I have not seen a the SWC for a bit, but thought it lost the baggage car for some time now.


Nope, it's been running with a baggage car for at least a month, AFAIK it's always been on the back.


----------



## amtrakpass (Sep 8, 2021)

As for me I would not use as harsh a language as the author but I do think it is plain that Amtrak as a company on the whole is not very interested in growing Long distance ridership and the shortened consists are one of the primary limiting factors. Yes a few things are being done, but the very limited number of coaches, removal of ssl lounges on some trains, high sleeper prices, prevention of coach passengers using the diner etc.... all point to discouraging high ridership in the coaches especially. On the other hand I don't think the motives are particularly nefarious. I personally know a guy who worked for Amtrak in the Nec. Good railroad guy, also had no idea what was going on anywhere else in the company around the country. He would make fun of 448-449 actually even though he had never taken a ride on them. This happens in most large companies where some business unit's are the favored, and some are disparaged. But it seems to be a little more so with Amtrak and after meeting my friend I realized it was not just tied to the whoever the CEO was but is ingrained somewhat in the company culture.


----------



## enviro5609 (Sep 8, 2021)

The important factor for me that cuts strongly towards this being an equipment and staffing issue was the abrupt resumption of daily long distance service.

During the modified schedule (and correct me if I'm wrong) most trains still had their full consists. Staff were furloughed as there were less weekly trains, and cars were put into storage. But the actual consists were the same size on the days the train still ran.

Hoping into the time machine to late winter/early spring, the Biden stimulus and congressional mandate to resume service happened very quickly. Even the existence of the third stimulus package was in doubt up until the Senate special elections in December of 2020.

If your staff has been furloughed and cannot be 100% recalled, and your cars are in storage, the only way to resume daily service asap is to run the consists shortened. It takes more time to come out of a furlough/service reduction that it does to go into one. And it certainly takes longer than the lead time given to Amtrak by Congress. 

All of that is to say, the likeliest, and simplest, explanation, is that Amtrak was unprepared to resume full daily service, and did not have the staff or rolling stock to do so without cutting consist size.


----------



## amtrakpass (Sep 8, 2021)

I do ask those who believe it is an equipment and staffing issue, when do you think this will no longer be a valid reason? This winter? Next Spring? Next summer? even longer? It is good to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in my mind there does have to be an end point and Amtrak should be held accountable eventually.


----------



## enviro5609 (Sep 8, 2021)

amtrakpass said:


> I do ask those who believe it is an equipment and staffing issue, when do you think this will no longer be a valid reason? This winter? Next Spring? Next summer? even longer? It is good to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in my mind there does have to be an end point and Amtrak should be held accountable eventually.



From what I've seen on a few Amtrak Facebook groups (including from people who claim to be in the known or Amtrak employees) there are job postings up now, but the process is slow. Amtrak is having difficulty attracting qualified applicants, and this is not a uniquely Amtrak problem. Assuming hiring works out (and exceeds attrition) there should be a gradual resumption of more complete consists and dining services by the end of next summer. For example, the Texas Eagle may get traditional dining back this fall, but the lounge and additional coaches/sleepers may take longer. 

I would agree that it would be nice if Amtrak acted more like a corporation in this respect, and give regular updates and set expectations/forecast guidance. They are leaving money on the table, and the difficulties in recalling furloughed employees or onboarding new ones is exactly the kind of thing that would be discussed at a quarterly earnings conference call, for instance. While the difficulties are understandable, they are not insurmountable. So what the plan?


----------



## joelkfla (Sep 8, 2021)

amtrakpass said:


> As for me I would not use as harsh a language as the author but I do think it is plain that Amtrak as a company on the whole is not very interested in growing Long distance ridership and the shortened consists are one of the primary limiting factors. Yes a few things are being done, but the very limited number of coaches, removal of ssl lounges on some trains, high sleeper prices, prevention of coach passengers using the diner etc.... all point to discouraging high ridership in the coaches especially. On the other hand I don't think the motives are particularly nefarious. I personally know a guy who worked for Amtrak in the Nec. Good railroad guy, also had no idea what was going on anywhere else in the company around the country. He would make fun of 448-449 actually even though he had never taken a ride on them. This happens in most large companies where some business unit's are the favored, and some are disparaged. But it seems to be a little more so with Amtrak and after meeting my friend I realized it was not just tied to the whoever the CEO was but is ingrained somewhat in the company culture.


A lot of us non-foamers don't have train numbers memorized. I realize there are web sites that list them, but it would be a lot easier if you referred to trains by their name. Thx.


----------



## edolan (Sep 8, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> A lot of us non-foamers don't have train numbers memorized. I realize there are web sites that list them, but it would be a lot easier if you referred to trains by their name. Thx.


Lake Shore Limited Boston section


----------



## amtrakpass (Sep 8, 2021)

Thanks for the thoughtful replies. One question I was thinking of is does anyone know what the actual agreement is for the number of attendants required per coach and/or per sleeper/ lounge car? Also can Amtrak just run the cars anyway without attendants if they are short staff? I know some railroads have a penalty claim for short crew but some also get by with paying very few claims for anything these days.
Lastly, I do know it is tough for the whole service industry finding staff these days, so I do sympathize with that. However I do think Amtrak's hiring process is too laborious and intensive for some jobs when some attendant jobs might be much easier to fill if people could just try it out or do it as a temp for a summer or winter season without making it a full time career. I know the same can't be done for the operating crafts but to me the 
skills in customer service are easily transferable from other parts of the service industry and might not need an super intense hiring process


----------



## Qapla (Sep 8, 2021)

There are many good points made for and against the authors conclusions ... one thing that stands out though, it does not take any additional rolling stock or trained employees to assemble the consist in a more rational, pleasing arrangement. Placing the sleepers directly behind the engine does seem to be self-defeating and would not cost any additional money to correct.


----------



## jis (Sep 8, 2021)

Qapla said:


> There are many good points made for and against the authors conclusions ... one thing that stands out though, it does not take any additional rolling stock or trained employees to assemble the consist in a more rational, pleasing arrangement. Placing the sleepers directly behind the engine does seem to be self-defeating and would not cost any additional money to correct.


The usual problem of course is that there is no universal agreement on what is the most pleasing arrangement and it is quite impossible to satisfy everyone's idea of "pleasing".


----------



## Tlcooper93 (Sep 8, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> A lot of us non-foamers don't have train numbers memorized. I realize there are web sites that list them, but it would be a lot easier if you referred to trains by their name. Thx.


Not a foamer, but have decided to commit a few important route numbers to memory; its not so difficult to do.



amtrakpass said:


> Here is a link to a recent article on the current short consists of long distance trains. Even if you disagree with the author it is good food for thought I believe.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This was a fun read, but really doesn't hold up to reality; Amtrak has always been bad at accountability, and the reason for doing something questionable may change over time. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that Amtrak isnt interested in expanding their LD operations. That said, there is also evidence (as many have pointed out) to suggest that they want to keep what they currently have.


----------



## lrh442 (Sep 8, 2021)

Absent _any_ explanation from Amtrak management on why consists are short I think the sabotage theory is plausible. They have a track record on this (SW Chief). It's not like we have to make outlandish leaps of logic to think that Amtrak wants to do away with the LD trains. It's more than benign neglect or simple incompetence, IMO.

Or, as Maya Angelou famously said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."


----------



## jis (Sep 8, 2021)

There was actually about a decade or a bit more when Amtrak was explicitly barred from adding any LD train without getting permission from Congress. Fortunately that piece of idiocy was gotten rid of, but the mindset developed in that period seems to have lingered on.

There was a time when Amtrak used to quite freely experiment with adding LD service. But they were much less religious about gold plating each train with Sleepers and Diners and Lounges and the works. The Pioneer for example started as a Coach and Cafe train from Salt Lake City to Seattle with cro0ss platform connection with the San Francisco Zephyr at Ogden.

Unfortunately, sicne one can find an example of almost any behavior - good or bad - in the past in Amtrak history, it is hard to cherry pick one and use that to claim that a conspiracy theory is plausible because Amtrak did that. The only theory consistently plausible about Amtrak seems to be random Brownian motion affected by who was appointed CEO and how the winds blew in Congress five years back.


----------



## lrh442 (Sep 8, 2021)

jis said:


> Unfortunately, sicne one can find an example of almost any behavior - good or bad - in the past in Amtrak history, it is hard to cherry pick one and use that to claim that a conspiracy theory is plausible because Amtrak did that.


I put little stock into what Amtrak may or may not have done decades ago. What Steven Gardner has done (or tried to do) over the last 5 years is imminently relevant, though. No need to cherry pick anything when there is a body of recent work that has a clear bias against the LD trains.


----------



## jis (Sep 8, 2021)

lrh442 said:


> I put little stock into what Amtrak may or may not have done decades ago. What Steven Gardner has done (or tried to do) over the last 5 years is imminently relevant, though. No need to cherry pick anything when there is a body of recent work that has a clear bias against the LD trains.


Good. So do you suppose this is going to get fixed soon, now that there is an Amtrak friendly administration? Do you think Steven Gardner is a rogue acting on his own or do you suppose he is jsut the tip of the iceberg? What explanatory value is there is just repeating Steven Gardner's name regularly?


----------



## lrh442 (Sep 8, 2021)

jis said:


> Good. So do you suppose this is going to get fixed soon, now that there is an Amtrak friendly administration? Do you think Steven Gardner is a rogue acting on his own or do you suppose he is jsut the tip of the iceberg? What explanatory value is there is just repeating Steven Gardner's name regularly?


So do you suppose this is going to get fixed soon, now that there is an Amtrak friendly administration? - If by "this" you mean short consists, the good news is that we won't have to wait much longer to find out if it's a staffing issue or something deeper.

Do you think Steven Gardner is a rogue acting on his own or do you suppose he is just the tip of the iceberg? - Gardner has a a strong viewpoint on what Amtrak should be and there seems to be little resistance from within the company to his vision. He seems to bend only reluctantly to the will of Congress. 

What explanatory value is there is just repeating Steven Gardner's name regularly? - This is a forum for passenger rail enthusiasts, and my post assumes most readers have a rudimentary knowledge of the Gardner (He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?)/Anderson years and don't require citations for every observation. I know you are more knowledgeable than most, so I assume your question is a friendly polemic designed to enliven the thread, rather than an attempt to stifle conversation by requiring chapter and verse citations.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 8, 2021)

The Board needs to fired, along with Gardner.


----------



## jis (Sep 8, 2021)

The only interesting addition to all this is that Congress is not a monolithic thing. Unfortunately it is also the will of another part of Congress and their lackeys that got the likes of Gardner to be where they are. As the saying goes - “There are wheels within wheels”. They went so far as to undermine Boardman to remove dining service from the Star and the LSL claiming that Diners could not be serviced to keep them on line while the Viewliners were delayed. It was the then CFO in that case.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Sep 8, 2021)

I think Gardner and company are intentionally holding back the network trains to suppress ridership and increase loses until a time when there is another anti Amtrak administration and/or Congress. The poor numbers will foster managements goal of reducing the network at that time. Anderson’s in your face tantrums didn’t work so they are playing the long game now. Unfortunately we may see that anti Amtrak political environment sooner than later. I’ve talked to staffers who witnessed the shouting match (SWC) and to a person they all paint Gardner as the one behind Anderson’s idiotic agenda.

If nothing else look at the Texas Eagle traveling through deep red states with no political pushback. They have decimated that train and it’s not temporary due to lack of labor/lounges/fresh food/etc. It’s cut because they want to depress ridership.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

jis said:


> The only interesting addition to all this is that Congress is not a monolithic thing. Unfortunately it is also the will of another part of Congress and their lackeys that got the likes of Gardner to be where they are. As the saying goes - “There are wheels within wheels”. They went so far as to undermine Boardman to remove dining service from the Star and the LSL claiming that Diners could not be serviced to keep them on line while the Viewliners were delayed. It was the then CFO in that case.


I’m confused, so Boardman didn’t want to downgrade dining on any trains?


----------



## Dakota 400 (Sep 8, 2021)

#1: The author is a "guest commentator". Who is he and what is his expertise?

#2: There is not a business in this Country that is not having problems doing the amount of business that they would like to do. Supply chain issues, staffing issues, etc. Why would Amtrak be exempt from this current business condition?

#3: The author does make a good point about the trains' consists. Why are the sleepers sometimes the closest cars to the engines? It seems to me that in the distant past, the sleeping cars were always at the end of the train. Who or what regulation/rule determines how the consists are composed?


----------



## me_little_me (Sep 8, 2021)

Sabotage is believable because Amtrak made it believable.

They tried to screw the Southwest Chief.

They have never explained why they could not use money from the government to keep people employed in maintenance so that the cars would be ready to go to now.

They have been unwilling to be open with their customers about why that had to to things such as removing SSL lounges and whether such moves are temporary or permanent.

They have never explained why they didn't put the new VL2 sleepers to work when accepted instead of holding them and not using those expensive assets. It has nothing to do with Covid.

They never explained why their promise to put new linen on the trains just disappeared into thin air even though that promise was made pre-Covid.

They never explained or justified the need to go from real food to the worst of packaged food nor why they couldn't provide more choices. This is not a case of having to save money because the difference in cost between quality packaged food and packaged garbage is incidental as is the difference in cost between having so few choices and having differnt choices on, e.g., different directions or different trains or different days.

They never explained their need to suddenly and without proper notice, decide to quit pulling private cars instead of just simply saying they would phase out the program by no longer signing contracts to haul cars except for limited city combinations.

They never justified why they couldn't provide proper schedules/timetables and pricing information any more which is especially critical on LD trains because of the high prices.

They never explained why they knocked Amsnag out even though it was providing a service that Amtrak has failed to provide.

Amtrak tries to hide information from the public, from congress, from the media consistent with the theory of sabotage or deliberate malfeasance. 

Amtrak operates like a company that feels no obligation to be open and honest to its customers even though the American people are paying to subsidize it.

So claiming sabotage is not unreasonable in response to the company's deliberate actions and failures to justify or explain them.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Sep 8, 2021)

I’m confused, so Boardman didn’t want to downgrade dining on any trains?
[/QUOTE]

It was actually a pretty shrewd move on Boardmans part. He had to placate the Mica types in Congress and show some type of initiative on cutting food costs as misguided as the notion is and was. He took the only route with double daily service and removed the diner from one train. Customers still had the choice of a full service train or save a few bucks and take a no frills train. It was a good sacrificial lamb all things considered. The move made logical sense unlike today’s cuts which don’t make any sense.

The first paragraph of this article from the time sums it up. It hurt ridership but it was done to appease Congress.





__





Silver Star Dining Car Service is Gone Permanently - Trains Magazine - Trains News Wire, Railroad News, Railroad Industry News, Web Cams, and Forms


Trains magazine offers railroad news, railroad industry insight, commentary on today's freight railroads, passenger service (Amtrak), locomotive technology, railroad preservation and history, railfan opportunities (tourist railroads, fan trips), and great railroad photography.



cs.trains.com


----------



## MARC Rider (Sep 8, 2021)

I would like to point out that Northeast Regional consists are now shorter than they were before the pandemic. In addition, a lot of the Northeast Regionals have been cancelled, and have still not been restored. I suppose this is some nefarious plot by Amtrak to cancel the Northeast regional Service... (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who just let out a contract for 100s of new cars for the Northeast Regionals.)


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 8, 2021)

_Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or apathy)_

The core problem with the LD trains is lack of investment. The cars are dated. The operating procedures are archaic.



me_little_me said:


> They have never explained why they could not use money from the government to keep people employed in maintenance so that the cars would be ready to go to now.



They do keep people employed in maintenance--but there's really very little even an incredibly gifted maintenance crew can do for a fleet of cars that literally predate Facebook and Google by a decade or more.

Who here has been on a round trip voyage on an LD train where there wasn't some kind of major problem with one of the cars? 

The third generation of Superliners will probably never come to be, even though they started the design process in 2006.



me_little_me said:


> They have been unwilling to be open with their customers about why that had to to things such as removing SSL lounges and whether such moves are temporary or permanent.



There wasn't a press release, but they were pretty clear about the fact they were refurbishing them. The refurbished ones are quite nice, actually. Also, there are a very limited number of SSLs in service and they are a vital part of the experience on the EB and CZ...less so on the other lines. When there's a limited amount in stock in Chicago, they have to roll with what they have.



me_little_me said:


> They never explained why they knocked Amsnag out even though it was providing a service that Amtrak has failed to provide.



Amsnag was technically violating the TOS of the Amtrak website. They didn't "knock it out" as much as keeping their website current made the way Amsnag was scraping non-viable. 



me_little_me said:


> Amtrak tries to hide information from the public, from congress, from the media consistent with the theory of sabotage or deliberate malfeasance.



Given the glaring mistakes on the things they make available for public consumption, I think Hanlon's razor (i.e. stupidity) is a much more likely explanation.


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 8, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> Amtrak operates like a company that feels no obligation to be open and honest to its customers even though the American people are paying to subsidize it.



Let's never forget that Amtrak's primary customer on the LD trains is congress.

Amtrak has exceptional individuals working for it, but as an organization, the LD passengers are treated somewhere between an inconvenience and and an afterthought.


----------



## amtrakpass (Sep 8, 2021)

On the NEC Tomorrow it looks like about 15 round trips scheduled Boston to New York and 30 plus round trips New York to Washington. I don't know what the previous pre-covid schedule was but that is still pretty good service. I take the NEC myself once every month or so and enjoy having it available. I just wish the rest of the system had a small part of the attention it receives. It's not personal to me and I think maybe the attention on a few specific individuals who are in charge of different roles at Amtrak is perhaps unwarranted when the issues run deeper within the company than that. Hopefully this is something that will all change in the not too distant future and we will see improvements across the whole system


----------



## Tlcooper93 (Sep 8, 2021)

amtrakpass said:


> On the NEC Tomorrow it looks like about 15 round trips scheduled Boston to New York and 30 plus round trips New York to Washington. I don't know what the previous pre-covid schedule was but that is still pretty good service. I take the NEC myself once every month or so and enjoy having it available. I just wish the rest of the system had a small part of the attention it receives. It's not personal to me and I think maybe the attention on a few specific individuals who are in charge of different roles at Amtrak is perhaps unwarranted when the issues run deeper within the company than that. Hopefully this is something that will all change in the not too distant future and we will see improvements across the whole system



Comparing the NEC to any other part of the country is unhelpful, and questioning Amtrak's continued preference to it is also unwise.

The NEC was largely handed down infrastructure that Amtrak didn't screw up. Its the one place in this country that has somewhat European level rail service, but also requires gargantuan maintenance.

There is no other part of the country that could, right now, demand the same level of attention from Amtrak, or provide the same level of service, even with significant capital infrastructure investments. Perhaps in 10-20 years, something similar could arise.
St. Louis was once the busiest train station in the world, so anythings possible.

The "conspiracy" to prefer the NEC to the LD network looks way more like a last ditch effort to keep Amtrak profitable than a demonic attack on the LD network.


----------



## MARC Rider (Sep 8, 2021)

Tlcooper93 said:


> Comparing the NEC to any other part of the country is unhelpful, and questioning Amtrak's continued preference to it is also unwise.
> 
> The NEC was largely handed down infrastructure that Amtrak didn't screw up. Its the one place in this country that has somewhat European level rail service, but also requires gargantuan maintenance.
> 
> ...


And the point I was making was that, even on the NEC, they have cut back and not restored all the cuts. Thus <sarcasm> Amtrak has a nefarious plot to shut down the NEC, too.</sarcasm>


----------



## Tlcooper93 (Sep 8, 2021)

MARC Rider said:


> And the point I was making was that, even on the NEC, they have cut back and not restored all the cuts. Thus <sarcasm> Amtrak has a nefarious plot to shut down the NEC, too.</sarcasm>


Your post was entirely understood, hence my “like”. I though it was funny.


----------



## 20th Century Rider (Sep 8, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> Sabotage is believable because Amtrak made it believable.
> 
> They tried to screw the Southwest Chief.
> 
> ...


Appreciated is all the work you put into this ... keeping Amtrak's most loyal customers fully informed!


----------



## 20th Century Rider (Sep 8, 2021)

MARC Rider said:


> And the point I was making was that, even on the NEC, they have cut back and not restored all the cuts. Thus <sarcasm> Amtrak has a nefarious plot to shut down the NEC, too.</sarcasm>


Of course they'll keep it going... and going strong... cause they are making 'big bucks!'


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Who here has been on a round trip voyage on an LD train where there wasn't some kind of major problem with one of the cars?


I have. At least I didn't notice or hear of any major problems.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> they are a vital part of the experience on the EB and CZ...less so on the other lines.


Just gotta forget about the CS which has arguably better scenery than the Builder, and the 30 hours you go on the TE with nowhere to go?? They are a vital part of the experience on ALL superliner routes, even if there is no spectacular scenery.


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 8, 2021)

Cal said:


> Just gotta forget about the CS which has arguably better scenery than the Builder, and the 30 hours you go on the TE with nowhere to go?? They are a vital part of the experience on ALL superliner routes, even if there is no spectacular scenery.



I'm not sure the conductors have ever had to ration seating on the TE, whereas it's standard procedure now on the CZ.

With a limited number of SSLs, they'll have to be pulled off a route every now and then. There's some routes that can do without them better than others.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> I'm not sure the conductors have ever had to ration seating on the TE, whereas it's standard procedure now on the CZ.


That is true, but that doesn't mean they aren't still one of the better aspects of long distance rail journeys, and I'd say they are vital for all routes.


----------



## John819 (Sep 8, 2021)

"Build it and they will come."


----------



## Ryan (Sep 8, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Who here has been on a round trip voyage on an LD train where there wasn't some kind of major problem with one of the cars?



/me raises his hand several times



Cal said:


> They are a vital part of the experience on ALL superliner routes, even if there is no spectacular scenery.


For you, perhaps. I scarcely set foot in them.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

Ryan said:


> For you, perhaps. I scarcely set foot in them.


Really? I'm surprised. On my most recent trip at least 70% of the ride was spent in the SSL for me!


----------



## RebelRider (Sep 8, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> They have never explained why they could not use money from the government to keep people employed in maintenance so that the cars would be ready to go to now.



To the best of my knowledge, no one in mechanical was furloughed. Amtrak parked the "excess" cars, literally let them bake in the sun with no preventative maintenance for months while all the mechanical folks spread the remaining work around. Not surprisingly, the stuff still running didn't get any additional attention or care.



me_little_me said:


> They have never explained why they didn't put the new VL2 sleepers to work when accepted instead of holding them and not using those expensive assets. It has nothing to do with Covid.



When new cars are delivered to Hialeah, they aren't immediately ready for service. Acceptance testing, additional field modifications, WiFi installation, etc. needed to be completed before going into service. This has been mentioned here before.



me_little_me said:


> They never explained or justified the need to go from real food to the worst of packaged food nor why they couldn't provide more choices. This is not a case of having to save money because the difference in cost between quality packaged food and packaged garbage is incidental as is the difference in cost between having so few choices and having differnt choices on, e.g., different directions or different trains or different days.



Amtrak sure did explain the change. It's because millennials asked for crap food. 



me_little_me said:


> They never justified why they couldn't provide proper schedules/timetables and pricing information any more which is especially critical on LD trains because of the high prices.



I think this is a case of IT mis-management. There is supposed to be some new, fantastic schedule/route tool on Amtrak.com that generates PDFs on the fly with the latest and greatest schedule information. It's probably a combination of killing the old schedules too early and the new tool getting delayed.



me_little_me said:


> Amtrak operates like a company that feels no obligation to be open and honest to its customers even though the American people are paying to subsidize it.
> 
> So claiming sabotage is not unreasonable in response to the company's deliberate actions and failures to justify or explain them.



Is this deliberate and intentional? I don't think so. Is it incredibly short-sighted mis-management combined with media relations/marketing spin? Yup.


----------



## Cal (Sep 8, 2021)

Just saw #8 and #30 on the cams.

8's Consist: One engine (161), baggage, transdorm, two sleepers, diner, one coach. 

30's consist: Two engines, three amfleets (Are they deadheading or-), baggage, two sleepers, diner, two coaches (one being a coach baggage)


----------



## Tlcooper93 (Sep 8, 2021)

Cal said:


> Really? I'm surprised. On my most recent trip at least 70% of the ride was spent in the SSL for me!



I think like all things, it depends on the route/person.
On my CZ trip, I didn’t enter the SSL the entire first day/night. After Denver however, I spent a considerable amount of time there.

Subsequently though, I found the dining car (which was often empty due to COVID) to be a nice alternative to the overcrowded SSL. I could see out both sides easily, get some work done at a spacious table, and enjoy the scenery just as much.

On a non-scenic route, i really don’t have too much interest in a SSL.


----------



## frequentflyer (Sep 9, 2021)

In the 90s the Silver trains were 18 car consists during peak season, even though they used to split in Jacksonville and Aubundale. 18 cars! Go to the Plant City or Forkston video cams and you see these same trains with two or three sleepers and TWO coach cars. Would love to see year over year pax numbers for the Silvers. Tell me Amtrak did not chase off pax over the years from the Silvers. How do you screw up a mature market from northeast to Florida?


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 9, 2021)

frequentflyer said:


> In the 90s the Silver trains were 18 car consists during peak season, even though they used to split in Jacksonville and Auburndale. 18 cars! Go to the Plant City or Forkston video cams and you see these same trains with two or three sleepers and TWO coach cars. Would love to see year over year pax numbers for the Silvers. Tell me Amtrak did not chase off pax over the years from the Silvers. How do you screw up a mature market from northeast to Florida?


"From out of the pages of yesteryear!" _(Rail Travel News) _Riders

NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1981 = 42,410 // December 1981 = 55,642
NEW YORK - SAVANNAH --November 1981 = 10,466 // December 1981 = 14,496 

In February '82 the typical consist of the _Silver Meteor _southbound from Washington, DC was 16 cars to 18 cars, including three sleepers and a Slumbercoach..


----------



## joelkfla (Sep 9, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> "From out of the pages of yesteryear!" _(Rail Travel News) _Riders
> 
> NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1981 = 42,410 // December 1981 = 55,642
> NEW YORK - SAVANNAH --November 1981 = 10,466 // December 1981 = 14,496
> ...


Compare to:





*389,995 + 353,466 = 743,461 / 12 = 61,955*
(not sure whether those numbers are directly comparable)


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 9, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> *389,995 + 353,466 = 743,461 / 12 = 61,955*
> (not sure whether those numbers are directly comparable)



Are they each total ridership numbers, or is one counting every passenger between city pairs ignoring any intermediate stops.


----------



## Barb Stout (Sep 9, 2021)

Qapla said:


> There are many good points made for and against the authors conclusions ... one thing that stands out though, it does not take any additional rolling stock or trained employees to assemble the consist in a more rational, pleasing arrangement. Placing the sleepers directly behind the engine does seem to be self-defeating and would not cost any additional money to correct.


I'm not sure if there was a change since the last time I took a sleeper on the SWC back in 2019, but at that time the sleepers were not right behind the locomotives. Although I wasn't paying strict attention when I boarded, I think they were near the back because at the station I use (ABQ), the sleeping car passengers were told to wait at the south side of the station in Albuquerque and the coach people were on the north side. The east-bound train which I was taking, first heads north before veering east somewhere around Lamy. Also, any time I have been in sleepers on the SWC, I have not heard train horns or smelled fuel fumes (I sure have smelled other things, if you know what I mean), so I would say if it's true that the sleepers are now at the front, then perhaps the consists are inconsistent. (Pun intended)


----------



## me_little_me (Sep 9, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Let's never forget that Amtrak's primary customer on the LD trains is congress.
> 
> Amtrak has exceptional individuals working for it, but as an organization, the LD passengers are treated somewhere between an inconvenience and and an afterthought.


While management may treat congress as their customer, it is NOT true that Congress IS their customer.

The people that pay for travel are customers.

The American people who are expecting Amtrak to provide service by subsidizing it are customers. Congress is just allocating the money paid by the American people just like a Home Owners Association board allocates the money for maintenance paid by the owners of the association.


----------



## me_little_me (Sep 9, 2021)

RebelRider said:


> To the best of my knowledge, no one in mechanical was furloughed. Amtrak parked the "excess" cars, literally let them bake in the sun with no preventative maintenance for months while all the mechanical folks spread the remaining work around. Not surprisingly, the stuff still running didn't get any additional attention or care.
> 
> When new cars are delivered to Hialeah, they aren't immediately ready for service. Acceptance testing, additional field modifications, WiFi installation, etc. needed to be completed before going into service. This has been mentioned here before.
> 
> ...


Item #1: If they furloughed nobody, then the running cars shoul have been given lots of additional maintenance since there were so few of them being used or those sitting should have been maintained and upgraded.

#2. I specifically stated "after acceptance". Those cars have just been sitting for many many months with no plans in place to put them in service and even now, have not been put in service. If there are problems, Amtrak should be open about it. If not, suggesting that it is deliberate (and therefore possibly sabotage) is not unreasonable. 

As I clearly stated: "Sabotage is believable because Amtrak made it believable".

BTW, I did not suggest I believed it but it is not unreasonable to believe it.


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 9, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> The people that pay for travel are customers.



So by that logic, Congress (via federal subsidies) pays for the travel on most LD lines. How much is debatable depending on the accounting, but they're clearly the single biggest and most important customer.

There's a reason that the Auto Train was mostly untouched as a product during COVID and that's because it's mostly self-sustaining. All the other LD services suffered.

Amtrak doesn't run the LD services because of its paying customers. It runs them because Congress says so. If Congress stops funding those lines, they go away.

The whole reason for 3x/week service was to get more funding. Once they got more funding, service was restored.


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 9, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Are they each total ridership numbers, or is one counting every passenger between city pairs ignoring any intermediate stops.


I think these are all passengers except that NEC riders may not be included on the Savannah run. When I get time I'll look up some more recent years. The year that I picked included the transition from steam to electric heat, although it's hard to find a year that was 'normal'.


----------



## Ryan (Sep 9, 2021)

Tlcooper93 said:


> I think like all things, it depends on the route/person.
> On my CZ trip, I didn’t enter the SSL the entire first day/night. After Denver however, I spent a considerable amount of time there.
> 
> Subsequently though, I found the dining car (which was often empty due to COVID) to be a nice alternative to the overcrowded SSL. I could see out both sides easily, get some work done at a spacious table, and enjoy the scenery just as much.
> ...


Indeed.

I paid for a private room, why would I go and hang out with strangers?


----------



## basketmaker (Sep 9, 2021)

Author makes a lot of sense! The tail-end Baggage car always stumped me since 9 out of 10 of the consists (SWC and CZ) I have watched over the last year or so on Virtual Railfan at GBB still tote the Coach-Baggage at least on the SWC in addition to the dedicated Baggage. Only noticed once that the Coach-Baggage was actually used and that was when about 40+ Boy Scouts came back to GBB with all their gear. And for the most part they actually did the unload. The SWC Baggage at the rear and the fumes/noise for the leading Sleeper is an issue. I have done both a few times and the noise hasn't been an issue personally but the fumes were. Same with the PDX-SPK leg of the EB when the Lounge was in the lead. Twice I had to leave the Lounge because the fumes were too much. And I worked airport tarmacs around jet exhaust for a living for 40+ years. The Baggage car should be behind the power as a buffer. 

The author of the article never even raised the issues of the freight railroads intentionally delaying Amtrak. That torques me more than anything. I see the CZ from my bedroom in/out of Denver. And more times than not #5 is thrown in the Barr Lake siding (a mile from me) only to wait for a 75+ car _slow _coal drag or long manifest to get by. Yet it appears that Amtrak does little about this. Other than posting an "Amtrak Alert" blaming freight. And I know it is not an isolated incident only with BNSF.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 9, 2021)

Amtrak really has not had the authority to do anything about mishandling by the freight railroads, despite its statutory priority. It cannot bring suit itself, the DOJ has to do it. The regulatory authorities (STB) did not have the tools, either.

PRIIA in 2008 conferred authority on the STB to regulate passenger delay. It has been held up in court, the legislation amended to take Amtrak out of the role of formulating standards when that was challenged and went to the Supreme Court and lost. The railroads continued to fight it, taking the amended legislation to the Supreme Court again, which didn't hear it. The implementing regulations and standards finally started being implemented in December 2020, the railroads finally losing after fighting it tooth and nail for 12 years.

There is also now an effort in Congress to amend the law to allow Amtrak the ability to file suit itself without needing the DOJ to take the case. Whether that is successful, who can say? Suffice to say the railroads are fighting it.


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 9, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> "From out of the pages of yesteryear!" _(Rail Travel News) _Riders
> 
> NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1981 = 42,410 // December 1981 = 55,642
> NEW YORK - SAVANNAH --November 1981 = 10,466 // December 1981 = 14,496
> ...


 
NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1986 = 59,688 // December 1986 = 69,728
NEW YORK - SAVANNAH --November 1986 = 11,164 // December 1986 = 13,094

A footnote mentions low gas prices then in effect. (Denver and Calgary had lots of vacant office space at that time.)

A consist for the _Silver Meteor _at Orlando on Feb. 15, 1987 shows four sleepers and a Slumbercoach. A consist for the _Silver Star _at Jacksonville on Feb. 8th shows three sleepers in service.


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 10, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1986 = 59,688 // December 1986 = 69,728
> NEW YORK - SAVANNAH --November 1986 = 11,164 // December 1986 = 13,094
> 
> A footnote mentions low gas prices then in effect. (Denver and Calgary had lots of vacant office space at that time.)
> ...



NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1996 = 57,587 // December 1996 = missing

The _Royal Palm _began service on Nov. 10th. Between Amtrak's erratic release of ridership stats and RTN's erratic publication dates and the news hole required to cover the major service cuts about to occur, I haven't found Dec '96.


----------



## neroden (Sep 10, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> There's a reason that the Auto Train was mostly untouched as a product during COVID and that's because it's mostly self-sustaining. All the other LD services suffered.



Many of the other LD services are also self-sustaining (specifically: every reputable outside analysis says the Lake Shore Limited, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmetto and Coast Starlight are), but this is obscured by Amtrak's deliberately fraudulent "allocations" accounting system (which was instituted decades back for various political reasons which are no longer relevant, but is still staggering on like a zombie).

The incompetence is quite serious: people near the top of Amtrak management, and in Congress, believe the fake numbers unless there's pushback against them, and make business decisions based on the fake numbers. Managing based on fake numbers is how the Rock Island Railroad abandoned the profitable part of their system and kept the unprofitable part -- it really is a bad thing to manage based on false numbers.

----
On the original topic of short consists, every rumor I've heard is that it's short-staffing. Some rather thoughtless actions were taken by Mr. Anderson, and more thoughtless actions were taken during the pandemic, and as a result a lot of people retired or were laid off and didn't come back... and it turns out it's not so easy to replace them.


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 10, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- November 1996 = 57,587 // December 1996 = missing
> 
> The _Royal Palm _began service on Nov. 10th. Between Amtrak's erratic release of ridership stats and RTN's erratic publication dates and the news hole required to cover the major service cuts about to occur, I haven't found Dec '96.


Here's February 2001:
SILVER STAR = 17,992
SILVER METEOR = 18,013
SILVER PALM = 14,728

NEW YORK - FLORIDA -- 50,733

I also am missing some issues in this era. The time required by "my own" railroad (Denver's transit system) became overwhelming, so I can't blame the lack of continuous stats on any one thing.

Another hazard is thumbing through the back issues. Did you know that the _Desert Wind _once detoured via the Tennessee Pass line?


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 10, 2021)

neroden said:


> Many of the other LD services are also self-sustaining (specifically: every reputable outside analysis says the Lake Shore Limited, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmetto and Coast Starlight are),



Can you cite at least one reputable outside analysis that backs this up? The only analyses people cite are articles that do a worse job of error-prone cherry-picking to suit their point than what's presented in Amtrak's "materially good enough" Audited Financial Statements. Just because Amtrak lies doesn't somehow make these services self-sustaining.

Yes, I'm sure you could find one or two quarters where each of these services eeked out a profit. However, on the whole, they have all relied on a subsidy just like all of Amtrak's services.

If they were >100% farebox recovery services, then they wouldn't need a subsidy, wouldn't have been cut and would likely be run by private entities.


----------



## PaTrainFan (Sep 10, 2021)

neroden said:


> Many of the other LD services are also self-sustaining (specifically: every reputable outside analysis says the Lake Shore Limited, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmetto and Coast Starlight are), but this is obscured by Amtrak's deliberately fraudulent "allocations" accounting system (which was instituted decades back for various political reasons which are no longer relevant, but is still staggering on like a zombie).
> 
> The incompetence is quite serious: people near the top of Amtrak management, and in Congress, believe the fake numbers unless there's pushback against them, and make business decisions based on the fake numbers. Managing based on fake numbers is how the Rock Island Railroad abandoned the profitable part of their system and kept the unprofitable part -- it really is a bad thing to manage based on false numbers.



Has RPA made any headway with a more receptive Congress on recognizing this as a flawed metric? I am guessing Amtrak management has no desire to change their thinking but this might have to be anotehr case of Amtrak forcing them to rethink.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51 (Sep 10, 2021)

Smiling Joe Boardman once upon a time had a PowerPoint presentation that show profitable for some of this routes in question.

As for why Amtrak is the only operator might due with operations authorization, equipment, and liability protection.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Sep 10, 2021)

As I alluded to earlier in this thread looking back I think Boardman did a lot better job then he was given credit for at the time. He knew how to play the political game and knew railroading.

Plus from all accounts he was just a nice guy. I enjoyed reading the story, it might have been on here or Trainswire where he was out to eat near WUS at a diner with an Amtrak polo shirt on. A customer started talking Amtrak with him, not knowing he was the CEO. Long story short they hit it off and Boardman took him back to the station and gave him a VIP tour of the facilities. 




Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Smiling Joe Boardman once upon a time had a PowerPoint presentation that show profitable for some of this routes in question.
> 
> As for why Amtrak is the only operator might due with operations authorization, equipment, and liability protection.


----------



## west point (Sep 11, 2021)

IMO there are some LD routes that can break even. But it requires those trains to carry a large amount of passengers. Look at the Palmetto which comes close to breaking even with just 8 or 9 cars south of WASH. If all silvers were up to 16 cars then just having 3 non revenue cars and 13 revenue cars on overnight trains.. 
My candidates are Silvers, Crescent ATL - NEC (requires dropping cars at ATL ) LSL, Empire Builder, Cal Z. 

Now to operate any of these trains at this capacity requires many changes that Amtrak being hide bound would find hard to implement.
1. Proper planning of station stops is at the top. Conductors will have to be trained for quicker stops may require different boarding procedures..
2. Agents at stations as well will need training..
3. Stations will need boarding locations automated by way the train make up is is for that train. This will require engineers to have initial stop locations marked and noted to engineer where to stop for each trip.
4. Diners will need to be run 24/7 that will need more personnel. No blocking off any seating.
5. New intermediate catering locations for additional food and other supplies will be required.
6. A baggage man or some OBS might be needed to speed up station stops.
6. One benefit will be an a


----------



## Cal (Sep 12, 2021)

west point said:


> My candidates are Silvers, Crescent ATL - NEC (requires dropping cars at ATL ) LSL, Empire Builder, Cal Z.


I would think that all LD trains have the potential to make a profit. I mean the Sunset hits six population centers and can be relatively fast if it loses it's padding.


----------



## neroden (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Can you cite at least one reputable outside analysis that backs this up?


Sure, check anything which doesn't include "allocated costs". They're marginal-cost profitable and even Amtrak has admitted this when pressed on it.

Boardman stated outright that cancelling the Silver Star or Silver Meteor would ***increase Amtrak's need for Congressional funding***. If cancelling a train increases Amtrak's need for funding, *THAT TRAIN IS PROFITABLE*.



> If they were >100% farebox recovery services, then they wouldn't need a subsidy, wouldn't have been cut and would likely be run by private entities.


Absolute ignorant nonsense.

You don't seem to understand business. There's overhead to cover.

NO SINGLE TRAIN, including the Auto Train, can cover the overhead of running a passenger rail system by itself. The only way to cover overhead is to have a *large system* so that you can have economies of scale. (This is also part of why all the freight railroads are trending towards giant monopolies.)

That doesn't change the fact that each individual train is profitable -- it covers its marginal costs.

They're just not profitable enough to cover the overhead of having a central reservations system, a heavy maintenance backshop, a headquarters building, accountants, work gangs, etc. But each train is profitable.

I know this is confusing to people who don't actually understand business, but you can have each individual product be profitable and have the business as a whole not be profitable due to not having enough economies of scale.

"Allocating" the overhead is a nonsense move -- it creates gibberish. Because the company as a whole is not profitable, if you allocate all the overhead to one product, you can claim that the LSL is unprofitable and the NEC is profitable, but this is nonsense; you could allocate the overhead the other way and claim that the LSL is profitable and the NEC is unprofitable, and it would be just as accurate -- both are inaccurate.

The fact is that each individual train is profitable and covers its own marginal costs (with a few exceptions, notably the Sunset Limited) but the overall business is not profitable.

The correct accounting system separates the marginal costs (which each individual service should cover from fares, in a for-profit business) from the fixed overhead costs (which should not be allocated to any service; instead one should try to have ENOUGH services to cover them when you add up all the profits from individual services). This is not what Amtrak is reporting, even though they have been *legally required to report it since 2008*.

Overhead in railroads is massive, really massive, and one has to have huge economies of scale to even start to come close to covering it. And to swing back to the original topic, one way of getting economies of scale is to *run longer trains*.


----------



## daybeers (Sep 12, 2021)

29(11) has two sleepers, a Cross Country Cafe, coach/bag, and coach. No SSL. Knew that would happen, but the rest of the passengers didn't. I'll be calling Amtrak for at least a partial voucher, maybe I should tell my car too?

The CL is a great route that needs some schedule help, at least one more frequency, and a real baggage car that they spent so much on so they can have two or three coaches and at least three sleepers.


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 12, 2021)

neroden said:


> Sure, check anything which doesn't include "allocated costs".



Can you provide an actual link to a document that provides actual numbers?

I don't think you understand how money or profit works. 

How is Amtrak profitable when it sucks up billions of dollars from Congress, collects millions in fares, doesn't build new facilities and still loses money? Where is all that money going?



neroden said:


> They're marginal-cost profitable and even Amtrak has admitted this when pressed on it.



Please cite anything that says this. And by cite I mean provide a link to a document, page, testimony, financials, anything.

And even then, do you know what every "marginal-cost profitable" business that can't pay its overhead costs is? Unprofitable, if not broke.



neroden said:


> NO SINGLE TRAIN, including the Auto Train, can cover the overhead of running a passenger rail system by itself.



Actually, the AT is a great example of a train that has been profitable running completely independently. It has its own resources for everything. It was a perfectly designed business. 



neroden said:


> The only way to cover overhead is to have a *large system* so that you can have economies of scale. (This is also part of why all the freight railroads are trending towards giant monopolies.)



Amtrak is not Walmart. It's not a business selling discounted widgets with low margins that makes up for it in bulk.

Freight rail and passenger rail are also two completely different businesses. The economies of scale in freight railroads have to do with physics. You can ship bulk products and containers for pennies on the dollar across the continent compared with other methods of transport. It just takes a lot longer. 

The monopoly pressure on freight railroads has more to do with competition and access to networks. The economies of scale come into play with maintaining the rails themselves--something Amtrak doesn't do across it's LD network. 



neroden said:


> I know this is confusing to people who don't actually understand business, but you can have each individual product be profitable and have the business as a whole not be profitable due to not having enough economies of scale.



I know this is confusing to people who don't understand accounting, but gross profit (before fixed expenses) is not the same as net profit (after fixed expenses) and it really doesn't matter if you can't cover your fixed expenses.

If a single Starbucks doesn't cover it's expenses because it doesn't sell enough product, they close it. 

If a coffee shop loses money on every product it sells except for it's $100 single cup of Panamanian Geisha, and they sell enough of that single product to covers all the expenses and have profit left over--they stay open. 



neroden said:


> The fact is that each individual train is profitable and covers its own marginal costs (with a few exceptions, notably the Sunset Limited) but the overall business is not profitable.



The fact is Amtrak collects billions of dollars in subsidies and still loses money. 

The subsidies for the LD network cover more than half of all the costs of the LD network which is *far less resource intense* than the NEC, since Amtrak isn't running rails on the LD services and they're using far more outdated equipment that's essentially fully depreciated.

And nothing I'm going to say or cite will change your mind.


----------



## jis (Sep 12, 2021)

Oddly enough, though we (mostly rightly) dump on Amtrak about allocating costs, to some extent it is an unintended consequence of the Congress first requiring Amtrak to do overhead allocation on a per train basis and then not funding Amtrak enough so as to reduce the proportion that is accountd for as overhead. There is a lot in what Amtrak calls overhead that for example, no self respecting airline with a proper accounting system would call overhead. They are able to allocate at source rather than post facto as random proportions. It again has to do with the inadequacy of Amtrak's cost/expenditure tracking IT system and supporting infrastructure, something that we inevitably circle back to all the time.


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 12, 2021)

Cal said:


> I would think that all LD trains have the potential to make a profit.



The point of running the LD trains is not to make a profit and never has been. Amtrak was brought into existence by the US government to relieve railroads of their obligations to run these money-losing services.

To say the LD trains should be profitable is kind of like saying the Interstate Highway System or the United States Postal Service should run at a profit. Sure, both of these things could (and in certain situations have) run at a profit. However, trying to make these services run at a profit runs counter to why they exist in the first place: to _provide essential infrastructure on which the rest of the economy and country moves_.

Could the LD services be run better? Yes, absolutely. Frankly, it's amazing that they still have customers given how old the equipment is and how inconsistent the service is. 

The core problem behind everything in the LD network is how they're running basically the same product basically the same way as Amtrak inherited it in the 1970s. The LD network has been neglected and it shows in everything from the random crumbs you find underneath every seat in the sleepers to the surly way you're treated by every other on board staff member. Yet, we still ride the trains because in spite of Amtrak, we enjoy (or depend on) the experience.

The core reason we cannot run longer consists of LD trains is there simply isn't enough equipment in good operation to extend the consists.


----------



## Qapla (Sep 12, 2021)

It's interesting how many people complain about the subsidy Amtrak gets ... when, in reality, ALL businesses get subsidy. The road system at the Federal, State, County and City level is all maintained by tax dollars. If we did not have the road system we have, most stores and other businesses we have today would not have the customer base they have.

The difference is, since the "free use" of the road system is not labeled as a subsidy, people don't view it as such.

Had the term "subsidy" not been used - who knows, we may still have longer consists and better passenger service just like the massive and impressive Interstate Highway System that survives on subsidies - even they don't use that term for roads.


----------



## neroden (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Can you provide an actual link to a document that provides actual numbers?


I'm not doing your homework for you. They've been posted here in years past, but digging up documents which were posted years ago is a lot of work. Try searching the forum for Boardman's presentation on the avoidable-costs numbers.



> I don't think you understand how money or profit works.



That's a laugh. I'm a professional investor and I've made a lot of money because I understand how money and profit works. Don't ever try to invest until you get some humility and learn to listen to people who know what they're talking about.



> Please cite anything that says this. And by cite I mean provide a link to a document, page, testimony, financials, anything.


Amtrak has deleted most of its documents and reports from previous years, or I'd link you to them. You might find them by searching this forum.

Amtrak has also obstreporously refused to publish the FRA-required marginal cost data, but it has been back-estimated by a number of people over the years. The results are pretty consistent. You can find most of it at this forum if you search.



> And even then, do you know what every "marginal-cost profitable" business that can't pay its overhead costs is? Unprofitable, if not broke.



That's my entire point!

You don't seem to understand what you're saying.



> Actually, the AT is a great example of a train that has been profitable running completely independently.


False.


> It has its own resources for everything.


False.


> It was a perfectly designed business.


False. It went bankrupt, anyway. Look it up.



> Amtrak is not Walmart. It's not a business selling discounted widgets with low margins that makes up for it in bulk.



It's subtly different -- it depends on bulk ***far more*** than Walmart does -- but in terms of economies of scale, it is actually about the same. It's a capital-intensive infrastructure business and they're *all* like this. (Standing room on a train is perhaps the ultimate in discounted widgets, having no immediate marginal cost at all and being entirely a matter of volume sales. Seats on a train come close.)



> Freight rail and passenger rail are also two completely different businesses.


Not really, but I see that you don't understand why they're similar.



> The economies of scale in freight railroads have to do with physics. You can ship bulk products and containers for pennies on the dollar across the continent compared with other methods of transport. It just takes a lot longer.
> 
> The monopoly pressure on freight railroads has more to do with competition and access to networks. The economies of scale come into play with maintaining the rails themselves--something Amtrak doesn't do across it's LD network.



....you're starting to get it, maybe? First, do you realize that Amtrak actually is charged for the maintenance of the rails used by the trains on the LD network? That's a side note, anyway.

Second, more important, it's not just the rails which have economies of scale. It's also the freightyards -- the freight stations. There's a reason the railroads have consolidated them and run a smaller number of massive yards rather than lots and lots of little sidings like they used to.

And Amtrak, in a manner parallel to the upkeep of freight yards, pays for maintenance and upkeep and operations of passenger stations. About the same cost for a station if they're stopping one train a day at the station as if they're stopping 15 trains a day. (And yet these are still included as variable costs in most of the estimates of marginal profit for the trains.)

And the biggest economy of scale is the length of the trains. In both freight and passenger service. Running a train which is twice as long does NOT use twice as much fuel (it uses less), and does not use twice as many employees (it uses less) and does not double the maintenance costs (it's less locomotive maintenance). This is actually the core economy of scale in railroading.



> I know this is confusing to people who don't understand accounting, but gross profit (before fixed expenses) is not the same as net profit (after fixed expenses) and it really doesn't matter if you can't cover your fixed expenses.



You seem to be a confused person who doesn't understand how to use accounting for business and investing decisions, but my *entire point* is that gross profit is different from net profit. And it has *massively* different business decision results.

If you have a product which doesn't make a gross profit, your business decision should be either to raise the price, cut the costs, or shut it down, stop making it.

If you have a product which makes a gross profit but your overall business doesn't make a net profit, you would be an IDIOT if you stopped making the product. You should instead sell more product.

Do you see why the difference is critical for business decisions? That's my *entire point*. The Lake Shore Limited is a gross-profit train. That means that the *correct action* if you want to make more money is to *make more of it*. Add cars to it, make it longer, run more trains per day on the same route.



> If a single Starbucks doesn't cover it's expenses because it doesn't sell enough product, they close it.



You are still missing the point. Suppose a single Starbucks doesn't cover its expenses because it doesn't MANUFACTURE enough coffee. They only get enough coffee beans to make 15 cups of coffee a day. Let's say they make $5 profit on every cup of coffee, the customers are banging on the door, but nope, they can't pay the rent because *they aren't making enough coffee*.

Do you declare that the "cup of coffee is unprofitable"? Or do you realize that ****the cup of coffee is profitable and you need to order more beans****?

Because THAT is the situation Amtrak is in.

The Lake Shore Limited is one cup of coffee. It's a profitable cup of coffee. Amtrak is a Starbucks which isn't allowed to buy enough beans to sell more than 15 cups of coffee a day.

Now do you get it?

People are saying "Oh, the cup of coffee is unprofitable, let's close the Starbucks". That is a lie and that is nonsense. The Starbucks is only getting enough coffee beans to make 15 cups of coffee a day, and that's not enough to cover the rent, and *that* is the truth. They need to be making more coffee.

(Literally, the way Amtrak claims the LSL is unprofitable is the equivalent of taking the rent for the Starbucks location and dividing it amongst the 15 cups of coffee sold per day to claim that each cup of coffee is unprofitable. It is *nonsense*. And Amtrak is emphatically supply-limited, with trains selling out repeatedly at high prices -- so it is a matter of not having enough beans. It would be different if Amtrak were demand-limited and there just weren't enough people who wanted coffee, but *that is not the case*.)

Actually, thanks for the Starbucks analogy? This may help explain it to other people who are being really thick about this and don't understand why it's vital to look at the *marginal* profit of each product.


----------



## neroden (Sep 12, 2021)

jis said:


> Oddly enough, though we (mostly rightly) dump on Amtrak about allocating costs, to some extent it is an unintended consequence of the Congress first requiring Amtrak to do overhead allocation on a per train basis and then not funding Amtrak enough so as to reduce the proportion that is accountd for as overhead. There is a lot in what Amtrak calls overhead that for example, no self respecting airline with a proper accounting system would call overhead. They are able to allocate at source rather than post facto as random proportions. It again has to do with the inadequacy of Amtrak's cost/expenditure tracking IT system and supporting infrastructure, something that we inevitably circle back to all the time.



Congress requiring Amtrak to do "allocated costs" was indeed a gross mistake. However, Congress then required Amtrak to report "avoidable costs" (marginal costs) too... and Amtrak just broke the law. There's a blank space in the FRA reports for the avoidable costs, saying "coming soon", and there has been for *13 years*.

I question why Amtrak's management went along with the edict of one Congress which wanted "fully allocated costs" and then refused to follow the edict of a later, smarter Congress when it (correctly) wanted "avoidable costs".

There is also, as you note, a surprising amount which really isn't overhead which Amtrak can't track properly at all and is just GUESSING on, including car maintenance costs. Most of the attempts to estimate marginal profit per route just accept Amtrak's guesses on those.

The states who fund state-supported routes got so annoyed by Amtrak's wild guesswork on car maintenance costs that most of them bought their own cars and got separate maintenance contracts for them.


----------



## MARC Rider (Sep 12, 2021)

As I have mentioned before, the term "profitable" is so slippery, it's almost meaningless. I again recommend that folks google "Hollywood accounting." The example I read about was that the film _Return of the Jedi_ did not make a profit. For some reason that didn't seem to stop investors from pouring lots of money into making three "prequels" and three sequels expanding the storyline. 

It seems to me that government spending on passenger rail can provide a lot of financial benefits to the country that don't show up on the Amtrak balance sheets. It may even provide the benefits more efficiently than government spending on other forms of transportation. Expanding the passenger rail system helps enable the expansion of dense walkable cities and towns, something essential if we are going to deal with climate change. True, most of the benefits will come from shorter corridor service and commuter rail, but the long-distance trains play a role, too. 

By the way, this nice little nugget from the Congressional Budget office:

Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956 to 2017 (cbo.gov) 

In 2017, public spending on Highways was $177 billion, mass transit was $70 billion, and rail was $5 billion. There probably hasn't been a whole lot of relative change over the past 4 years. Obviously, these proportions need to change whatever the status of Amtrak "profitability.".


----------



## Tlcooper93 (Sep 12, 2021)

Qapla said:


> It's interesting how many people complain about the subsidy Amtrak gets ... when, in reality, ALL businesses get subsidy. The road system at the Federal, State, County and City level is all maintained by tax dollars. If we did not have the road system we have, most stores and other businesses we have today would not have the customer base they have.
> 
> The difference is, since the "free use" of the road system is not labeled as a subsidy, people don't view it as such.
> 
> Had the term "subsidy" not been used - who knows, we may still have longer consists and better passenger service just like the massive and impressive Interstate Highway System that survives on subsidies - even they don't use that term for roads.



Definitely agree with this.
Nobody complains about the billions that go towards other forms of travel. Somehow, the government “picked” road and air over rail, yet people complain about a measly 1.5 billion a year or so that goes towards Amtrak. The interstate highway systems gets close to 100 times that.

there’s a lot of smear that’s directed towards rail, as well as a general belief that rail is an outdated form of transportation. The word boondoggle gets used with rail more than anything else. No one ever called any airport project a boondoggle.

Before I became more knowledgeable about this stuff, my dad always would say that trains are outdated 100 year old tech, and we should replace all Acelas with high speed buses (I know, pretty silly). Now I think he sees how that’s wrong, but he certainly wasn’t alone. The Randall Otoole camp is quite big.
This is pretty off topic. Sorry.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> The core reason we cannot run longer consists of LD trains is there simply isn't enough equipment in good operation to extend the consists.


Well, the consists were longer in daily operation in early 2020 prior to the pandemic. The Builder had two Seattle coaches, almost every Superliner train ran a transdorm year round, the exception to my certain knowledge being the Baby Builder between Spokane and Portland. The Capitol and Eagle had SSLs.

There was sufficient equipment just before COVID, there isn't now. And they are doing things like withdrawing the transdorm from the Starlight after the summer after _having sold space in it_.

So, if equipment shortage is the "core reason" what happened to the equipment over the last 18 months? Did it die of COVID?


----------



## neroden (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> The point of running the LD trains is not to make a profit and never has been. Amtrak was brought into existence by the US government to relieve railroads of their obligations to run these money-losing services.



And they're mostly money-making at this point.

This actually shouldn't be surprising, given the history. During the 1950s, when passenger trains were *far* less popular than they are now, the private railroads petitioned to get rid of one passenger train at a time, starting with the lowest-marginal-profit / highest-marginal-loss trains.

By the time Amtrak was formed, the survivors were the individual trains which were stubbornly continuing to make gross profits. Because that was ICC practice regarding what they permitted to be discontinued -- they allowed trains with gross losses to be discontinued, but not trains with gross profits. (Those gross profits were typically not enough to cover the overhead of having an entire infrastructure for passenger service -- stations, commissaries, maintenance bases, etc. etc. -- so many of the private railroads attempted to drive away customers to convince the ICC to let them discontinue them.) Amtrak chopped half of those gross-profit trains and kept the best performers. Then demand for passenger train service skyrocketed in the intervening 50 years, *and* rates were deregulated.

So of *course* routes like NYC-Chicago and NYC-Miami are making gross profits now.



> To say the LD trains should be profitable is kind of like saying the Interstate Highway System or the United States Postal Service should run at a profit. Sure, both of these things could (and in certain situations have) run at a profit. However, trying to make these services run at a profit runs counter to why they exist in the first place: to _provide essential infrastructure on which the rest of the economy and country moves_.



I agree entirely. I don't think they should need to be profitable.

But I do think that claiming that they're losing money when, in fact, *they aren't* is incredibly misleading and leads to a "cutbacks" attitude from Congress when what's needed is an "economies of scale expansion" attitude.

(We have actually in the past seen similar problems in the Post Office, where there have in the past been pushes to shut down local post offices based on totally bogus "allocated cost" calculations. These are situations where the local post office actually makes a marginal profit -- the customers who use it instead of UPS or FedEx because it exists produce revenue exceeding the marginal cost of keeping it open -- and closing it will increase the need for Congressional subsidy. But using "allocated costs" the hatchetmen claimed that it was "money losing".)

The net cost to Congress of having all 15 long-distance trains -- as opposed to just having the NEC -- is under $30 million/year at this point, the bulk of which is the Sunset Limited (probably because it's tri-weekly, with lots of failures of economies of scale, and people unwilling to pay much for such inconvenient scheduling). I worked this out back in 2017 based on data primarily from Boardman's 2013 chart and the next 4 years of Amtrak financial reports (all disappeared from the web now, obviously).

It turns out it costs a billion dollars a year to keep the lights on at Amtrak, basically. They "allocate" half of this to the long-distance trains. If they discontinued the long-distance trains they'd just have to reallocate that $500 million to the NEC and Congress would keep paying for it. If they discontinued everything but the Auto Train, I suppose they might allocate all $500 million to the Auto Train, and it would then look very unprofitable.

Running an extra train on a route which already has stations is usually a positive-margin action -- profitable. If it costs a billion dollars a year to keep the lights on, but running extra trains on the same route actually makes a small marginal profit -- obviously we should run more trains on the same route, right? This is a message I've been trying to get through the heads of Congress.

But it seems very difficult. Because they don't understand the difference between fixed costs and variable costs, they say "Oh, the Starbucks is not profitable, that means if they sold more coffee they would be even less profitable", which is just wrong!


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 12, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> So, if equipment shortage is the "core reason" what happened to the equipment over the last 18 months? Did it die of COVID?



First: Specific decisions on consists is subject to all sorts of weird irrational decision-making.

That being said, dying of COVID actually isn't terribly off-point. Once you mothball old transportation equipment, putting it back into service is difficult. They had a lot of problems with the vacuum sewage systems on the Superliners before COVID and that seems to have become much worse after pulling them back from COVID. There aren't that many techs who know how to patch up that system and a lot of them retired during COVID. You're not going to put a car whose toilets don't work back into service. 

The other issue beyond the vacuum systems is that they're pulling a lot of Superliners out of service for their interior refresh.

The final thing is that equipment juggling isn't being done with much consideration for anything beyond the needs of the yard or what they think they can get away with. It's also unfortunate that demand for sleepers seems to be at an all-time high due to the pandemic.

All the Superliner I fleet should have been replaced by now...but the planned replacement ended up getting cancelled and we're now limping along with equipment well past its end of life.


----------



## frequentflyer (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> First: Specific decisions on consists is subject to all sorts of weird irrational decision-making.
> 
> That being said, dying of COVID actually isn't terribly off-point. Once you mothball old transportation equipment, putting it back into service is difficult. They had a lot of problems with the vacuum sewage systems on the Superliners before COVID and that seems to have become much worse after pulling them back from COVID. There aren't that many techs who know how to patch up that system and a lot of them retired during COVID. You're not going to put a car whose toilets don't work back into service.
> 
> ...



A testament to the workers of Pullman on how well they built their last product.


----------



## neroden (Sep 12, 2021)

I will add that I heard rumors from some people who were involved in Congressional activity back in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s with respect to Amtrak -- what they said was that they engaged in this allocation because they were afraid that the NEC would get defunded, but they knew the long-distance trains wouldn't -- because of the then-current situation in the Senate -- so they shoved the allocated costs onto the long-distance trains to make the flyover-state Senators say that the funding was going to support "their" trains so that they could claim to their constituents that they weren't subsidizing the dreaded "East Coast elite" trains. (Of course, if those same Senators defunded the "East Coast elite" trains, they'd end up losing their own trains too, but that's not how they saw it at the time.)

This is not the current Congressional politics and I think this fiction doesn't make sense any more. Also I'm not sure whether I can trust those sources to have described the politics of the time correctly.

Bottom line is that it costs a billion dollars a year to keep the lights on at Amtrak, and once you've got the whole operation going, running more trains on the same routes tends to actually save money for Congress. Nowadays the number of Congressmen who want to zero out Amtrak completely is small and shrinking.

Among those Congressmembers who agree that Amtrak should exist *at all*, I think it would help if they had a better appreciation of the fact that adding additional trains ranges from costing a trivial amount to actually saving Congress money; they tend to think it will cost Lots and Lots to add an additional train and it's just not true. That's why I want them to understand the marginal profit status of the trains rather than looking at inflated allocated costs.

(That said, Amtrak actually needs a bundle more money to fix some of its "overhead" problems. Like the current deficient state of the IT systems. It may really cost more than a billion a year to keep the lights on *properly*.)


----------



## Qapla (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> They had a lot of problems with the vacuum sewage systems on the Superliners before COVID and that seems to have become much worse after pulling them back from COVID. There aren't that many techs who know how to patch up that system and a lot of them retired during COVID. You're not going to put a car whose toilets don't work back into service.
> 
> The other issue beyond the vacuum systems is that they're pulling a lot of Superliners out of service for their interior refresh.



How does that explain the shortened consists of the Silvers that travel between two very well traveled terminuses and use Viewliners?


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> First: Specific decisions on consists is subject to all sorts of weird irrational decision-making.
> 
> That being said, dying of COVID actually isn't terribly off-point. Once you mothball old transportation equipment, putting it back into service is difficult. They had a lot of problems with the vacuum sewage systems on the Superliners before COVID and that seems to have become much worse after pulling them back from COVID. There aren't that many techs who know how to patch up that system and a lot of them retired during COVID. You're not going to put a car whose toilets don't work back into service.
> 
> ...


All this points to a _massive_ management failure.
1. Insufficient cross training on critical systems (vacuum toilets). "Loss of trained staff" is an excuse for poor planning by management.
2. Not maintaining temporarily sidelined equipment or rotating it into service under the triweekly schedule to maintain roadworthiness. Unless, of course, management intended the reductions to be permanent under the principle of "never let a crisis go to waste" but got their bluff called by Congress.
3. Until this year, I had never heard of Amtrak scheduling withdrawal of equipment in which accommodations had been sold when passengers could not be reaccommodated in like accommodations in the remaining equipment. That is new. I am talking about scheduled withdrawals, not last minute bad ordering a car.

As time goes by with these short consists for daily service, it is harder and harder to avoid subscribing to the "conspiracy theory" that Amtrak is trying to undermine current long distance services while technically adhering to the letter of Congress' mandate for daily service.


----------



## neroden (Sep 12, 2021)

While I always try to apply Hanlon's Razor -- assume incompetence rather than malice -- (and boy, Amtrak does have a history of incompetence in several specific areas) -- there are times when I can't attribute it to anything *but* malice, including the wilful refusal to publish avoidable costs required by Congress. (Amtrak Management is apparently making a frivolous claim that the law, which is *still in force and part of the US Code*, somehow doesn't apply any more.)

I'm not the only one thinking frequently, in multiple contexts, about whether we're looking at good-faith actions or subversive dishonesty. Jim Mathews at RPA was thinking about this a month ago:









Motives Matter: A Meditation On ‘Good Faith’ | Rail Passengers Association | Washington, DC







www.railpassengers.org


----------



## Cal (Sep 12, 2021)

Qapla said:


> How does that explain the shortened consists of the Silvers that travel between two very well traveled terminuses and use Viewliners?


Well I believe some of the Illinois services are using Amfleet II's for whatever reason (can anyone back this up?), which takes away from the coaches available for Eastern trains. I believe most of the [eastern] trains are running with a normal amount of sleepers, maybe one less.


----------



## jis (Sep 12, 2021)

So far I have heard a few reports of the Crescent running with one less Sleeper. AFAIK the Silvers and LSL are running with full complement of Sleepers but are short one or two Coaches. And of course the Cardinal does still have its single ,lonesome Sleeper.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 12, 2021)

Current motto:
"Amtrak! We Can't Even Keep the Toilets Working!"


----------



## Cal (Sep 12, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Current motto:
> "Amtrak! We Can't Even Keep the Toilets Working!"


I think that 
"Amtrak! We promise to mess up your trip one way or another!" 

would be better.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 12, 2021)

Or with a more serious tone:

"Our Amtrak Promise:

We'll f*ck something up. Your reservation, your connection, even your toilet."

There's Something About a Train That's Magic!*
*magical services provided by Voldemort


----------



## Nick Farr (Sep 12, 2021)

neroden said:


> I'm not the only one thinking frequently, in multiple contexts, about whether we're looking at good-faith actions or subversive dishonesty. Jim Mathews at RPA was thinking about this a month ago:



Jim Mathews was talking about Freight Railroads, who have a clear motive to lie and have been proven doing so in a slew of operational contexts. They have actively lobbied against enforcement of the law regarding on-time performance.

There's no proof that Amtrak has any clear motive other than its continued existence. Even that is a rebuttable presumption, given how often they work at cross-purposes.

Neglect of LD rail is...well, neglect. Neglect rarely has a clear motive.


----------



## jis (Sep 12, 2021)

Nick Farr said:


> Neglect of LD rail is...well, neglect. Neglect rarely has a clear motive.


Unless certain religious or socio-cultural imperatives are involved of course


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Sep 12, 2021)

We can debate and bash each other endlessly on here. The fact of the matter is Amtrak management sucks. Whether it’s for incompetence, nefarious motives, or just not being savvy enough to deal with the hand they've been given, they need to be replaced. The time for benefit of the doubt has long since passed.


----------



## Qapla (Sep 12, 2021)

A typical _Silver _consist as of June 2021 is:


1 ACS-64 engine (New York–Washington)
2 P42DC engines (Washington–Miami)
2-4 Amfleet II coaches
Amfleet II Cafe
1 Viewliner Diner
2-3 Viewliner sleepers
Viewliner Baggage car

This is a far cry from the 17 cars that used to make up the Silvers in times past. Before C-19 the trains ran with the longer consist more often than it does today - now they opt for the shorter consist.

The thing is, they could most likely fill a train twice the length of the current consist on this route.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 12, 2021)

I just can't help but think Amtrak management longstanding focus on costs and history ignoring revenue enhancement possibilities is at play here.


----------



## MARC Rider (Sep 12, 2021)

Qapla said:


> A typical _Silver _consist as of June 2021 is:
> 
> 
> 1 ACS-64 engine (New York–Washington)
> ...


That's a 7 - 10 car train. The typical Silver consist I remember seeing through my years of commuting about the same time the Silver Meteor comes through Baltimore southbound was about 10 cars. So a 7 car train (2 coaches and 2 sleepers) is a bit shorter than usual, but it is an improvement over versions of the Capitol Limited and Crescent that I rode last June that also had only 2 coaches and 2 sleepers, which had a combined lounge/diner "food service car."


----------



## John819 (Sep 12, 2021)

I expect that the Silvers may get more equipment when the Viewliner I renovations (superficial or more) get done. The same is true for the Superliners. But I wouldn't expect to see cars added until some time in 2022, probably around March.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51 (Sep 12, 2021)

John819 said:


> I expect that the Silvers may get more equipment when the Viewliner I renovations (superficial or more) get done. The same is true for the Superliners. But I wouldn't expect to see cars added until some time in 2022, probably around March.



Other than the Viewliner equipment that was involved in a crash, which may or may not be rebuilt. What renovations are you referring to?


----------



## me_little_me (Sep 13, 2021)

Amtrakfflyer said:


> We can debate and bash each other endlessly on here. The fact of the matter is Amtrak management sucks. Whether it’s for incompetence, nefarious motives, or just not being savvy enough to deal with the hand they've been given, they need to be replaced. The time for benefit of the doubt has long since passed.


What I've been saying for years.


----------



## John819 (Sep 13, 2021)

The Viewliner I's are getting new upholstery, carpeting, etc., and perhaps some long-needed plumbing repairs.


----------



## frequentflyer (Sep 13, 2021)

So why are Amfleet II coaches on midwest local trains and not on the LDs trains in the East? What happened to the Horizon cars? Finally gave out?


----------



## Just-Thinking-51 (Sep 13, 2021)

Horizon are on the Talgo routes after Washington State had a bad accident, and refused to use the Amtrak own equipment. Amtrak pledge to deploy them there.

The delays in equipment from suppliers are causing intriguing deployments. Or go with the conspiracy theory on this one.


----------



## Larry H. (Sep 13, 2021)

The discussion about how the old railroads tried to discourage passengers and also make the trains look like losers is something I ran into several times. The most interesting scheme was I think the Great Northern running the Empire Builder and claiming loses and low demand. We had taken a trip to Canada, and then the Canadian National to Vancouver. Instead of returning the same route we decided to drop down to the states and take the Empire Builder. When the agent in Canada called down for a reservation of a sleeping space he was told it sold out. He tired for a couple hours to get us a room and finally said, take the train from here to Washington State and you can get off at a stop it comes too after leaving Seatle ( I forget the name). He told us to tell the conductor we wanted a room and he was pretty sure they would have one. We waited and when the train pulled in it had five pullman cars.. As we were told the Conductor sold us a room.. When we boarded we discovered that almost no one was in the sleepers. We met a woman in the lounge and we were saying how we were told the train was sold out. She turned out to be the wife of the Treasure for the Great Northern. She told us how they were playing games with the ridership. She said they called a couple months out to be sure to get a room. They were told however you couldn't book a reservation until 30 days out. When the 30 days came she called back for a room and was told it was now sold out! So they were running nearly empty passenger cars although there was a demand but simply wanted out of the passenger business. On that trip the signs were put up in the cars notifying the public that in 30 days the train would be no longer run by them, but by the United States Government.


----------



## Larry H. (Sep 13, 2021)

The Superliners toilet issue has been going on for a very long time, yet evidently its not be fixed? When we returned home from California, Los Angels, the Southwest Chief toilet in our car quit flushing. Once in a while the Conductor would go downstairs and make some adjustment that let them work a time or two a day. My moms Bedroom never had a working toilet after the first day out. We were told by the attendant that in order to save money when they upgraded the cars they went from two vacuum's to one that made the toilets work. They were especially prone to stopping in higher altitudes. We wrote and complained about it when we got home and they gave us a voucher for 1,000 toward another trip. By now that trip would have been probably 8 years of so back.. Funny that knowing what the issue is they have not bothered to fix it?


----------



## Railspike (Sep 13, 2021)

Noticed the SWC (#3) has a Transition Sleeper behind the engine today but the baggage car was still on the rear. ???? Go figure.


----------



## Cal (Sep 13, 2021)

Railspike said:


> Noticed the SWC (#3) has a Transition Sleeper behind the engine today but the baggage car was still on the rear. ???? Go figure.


Deadhead?


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 13, 2021)

Railspike said:


> Noticed the SWC (#3) has a Transition Sleeper behind the engine today but the baggage car was still on the rear. ???? Go figure.


Forget it, Jake, it's Amtrak.


----------



## The Commissioner (Sep 13, 2021)

Mr. Selden wrote:

_The marshalling order of the train reflects a subtle but calculated effort to run off the highest-revenue passengers. The Chief carries its sleepers at the front of the train, coupled directly to the locomotives, and trails a new CAF-built baggage car at the rear. This arrangement guarantees that sleeping car passengers will get to hear the engine’s horn all night at very close range, and that diesel exhaust fumes will enter the lead sleeper. That is a “never again” experience for many customers._

His conclusion that listening to the locomotive horn all night for sleeping car passengers is a "never again experience" tracks (no pun intended) with my avoidance of shelling out big bucks for another overnight trip on Amtrak when the sleepers are coupled to the head end. My last round trip was on the CONO in the car next to the locomotive. Even with ear plugs the noise was unbearable. The fact that Amtrak puts the highest priced accommodations in the noisiest place on the train is beyond explanation. I am not sure that Amtrak is trying to "sabotage' their long distance service but when they make the high paying customers miserable then they are definitely sabotaging their value proposition.


----------



## Oreius (Sep 13, 2021)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Horizon are on the Talgo routes after Washington State had a bad accident, and refused to use the Amtrak own equipment. Amtrak pledge to deploy them there.



When I was scouting Seattle Station today, I saw a Cascades train with Horizon cars. It had a Cascades F40PH hauling it. I thought it was weird, since the Cascades operate as Talgo train sets..


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 13, 2021)

Oreius said:


> When I was scouting Seattle Station today, I saw a Cascades train with Horizon cars. It had a Cascades F40PH hauling it. I thought it was weird, since the Cascades operate as Talgo train sets..


Not any more.

The Talgo 6s that Washington and Amtrak owned were retired a couple of years ago. That was in response to the NTSB recommendations after the Nisqually wreck since the 6s were operating a under an FRA waiver because they were not FRA compliant.

The Talgo 6s were sold for scrap and were scrapped some time ago.

The only remaining Talgos are the two FRA compliant Talgo 8 sets bought by Oregon, which are not enough to cover the service. Horizons are the normal, regularly assigned equipment on the Cascades now and have been for awhile until the Siemens Venture cars arrive that Washington ordered for Cascades service.

Do not expect to see another Talgo order for the Cascades. Aside from the economics of scale achieved in using the new standard Amtrak corridor cars there is very bad blood between WashDOT and Talgo. WashDOT won't have anything to do with them anymore.


----------



## Cal (Sep 13, 2021)

The Commissioner said:


> The fact that Amtrak puts the highest priced accommodations in the noisiest place on the train is beyond explanation


Beyond explanation? There's a fairly simply explanation. They usually run the baggage car in front, and when they do it makes sense to put the transdorm right behind it so they can access it while moving. And it gives staff the spot closest to the engine so they, who are probably used to the noise, can deal with it. Now when they are running without transdorms and baggage cars, they didn't just want to switch the consist on half their trains (although probably wouldn't be the worst idea) and so they stuck with it.


----------



## Cal (Sep 13, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Not any more.
> 
> The Talgo 6s that Washington and Amtrak owned were retired a couple of years ago. That was in response to the NTSB recommendations after the Nisqually wreck since the 6s were operating a under an FRA waiver because they were not FRA compliant.
> 
> ...


Why did that wreck push them to retire the 6s? And what happened between WashDOT and Talgo?


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 13, 2021)

Cal said:


> Why did that wreck push them to retire the 6s? And what happened between WashDOT and Talgo?


The 6s did not meet FRA requirements on wheelset retention. They were operating under an FRA waiver and the waiver required use of nylon strapping to improve retention. The concern was that the wheelsets would come loose during a "high energy event" (translation: bad crash).

And some did break free in the Nisqually wreck. One of them nailed a car on I 5, IIRC.

NTSB investigation showed that the straps had never been inspected or replaced after initial installation. Testing showed they were only at 50% strength.

As part of their final report recommendations, the NTSB recommended immediate retirement of the Talgo 6s, due to that. It was found that the wheelsets coming loose directly contributed to the injuries and loss of life from the accident.

Washington DOT stated that they intended to follow the recommendations as quickly as they could. The service cutback caused by the pandemic allowed them to follow through on it.

As far as the bad blood goes, that was largely around the maintainence contracts that Talgo required. It boosted costs and Talgo was adamant about them. The wreck and the NTSB report did not help anything, but the issues between them were already there. Their immobility on the maintenance issue pretty much wound up costing them their North American market entirely.


----------



## Cal (Sep 14, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> The 6s did not meet FRA requirements on wheelset retention. They were operating under an FRA waiver and the waiver required use of nylon strapping to improve retention. The concern was that the wheelsets would come loose during a "high energy event" (translation: bad crash).
> 
> And some did break free in the Nisqually wreck. One of them nailed a car on I 5, IIRC.
> 
> ...


Thanks, quick and easy explanation.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 14, 2021)

Larry H. said:


> The discussion about how the old railroads tried to discourage passengers and also make the trains look like losers is something I ran into several times. The most interesting scheme was I think the Great Northern running the Empire Builder and claiming loses and low demand. We had taken a trip to Canada, and then the Canadian National to Vancouver. Instead of returning the same route we decided to drop down to the states and take the Empire Builder. When the agent in Canada called down for a reservation of a sleeping space he was told it sold out. He tired for a couple hours to get us a room and finally said, take the train from here to Washington State and you can get off at a stop it comes too after leaving Seatle ( I forget the name). He told us to tell the conductor we wanted a room and he was pretty sure they would have one. We waited and when the train pulled in it had five pullman cars.. As we were told the Conductor sold us a room.. When we boarded we discovered that almost no one was in the sleepers. We met a woman in the lounge and we were saying how we were told the train was sold out. She turned out to be the wife of the Treasure for the Great Northern. She told us how they were playing games with the ridership. She said they called a couple months out to be sure to get a room. They were told however you couldn't book a reservation until 30 days out. When the 30 days came she called back for a room and was told it was now sold out! So they were running nearly empty passenger cars although there was a demand but simply wanted out of the passenger business. On that trip the signs were put up in the cars notifying the public that in 30 days the train would be no longer run by them, but by the United States Government.


That sounds like an Espee move. I know Espee pulled crap like that, I thought GN had more class.

Santa Fe and UP never pulled those stunts.

BTW, if there was a notice that the "US government" was going to run the trains, that sounds like it is a dim memory of a notice for the start of Amtrak on 5/1/71. If that is the case, it was a Burlington Northern operation by 1971, not GN.


----------



## ShiningTimeStL (Sep 14, 2021)

So I'm hearing the CL has actually gained a sleeper? Well, that's an improvement.


----------



## jis (Sep 14, 2021)

I wonder what the conspiracy is this time


----------



## me_little_me (Sep 14, 2021)

Cal said:


> Beyond explanation? There's a fairly simply explanation. They usually run the baggage car in front, and when they do it makes sense to put the transdorm right behind it so they can access it while moving. And it gives staff the spot closest to the engine so they, who are probably used to the noise, can deal with it. Now when they are running without transdorms and baggage cars, they didn't just want to switch the consist on half their trains (although probably wouldn't be the worst idea) and so they stuck with it.



So the real explanation is much simpler:

"We at Amtrak care so little about our customers that we will avoid doing something different for the benefit of our best ones, much less the rest of them"


----------



## ShiningTimeStL (Sep 14, 2021)

Or not, I thought the CL went from four to give cars, seems it had five this whole time.

I read through this whole thing and it sounds like the equipment situation across the entire system is practically a disaster, and yet, Amtrak decides to take the time to refurbish the _entire_ superliner fleet. My guess is that they're doing necessary maintenance simultaneously with the interior refresh. Who knows, maybe all of this will have been worth it when we receive refreshed cars with regularly working plumbing and electricity. If there's a conspiracy against LD service, why bring back traditional dining and why go through all the effort for the interior refresh? And not just on the CZ and EB, but on the whole fleet! 

I'm gonna go with what others here have suggested that we could see traditional dining return to the Eagle soon, and more cars added to consists by next spring and summer. I was thinking that too.


----------



## Cal (Sep 14, 2021)

If anyone wanted proof, yesterdays 14 confirms it. No transdorm


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 15, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> That sounds like an Espee move. I know Espee pulled crap like that, I thought GN had more class.
> 
> Santa Fe and UP never pulled those stunts.
> 
> BTW, if there was a notice that the "US government" was going to run the trains, that sounds like it is a dim memory of a notice for the start of Amtrak on 5/1/71. If that is the case, it was a Burlington Northern operation by 1971, not GN.



From the information provided in the original post, the BN merger had already taken place and Louis Menk -- a known passenger opponent -- was in charge of the merged company. If he had more time prior to the introduction of Amtrak he might have been able to do more damage, To the end, GN provided good service.

In Portland from the mid-1960's we could see the whole panorama:

SP = loathed passengers, customers were made aware of it.
UP = didn't innovate, scaled back advertising, provided good service to those who found them. Didn't permit excursions on branch lines.
NP = welcomed passengers, did some innovations. No problem booking excursions.
GN = welcomed passengers, did some innovations.
SP&S = welcomed passengers, no problem booking excursions. Joined with NP in promotions.

The interesting thing is that in this era the Northern lines were able to discontinue trains more easily than the UP or SP. And they paid dividends.


----------



## desertflyer (Sep 15, 2021)

Cal said:


> If anyone wanted proof, yesterdays 14 confirms it. No transdorm



The CS hasn't been running a transdorm or baggage since 9/10, apparently not coming back until sometime in November. Who knows why. It doesn't stop them from charging $20 to check a bike that is going to fall all over the place in the coach baggage, which lacks any sort of bike rack/straps.



Here was train 11 in SLO on 9/10. At least they put the cover on the door to reduce diesel fumes (engine 23 is very smoky).


----------



## west point (Sep 15, 2021)

I may be wrong but didn't BN actually cancel trains enroute at next stop or crew change locations after midnight on Amtrak day ?


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 15, 2021)

west point said:


> I may be wrong but didn't BN actually canceled LD trains enroute at next stop after midnight on Amtrak day ?


No, all enroute trains proceeded to their destinations, the last arriving on May 2, 1971.

You may be confusing it with a rather famous incident a few years earlier on the Burlington (I think), when a local train was up for discontinuance and was stopped right after it got approval. What the railroad was unaware of was that they had stranded a Congressman on a fishing trip. They were quickly made aware.


----------



## Willbridge (Sep 16, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> No, all enroute trains proceeded to their destinations, the last arriving on May 2, 1971.
> 
> You may be confusing it with a rather famous incident a few years earlier on the Burlington (I think), when a local train was up for discontinuance and was stopped right after it got approval. What the railroad was unaware of was that they had stranded a Congressman on a fishing trip. They were quickly made aware.


I believe the ill-fated train was the Kansas City - Alliance - Billings service, once known as the _Adventureland. _It was discontinued in 1969.


----------



## zephyr17 (Sep 16, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> I believe the ill-fated train was the Kansas City - Alliance - Billings service, once known as the _Adventureland. _It was discontinued in 1969.


That sounds like the right area.


----------



## Oreius (Oct 7, 2021)

As I said on another post, I just recently completed a ride on the Silver Star from Philadelphia to Florida. The train was very short for a long-distance, having 2 Amfleet II coaches, 1 lounge, 1VL2 Diner (used for the sleepers) 2 sleepers, and a baggage car as the “caboose.”

I rode the Starlight in mid-September. It only had 7 cars—2 sleepers, 1 diner, 1 dedicated business class coach, SSL and 2 coaches. The last coach was a baggage coach.

I saw the Texas Eagle when I was in Dallas back in May. It only had 5 cars: 1 coach, 1 baggage-coach, 1 CCC, and 2 sleepers!!

This, I’m sure, has been discussed in previous posts. Why the stubby long-distance trains? The Silvers had 6 coaches, lounge, diner, 3 sleepers, and a baggage when I rode back in February. I know Covid-19 was more of an issue in February and so they wanted to keep people spread out. The Star and Meteor shared the same consist; one ran 4X/week, the other the remaining 3X.

My SCA, David, on 91 told me that Amtrak is facing equipment/crew shortages, but that they’re actively hiring and training new Crew. I don’t know what to think..

Are there any other routes that have shorter consists, such as The Crescent, Cardinal, and Southwest Chief?


----------



## zephyr17 (Oct 7, 2021)

Every train seems to have a shorter consist.

The Empire Builder typically had 2 Seattle sleepers most of the year and always had 2 Seattle coaches. Now it is back to 1 Seattle sleeper after having a second over the summer, and never got its second Seattle coach after going back to daily. The Starlight was pretty close to a normal consist. The off season Starlight was usually a baggage, transdorm, two sleepers, diner, business class coach, Sightseer, two coaches. The peak season consists (summer and holidays) usually had a third sleeper and third coach.

There are a couple of theories that have been bandied about, but nobody really knows. Basically those theories are based either on Amtrak's management being merely incompetent or Amtrak management being hostile to long distance services, but unable to be as overt as they had been under Anderson due to the current attitude of Congress.

The OBS labor shortage I think most people acknowledge to be genuine and not entirely the fault of management, aside from letting the food service people go, because "Flex Dining" was going to be a big hit, and maintaining a crummy workplace culture that people may not have wanted to return to. People that were furloughed from Amtrak during the service cutbacks just got other jobs and aren't coming back. But the food service people weren't just furloughed back east, their positions were abolished.

Amtrak's incompetence: Equipment shortage due to not maintaining it or inspecting it during the triweekly period. Now they have a backlog of maintenance and just don't have the fleet to run full consists. The fleet was always just barely adequate to meet the schedules anyway, when routine inspections and maintenance were factored in, with little in the way of protection equipment.

Amtrak hostility to long distance services: While the maintenance backlog may well be real, Amtrak wants to depress ridership numbers so they can show justification for discontinuing long distance services when they get a more amenable Congress. The continued presence of Gardner, now COO, who has always been hostile to long distance services, is viewed as an indicator, despite Flynn's better PR skills than Anderson. Suspicion is they are executing a Ben Biaggini strategy of deliberating suppressing patronage to better support discontinuation of services they don't want to provide.

Personally, I believe it is a little of both. Amtrak's management has proven itself spectacularly incompetent in a number of areas, some not relating to railroad operations at all, such as their woeful IT operation. I do believe there remains quite a bit of hostility to long distance services in their C Suite and upper management levels, so they are not going out of their way to get the equipment back in service and get operations ramped up. Finally, there is the long standing attitude of Amtrak management generally where cost containment is the ultimate goal and they are largely blind to revenue enhancement opportunities and even blind to lost revenue as long as costs are cut. My own, very personal and not particularly well grounded, take is the current situation is maybe due to about 70% incompetence and 30% malevolence.


----------



## GaSteve (Oct 7, 2021)

The Crescent #19 and #20 were seen very recently with three coaches.


----------



## edolan (Oct 7, 2021)

Currently with 2 VLIIs on the Meteor, 1 VLII on the Star, and 1 VLII on the LSL — if my math is right there should be 15 VLIIs in use at any time (Amtrak has 25). Keeping 6 of them in reserves at sunny side i think amtrak could easily put one VLII on each crescent set... maybe im wrong... thoughts???


----------



## jis (Oct 7, 2021)

edolan said:


> Currently with 2 VLIIs on the Meteor, 1 VLII on the Star, and 1 VLII on the LSL — if my math is right there should be 15 VLIIs in use at any time (Amtrak has 25). Keeping 6 of them in reserves at sunny side i think amtrak could easily put one VLII on each crescent set... maybe im wrong... thoughts???


Yes at least in theory they could put 1 VLII on the Crescent.

Sunnyside typically may keep one or two reserve. The rest would most likely be in Hialeah for periodic service and certification and such. I doubt they will keep any reserve VLII in Chicago or such.

Actually we don;t know for sure how many serviceable VLIIs are available each day on an ongoing basis. They have been having some significant teething troubles including with Air conditioners and the toilet systems.


----------



## frequentflyer (Oct 7, 2021)

Today's Texas Eagle arriving into CUS has only three cars...................Yes three Superliner cars. The fiscal numbers are going to be brutal for this train.


----------



## desertflyer (Oct 7, 2021)

desertflyer said:


> The CS hasn't been running a transdorm or baggage since 9/10, apparently not coming back until sometime in November. Who knows why.



The CS has been running for at least the last week with a Viewliner baggage at the rear of the train. Still no transdorm from what I can tell. Typical Amtrak oddities.


----------



## Oreius (Oct 7, 2021)

I walked through the 2nd Coach when the “All Aboard” call was given at DC. There were about 6 people waiting in the vestibule, because it seemed no one was willing to give up their “sacred” second seat! I faced this issue when I boarded a Keystone in Philadelphia to return to Elizabethtown in 2019. I was the last person to board, and every seat in my coach (The Quiet Car) was taken but one. I had to politely ask this young lady if I could sit in that empty seat, and she gave me a nasty look and angrily moved her “junk” off the seat! Why can’t people share any more?

I am a large person, but I can fit comfortably in Amfleet seats if I must share.


----------



## Cal (Oct 7, 2021)

frequentflyer said:


> Today's Texas Eagle arriving into CUS has only three cars...................Yes three Superliner cars. The fiscal numbers are going to be brutal for this train.


Video?


----------



## west point (Oct 7, 2021)

Roger Harris of Amtrak addressed RPA September 20. He stated that short consists were due to lack of maintenance personnel to get all equipment back in service. So a check of the Amtrak job site did not show any job openings at BEECH, Wilmington, and bear. As well no maintenance positions at any of the end points of the LD trains including Chicago. The job posting go back for one month. Now there were several locations listed for OBS. Also coach cleaners at NEC locations.

Am composing a letter to sec of transportation asking what is going on.? Here are a couple links that may work which I-ll check once this is posted. Click on September 20 date and scroll down to Roger Harris section and click it.. 


Rail Passengers Association | Washington, DC - RailNationC - Virtual Fall Advocacy Conference | September 19 - 22, 2021
Rail Passengers Association | Washington, DC - Monday, September 20th


----------



## frequentflyer (Oct 7, 2021)

Cal said:


> Video?


 
Virtual Railfan Tower 55 and Big Sandy cam.


----------



## enviro5609 (Oct 7, 2021)

frequentflyer said:


> Today's Texas Eagle arriving into CUS has only three cars...................Yes three Superliner cars. The fiscal numbers are going to be brutal for this train.



There was a trespasser strike last last night/early this morning that took six hours to clear. It may be related, unless more three car trains show up in the coming days.


----------



## Cal (Oct 7, 2021)

frequentflyer said:


> Virtual Railfan Tower 55 and Big Sandy cam.


Gotchya. It's so sad that the TE is now operating shorter than practically every corridor train


----------



## me_little_me (Oct 7, 2021)

The current issue of Trains magazines seems to point the blame straight at management mistakes and incompetence. I believe it because there is no other rational excuse.


----------



## NW cannonball (Oct 8, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Every train seems to have a shorter consist.
> 
> The Empire Builder typically had 2 Seattle sleepers most of the year and always had 2 Seattle coaches. Now it is back to 1 Seattle sleeper after having a second over the summer, and never got its second Seattle coach after going back to daily. The Starlight was pretty close to a normal consist. The off season Starlight was usually a baggage, transdorm, two sleepers, diner, business class coach, Sightseer, two coaches. The peak season consists (summer and holidays) usually had a third sleeper and third coach.
> 
> ...


One minor correction here. On the night of 2021-10-07 I thought I saw WB #7 the Empire Builder near Saint Anthony Interlocking (about 7 miles West of SPUD on the [former GN}) with a Transdorm and two sleepers, followed by the diner and one coach, and the Portland section.
I coulda been hallucinating, but I don't think so.The WB EB (strange concatenation of initialisms?) I see this train at that place 2-3 nights per week.
I'm quite sure I saw a Transition Dorm and two sleepers before the diner and the one Seattle-bound coach. Maybe I got it confused with the 10-06WB EB #7.

A second minor comment -- I didn't see, but friend who was there told me he saw at the Minneapolis GN station back in the real late 1960's the only visible GN employee in the reservation section of their visible front office behind the ticket counter, saw this person just walking around the few desks and when a phone would ring, he'd pick it up and hang it up. - Hearsay anecdote, no clue of veracity.

PS, and OT. The only time I was ever on the GN EB it was EB in the late 1960's (hope the 2-letter-codes not 2 confusing 
My ticket was from Western Minnesota to the Capital City of Minnesota, Saint Paul. The EB EB was about 1:45 hours late out of blizzard in Montana, as happens sometimes, maybe even this year. The coach seat and the car's suspension was the most comfortable I'd ever rode on a train ( only a dozen previous rides). We were only about 20 minutes late into Saint Paul. Partly schedule padding no doubt. Partly it seemed we were going a "few miles over the limit"


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Oct 8, 2021)

Rumors Amtrak wants to and will shortly announce reduction back to 3x weekly service for LD using excuse of can’t hire new employees and abnormally high number of employees facing termination due to refusing vaccine mandate next month…it’s on the other board.


----------



## AmtrakBlue (Oct 8, 2021)

Amtrakfflyer said:


> Rumors Amtrak wants to and will shortly announce reduction back to 3x weekly service for LD using excuse of can’t hire new employees and abnormally number of employees facing termination due to refusing vaccine mandate next month…it’s on the other board.


You sound like you don’t believe that’s a legitimate reason.


----------



## me_little_me (Oct 8, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> You sound like you don’t believe that’s a legitimate reason.


Not necessarily true. I know, for me, that I don't trust Amtrak management to tell the truth or even know what the problem really is.


----------



## jis (Oct 8, 2021)

Well, if the rumor proves to be correct then that would be the ultimate short consist on a few days 

You win some, you lose some. Story of life.


----------



## Siegmund (Oct 8, 2021)

NW cannonball said:


> One minor correction here. On the night of 2021-10-07 I thought I saw WB #7 the Empire Builder near Saint Anthony Interlocking (about 7 miles West of SPUD on the [former GN}) with a Transdorm and two sleepers, followed by the diner and one coach, and the Portland section.
> I coulda been hallucinating, but I don't think so.The WB EB (strange concatenation of initialisms?) I see this train at that place 2-3 nights per week.
> I'm quite sure I saw a Transition Dorm and two sleepers before the diner and the one Seattle-bound coach. Maybe I got it confused with the 10-06WB EB #7.



It is normal for the 2nd sleeper to appear and disappear from one day to the next in shoulder season. In winter it is usually absent.

The 2nd Seattle coach runs somewhat less often than the 2nd Seattle sleeper -- in a pre-covid year it ran most of the summer, but essentially never in winter or shoulder season -- but this year is the only year where I didn't see a 2nd Seattle coach all summer. 

I am not 100% sure it is an equipment shortage and not just simple capacity needs...east of Spokane that still gives the Builder 3 coaches. There will just be a lot of people holding tickets reading "27" rather than "7".


----------



## Cal (Oct 8, 2021)

NW cannonball said:


> One minor correction here. On the night of 2021-10-07 I thought I saw WB #7 the Empire Builder near Saint Anthony Interlocking (about 7 miles West of SPUD on the [former GN}) with a Transdorm and two sleepers, followed by the diner and one coach, and the Portland section.
> I coulda been hallucinating, but I don't think so.The WB EB (strange concatenation of initialisms?) I see this train at that place 2-3 nights per week.


I don't think the EB ever lost it's transdorm


----------



## joelkfla (Oct 8, 2021)

Amtrakfflyer said:


> Rumors Amtrak wants to and will shortly announce reduction back to 3x weekly service for LD using excuse of can’t hire new employees and abnormally high number of employees facing termination due to refusing vaccine mandate next month…it’s on the other board.


I thought there was a law against that.


----------



## toddinde (Oct 9, 2021)

Siegmund said:


> It is normal for the 2nd sleeper to appear and disappear from one day to the next in shoulder season. In winter it is usually absent.
> 
> The 2nd Seattle coach runs somewhat less often than the 2nd Seattle sleeper -- in a pre-covid year it ran most of the summer, but essentially never in winter or shoulder season -- but this year is the only year where I didn't see a 2nd Seattle coach all summer.
> 
> I am not 100% sure it is an equipment shortage and not just simple capacity needs...east of Spokane that still gives the Builder 3 coaches. There will just be a lot of people holding tickets reading "27" rather than "7".


No, it’s an equipment shortage. Amtrak VP Harris said as much during his comments to RPA. Reading between the lines, Amtrak didn’t expect to be running many long distance trains in the future, so many cars were placed in storage and maintenance was deferred.


----------



## zephyr17 (Oct 9, 2021)

toddinde said:


> No, it’s an equipment shortage. Amtrak VP Harris said as much during his comments to RPA. Reading between the lines, Amtrak didn’t expect to be running many long distance trains in the future, so many cars were placed in storage and maintenance was deferred.


Make that read Amtrak _planned_ not to run many long distance trains in the future. Congress upset their apple cart, but not unexpectedly.

Amtrak management seemed to almost intentionally fail to read the tea leaves on the Congressional mandate to return to daily operation. It was in the works for months before it passed and was fully expected to pass.

It wasn't unexpected. It was lack of planning.


----------



## me_little_me (Oct 9, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Make that read Amtrak _planned_ not to run many long distance trains in the future. Congress upset their apple cart, but not unexpectedly.
> 
> Amtrak management seemed to almost intentionally fail to read the tea leaves on the Congressional mandate to return to daily operation. It was in the works for months before it passed and was fully expected to pass.
> 
> It wasn't unexpected. It was lack of planning.


Moreover, when things are done well, executives almost always find ways to reward themselves. Most of Amtrak's executives and Board need to find elsewhere to make their money and reputation and be terminated for cause. They have intentionally put cars in long-term unmaintained status and grossly mis-planned their needs.


----------



## MARC Rider (Oct 9, 2021)

My, my, there seem to be a lot of paranoia and conspiracy theory here. Some people seem to think that Amtrak's management have all been reincarnated from the management of the Southern Pacific in the late 1950s and 1960s, and that they have some sort of secret plan to eliminate all the long-distance trains by ensuring that there aren't enough railcars to operate the trains. It's also possible that the management just misjudged how long the COVID downturn would last. And remember, just because there are more people riding the trains today than there were last year doesn't mean that there are as many people riding as there were back in 2019 before the pandemic. In fact, I did a couple of test booking and found that there was space available for sale on all of the Long Distance trains leaving New York for Miami, New Orleans, and Chicago tomorrow. So there still seems to be empty space on the trains, even with the shorter consists. Unless someone has intercepted texts or emails from management documenting a conspiracy to starve out the long distance trains, I would suggest some patience, here.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Oct 9, 2021)

In a perfect world that all makes sense. The problem is Gardner is on record with Anderson as not wanting to run the network trains going back before CoVid. The SWC shouting match showed their true colors. Its not a secret to congressional aides at least on the SWC coalition that Gardner is anti national network. Covid or not this management has made bad decision after bad decision to the point they need to be replaced before more damage is done.

As far as trains not being completely sold out. Last minute fares and fares in general are outrageous for the most part and east coast trains have virtually no amenities on top of that. We can debate buckets and what not but the end result my trips on the SWC this year are 50%higher in cost then I’ve ever paid before. We’re paying $1920 ow for the family bedroom GBB to LAX 12/21 this year. On 12/23/18 we paid $970 for it. This has caused us to fly on 2 trips this year that we may have taken the train. The low buckets are far and few between if at all.



MARC Rider said:


> My, my, there seem to be a lot of paranoia and conspiracy theory here. Some people seem to think that Amtrak's management have all been reincarnated from the management of the Southern Pacific in the late 1950s and 1960s, and that they have some sort of secret plan to eliminate all the long-distance trains by ensuring that there aren't enough railcars to operate the trains. It's also possible that the management just misjudged how long the COVID downturn would last. And remember, just because there are more people riding the trains today than there were last year doesn't mean that there are as many people riding as there were back in 2019 before the pandemic. In fact, I did a couple of test booking and found that there was space available for sale on all of the Long Distance trains leaving New York for Miami, New Orleans, and Chicago tomorrow. So there still seems to be empty space on the trains, even with the shorter consists. Unless someone has intercepted texts or emails from management documenting a conspiracy to starve out the long distance trains, I would suggest some patience, here.


----------



## neroden (Oct 9, 2021)

west point said:


> Roger Harris of Amtrak addressed RPA September 20. He stated that short consists were due to lack of maintenance personnel to get all equipment back in service. So a check of the Amtrak job site did not show any job openings at BEECH, Wilmington, and bear. As well no maintenance positions at any of the end points of the LD trains including Chicago. The job posting go back for one month. Now there were several locations listed for OBS. Also coach cleaners at NEC locations.


Innnnteresting. It's possible they have a lot of unexpected sick time due to Covid or something. Still, this shows mismanagement. Get that letter written!



> Am composing a letter to sec of transportation asking what is going on.?


----------



## neroden (Oct 9, 2021)

Amtrakfflyer said:


> Rumors Amtrak wants to and will shortly announce reduction back to 3x weekly service for LD using excuse of can’t hire new employees and abnormally high number of employees facing termination due to refusing vaccine mandate next month…it’s on the other board.


Based on the current Congressional landscape, which is outright ordering Amtrak to provide daily service, that would basically amount to management tendering its resignation letters. So it seems unlikely. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Gardner wants to quit -- who knows?


----------



## me_little_me (Oct 9, 2021)

MARC Rider said:


> My, my, there seem to be a lot of paranoia and conspiracy theory here. Some people seem to think that Amtrak's management have all been reincarnated from the management of the Southern Pacific in the late 1950s and 1960s, and that they have some sort of secret plan to eliminate all the long-distance trains by ensuring that there aren't enough railcars to operate the trains.


They haven't got the brains to make their plan secret. That's why so many people are complaining about the SWC blunder, the cars not being available, the high prices, the lack of timetables, the food disaster, amtrak.com problems and everything else.



MARC Rider said:


> It's also possible that the management just misjudged how long the COVID downturn would last.


I've said it before. When the executives gets it right, they get honored, perks, promotion and $$. So when he gets it wrong, they need to suffer the consequences.



MARC Rider said:


> In fact, I did a couple of test booking and found that there was space available for sale on all of the Long Distance trains leaving New York for Miami, New Orleans, and Chicago tomorrow.


And your point? Prices for off-season are still out of sight. That's why there may be rooms available. I thought I paid way too much for rooms on my upcoming trip west but when I check, the prices are now laughable. If I could sell my rooms at those prices, I would then take the money, fly first class, and have enough left over for a 2019 Amtrak trip. I know. I did two then including one at Christmas time.


----------



## west point (Oct 9, 2021)

Is it still Amtrak policy that a passenger can cancel at last minute without penalty ? Do not count being able to book at last minute there are always cancellations.


----------



## zephyr17 (Oct 9, 2021)

west point said:


> Is it still Amtrak policy that a passenger can cancel at last minute without penalty ? Do not count being able to book at last minute there are always cancellations.


Not sleepers.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Oct 9, 2021)

Add that to the gripe list as well. Acela first class you can cancel 1 minute before departure and get a full refund. Long distance sleeper traveler is the most punitive needing 121 days notice for a full refund. Yes, 121 days. They really have made it death by a 1000 cuts with just about every aspect of long distance travel.

Class of Service: Sleeper Accommodations


Refunds: Full refund to original form of payment with no fees if canceled 121 days or more before departure. Refund to original form of payment with 25% fee charged if canceled 120 to 15 days before departure. Within 14 days of departure, only refundable to non-refundable eVoucher with a 25% cancellation fee.
No change fee


----------



## Cal (Oct 9, 2021)

Amtrakfflyer said:


> dd that to the gripe list as well. Acela first class you can cancel 1 minute before departure and get a full refund.


Hmmm. Just curious, if it arrives early and you board, would you be able to cancel after you're already on board? Although the conductor would have to scan your ticket on the platform.


----------



## TheVig (Oct 10, 2021)

Friday we took the Carolinian home from PHL to CLT. When we boarded in PHL, I noticed an extra coach car had been added. I took a walk through the train, coach cars were packed to the gills. We were in business, and it stayed packed until RGH.

Yeah, nobody rides trains anymore.


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

toddinde said:


> No, it’s an equipment shortage. Amtrak VP Harris said as much during his comments to RPA. Reading between the lines, Amtrak didn’t expect to be running many long distance trains in the future, so many cars were placed in storage and maintenance was deferred.


The utter incompetence of this company is unbelievable. And now we have to subract an entire trainset worth of cars after the builder. (as usual, I’m sure all but two cars will go long term storage/damaged) The only time they ever really focused on repairs to damaged but not totally destroy ours as with Obama stimulous funds. Perhaps it’s time to consider something like converting the CONO to single level and re-assigning those cars to the western trains?


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

Cal said:


> Hmmm. Just curious, if it arrives early and you board, would you be able to cancel after you're already on board? Although the conductor would have to scan your ticket on the platform.


Not after scanning the ticket and being marked on the manifest. At least not easily like through the app.


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> They haven't got the brains to make their plan secret. That's why so many people are complaining about the SWC blunder, the cars not being available, the high prices, the lack of timetables, the food disaster, amtrak.com problems and everything else.
> 
> 
> I've said it before. When the executives gets it right, they get honored, perks, promotion and $$. So when he gets it wrong, they need to suffer the consequences.
> ...


A perfect way to frame these losers, “haven’t got the brains to make it secret.” It’s amazing that people like this end up
in management. Lately I have been just flying and saving a HUGE amount of money and getting treated like my business means something. Getting appreciated. Great job Amtrak, you have driven away one of your best customers. It kills me, but I just cannot continue supporting the degraded yet more expensive.


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

neroden said:


> Based on the current Congressional landscape, which is outright ordering Amtrak to provide daily service, that would basically amount to management tendering its resignation letters. So it seems unlikely. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Gardner wants to quit -- who knows?


Time to clean house and get a new board in and get new managers.


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> Moreover, when things are done well, executives almost always find ways to reward themselves. Most of Amtrak's executives and Board need to find elsewhere to make their money and reputation and be terminated for cause. They have intentionally put cars in long-term unmaintained status and grossly mis-planned their needs.


If they really put cars into unmaintained long term storage, they need to all be fired and the company needs a reset.


----------



## joelkfla (Oct 10, 2021)

nti1094 said:


> unlsintaimed long term storage


???


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

Cal said:


> Video?


Last year I was on an eagle exactly like that. In St. Louis they added one coach to Chicago. Shortest LD train I ever rode.


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 10, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> ???


unmaintained or mothballed


----------



## west point (Oct 11, 2021)

Over several months we have had reports of various cars parked at different locations/ That IMO means un maintained.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Oct 11, 2021)

This is another situation where a shady untrusted management needs oversight. Whether that be RPA, Buttigieg/ Administration, certain Congress members or us, Amtrak’s long term future is again at stake. Money/funding/good intentions mean nothing if there continues to be sabotage from within.


----------



## toddinde (Oct 11, 2021)

nti1094 said:


> The utter incompetence of this company is unbelievable. And now we have to subract an entire trainset worth of cars after the builder. (as usual, I’m sure all but two cars will go long term storage/damaged) The only time they ever really focused on repairs to damaged but not totally destroy ours as with Obama stimulous funds. Perhaps it’s time to consider something like converting the CONO to single level and re-assigning those cars to the western trains?


It is a constant frustration. Anderson, on behalf of the Trump Administration, Mick Mulvaney, and the Heritage Foundation, really planned to do away with the long distance trains. I believe the three day per week was fully intended to be permanent. The election really messed that up. The long distance trains have nine lives. They’re popular, not costly to operate, and literally serve as the basis for all future passenger rail expansion. The Boardman years were largely lost years. They were a time when Amtrak could have presented a vision. Moorman was brought in to wreck it, and picked Anderson to finish the job. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.


----------



## Ryan (Oct 11, 2021)

Whole lotta assertions here with almost no facts to back them up.

Unless you've got inside information to share, you have no idea what Amtrak management was planning.


----------



## toddinde (Oct 11, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Make that read Amtrak _planned_ not to run many long distance trains in the future. Congress upset their apple cart, but not unexpectedly.
> 
> Amtrak management seemed to almost intentionally fail to read the tea leaves on the Congressional mandate to return to daily operation. It was in the works for months before it passed and was fully expected to pass.
> 
> It wasn't unexpected. It was lack of planning.


Absolutely. Amtrak frequently doesn’t understand their own business. I hope they’re getting better. It seems like VP Harris is pretty good. I would like to see more over overnight, longer corridor trains similar to the Caledonian Sleeper in Great Britain.


----------



## toddinde (Oct 11, 2021)

nti1094 said:


> If they really put cars into unmaintained long term storage, they need to all be fired and the company needs a reset.


They did, and admit they did. They did not believe that funding would be there in the future for the long distance trains. They believed their own rosy propaganda about the wonders of the NEC and the uselessness of long distance service. Congress and the American people had other ideas.


----------



## Tlcooper93 (Oct 11, 2021)

Ryan said:


> Whole lotta assertions here with almost no facts to back them up.
> 
> Unless you've got inside information to share, you have no idea what Amtrak management was planning.


Completely agreed.
Amtrak is a pretty poorly run company. To suggest there is some kind of devious scheme to covertly but decisively drop the LD routes implies quite a bit of planning and prowess that I don’t think they have.

More realistically, I think Amtrak has a far more nuanced and complex relationship with their LD routes than we think. Some of these routes have guaranteed funding due to the provincial way in which our government system works. I highly doubt Amtrak wants to unequivocally dump the California Zephyr.

Until we get inside ears, I’d suggest we chill with the silly conspiracy theories, and be a little more deliberate with our language.


----------



## TheTuck (Oct 11, 2021)

Im surprised at Mr. Selden on this one. In previous speaking engagements, he has touted the notion to "never believe in conspiracy when simple incompetence is a viable explanation." In a recent Trains Mag article by Bob Johnston, he explains Amtrak's lackluster decisions during covid to sideline equipment and furlough too many employees. He also highlights how the cost-cutting culture played into these decisions. Sure looks like incompetence to me!


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Oct 11, 2021)

People seem to forget the history of Gardner and this management overall. They are on record as only wanting to run 5-6 long distance routes with less than daily service this was 3.5 years ago. The code word used back then was “experimental” trains. Again they are on record as being hostile to long distance routes. How anyone can say there’s no evidence is beyond me. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. We’ve smelled smoke on every front for at least 4 years. From 121 days required now to refund a long distance sleeper ticket to Amtrak’s refusal to just put Acela meals on East coast trains. The list is probably 30 items of downgrades that for the the part are head scratching and only apply to long distance trains. They have gone out of their way to attack long distance trains in just about every aspect. There’s no denying it.


----------



## PaTrainFan (Oct 11, 2021)

Amtrakfflyer said:


> The code word used back then was “experimental” trains.


The word was "experiential."


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Oct 11, 2021)

Touché you get my point though.


----------



## jis (Oct 11, 2021)

PaTrainFan said:


> The word was "experiential."


Indeed. 

It should also be noted that until very recently, barring a few random Senators and Congresspeople to the contrary, the appropriations that were handed to Amtrak on an ongoing basis, except for occasional one year enthusiastic spurts, basically carried the message to wind things up so as to reduce subsidies to minimum if not zero. Of course the Board and their appointees acted accordingly, some more reluctantly and some less. Some were forced by internal intrigues managed either by the Board or explicitly direct interference by some specific Republican members of Congress. 

The so called incompetence may actually be completely by design to a large extent and is considered to be greatly competent by some powerful folks amongst the paymasters. The corners of the country that really wanted the service fought mightily and actually made gains by hiving off the corridor services from the assault to some extent. That is how the LD trains fell into the cracks. Funny thing is legislators from the states that benefit most from LD service were more active than others in trying to kill the LD trains. It was a religious matter of faith for them with no logic beyond that.

It is only within the last year or two, post Anderson that the overall attitude of the legislature seems to have shifted some. But we'll see how much fortitude is involved going forward, won't we?


----------



## Devil's Advocate (Oct 11, 2021)

Tlcooper93 said:


> To suggest there is some kind of devious scheme to covertly but decisively drop the LD routes implies quite a bit of planning and prowess that I don’t think they have.


It wasn’t covert; Anderson freely admitted he was fine with turning long distance routes into half-bus and half-rail monstrosities and the same board that hired him is still in power at Amtrak today.



> For train lovers, the moment of truth was when Anderson initially refused to put up funds to improve a 400-mile stretch of the Southwest Chief between Dodge City, Kan., and Albuquerque. Anderson said it would be more prudent to run a bus between the two cities instead. “The idea that Amtrak would think about replacing passenger service with bus service for 400 miles and believe that we would still have a long distance passenger train service is something I can’t get over,” Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, scolded Anderson in a hearing in June. The Senate ordered Amtrak to run the train and forget about buses. Fine, says Anderson, but he hasn’t given up on his plans to segment some routes.











Amtrak CEO Has a Plan for Profitability, and You Won’t Like It


Chopping up long-haul routes and saying goodbye to traditional dining-car service are part of former Delta chief Richard Anderson’s solution. Train lovers aren’t thrilled.




www.bloomberg.com


----------



## neroden (Oct 11, 2021)

jis said:


> Funny thing is legislators from the states that benefit most from LD service were more active than others in trying to kill the LD trains. It was a religious matter of faith for them with no logic beyond that.



So, the funny thing is, Amtrak management under Anderson appears to have been politically tone-deaf, and completely misread the situation. In a way nobody who was paying attention would ever have misread it.

While the Republican legislators from a bunch of states like Idaho, North Dakota, Mississippi, and Arkansas will say lots of negative things about Amtrak, the moment you come for THEIR train, they'll be demanding that you keep it running, and with tablecloths and steak, too! Every Amtrak management since the first has run up against this. Most of them, including Boardman and Moorman, understood the politics of it; Anderson clearly didn't.

I went through pro- and anti-Amtrak votes by Congressmembers at one point, and in nearly the entire country, every district with an Amtrak station serving it has a Congressmember who votes for Amtrak service, regardless of party or ideology. The exceptions, Congressmembers who vote against service to their own communities, are mostly in a string running along the Sunset Limited route, which makes it all the more remarkable that the SL is still running.

Those who knew the political landscape knew that an attack on the Southwest Chief would round up half a dozen Senators and a dozen Representatives to breathe fire at Mr. Anderson, which is exactly what happened. Attacking the Southwest Chief was political idiocy of the first order -- I have to suspect that whoever suggested it to Mr Anderson was actually trying to get Mr Anderson fired. They more or less succeeded. Don't tell the anti-long-distance saboteurs, but if they'd actually been trying to dismantle services competently, they would have gone after the Sunset, which lacks the political backing.

Mr. Anderson made other exceptionally stupid moves. Many stations had lost their Amtrak-employed agents with little outcry under Boardman. Mr. Anderson's administration tried to remove an agent from *Cincinnati*, which sparked a backlash which restored agents at dozens and dozens of other stations. It's almost like his underlings, told to make "cuts", made cuts in the ways designed specifically to create maximum backlash, and Mr. Anderson was too stupid to realize what was being done.

It's possible to *both* be maliciously trying to dismantle the long-distance services, *and* to be incompetent while trying to do so. Mr. Anderson achieved that combination.


----------



## jis (Oct 11, 2021)

Like most overconfident executives who think the world of themselves, hubris caused by such turns out to be their enemy. Anderson was no different. Blinded by his own perceived brilliance in his own mind I am afraid


----------



## Ryan (Oct 11, 2021)

Not to mention the fact that his gambit was for entities other than Amtrak to make with the funding for the SWC route.

Since that occured, the world will never know if was serious about the bus thing or it was a clever ploy that worked.


----------



## Devil's Advocate (Oct 11, 2021)

Ryan said:


> Not to mention the fact that his gambit was for entities other than Amtrak to make with the funding for the SWC route. Since that occured, the world will never know if was serious about the bus thing or it was a clever ploy that worked.


So in your view it is easier to believe that Anderson's attacks on the Southwest Chief were part of a secret conspiracy to secure more funding so that no buses would ever be needed, despite the fact that Anderson never implied or acknowledged any such motive and had to be told to keep running those trains against his own judgement?


----------



## lordsigma (Oct 11, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> So in your view it is easier to believe that Anderson's attacks on the Southwest Chief were part of a secret conspiracy to secure more funding so that no buses would ever be needed, despite the fact that Anderson never implied or acknowledged any such motive and had to be told to keep running those trains against his own judgement?



Anderson would probably tell you he was successful. While they didn’t allow the bus plan which may have been their ideal, they coughed up a whole bunch of money to address the issue which I’m sure was a plan B. They probably viewed it as they’ll either let us cut it or they’ll throw money at us so it’ll be a win win.


----------



## Devil's Advocate (Oct 11, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> Anderson would probably tell you he was successful. While they didn’t allow the bus plan which may have been their ideal, they coughed up a whole bunch of money to address the issue which I’m sure was a plan B. They probably viewed it as they’ll either let us cut it or they’ll throw money at us so it’ll be a win win.


Anderson never struck me as the sentimental type and love or hate him when he said he wanted something done he usually meant it. Witness his swift and decisive action to permanently retire the PPC fleet before a buyer could be found. I've seen no evidence that Anderson ever said or implied he was happy the Southwest Chief would remain viable under his watch. In fact he continued to push his bus-rail plans even _after_ sufficient funding was secured.


----------



## Ryan (Oct 12, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> So in your view it is easier to believe that Anderson's attacks on the Southwest Chief were part of a secret conspiracy to secure more funding so that no buses would ever be needed, despite the fact that Anderson never implied or acknowledged any such motive and had to be told to keep running those trains against his own judgement?


In my view, we don't know what he was doing, and as such decline to cite or accept those actions as evidence of anything for or against the LD trains.

Likewise with the PPC - if the stated reason (maintenance on unicorn cars of sufficient age that all repair parts had to essentially be custom made from scratch) is taken at face value, then pulling them from service ASAP to stop the bleeding makes sense. They lost less money with them sitting there awaiting a buyer then they would continuing to keep them on the road. Same story with Ocean View.

Personally, I don't like it because I like nice things, but there's a believable narrative where Anderson DGAF about those nice things and was playing the role of a cold, hard, business man that was cutting the expensive things but not as a part of a "secret conspiracy" to eliminate LD train travel along routes like the SWC.


----------



## enviro5609 (Oct 12, 2021)

Ryan said:


> In my view, we don't know what he was doing, and as such decline to cite or accept those actions as evidence of anything for or against the LD trains.
> 
> Likewise with the PPC - if the stated reason (maintenance on unicorn cars of sufficient age that all repair parts had to essentially be custom made from scratch) is taken at face value, then pulling them from service ASAP to stop the bleeding makes sense. They lost less money with them sitting there awaiting a buyer then they would continuing to keep them on the road. Same story with Ocean View.
> 
> Personally, I don't like it because I like nice things, but there's a believable narrative where Anderson DGAF about those nice things and was playing the role of a cold, hard, business man that was cutting the expensive things but not as a part of a "secret conspiracy" to eliminate LD train travel along routes like the SWC.



It’s a rational excuse, but it doesn’t mean it was a good decision. Aging assets do cost more to maintain— but they can also be unique profit centers and attractors. It just requires more vision than leadership had at the time.

Aren’t the St. Charles Streetcars in New Orleans even older (about to turn 100), and also require every replacement part to be custom fabricated? The New Orleans RTA isn’t exactly flush with cash, but they keep them running. They have modern streetcars running on other lines, but choose to keep the ~100 year old cast iron green cars on the St. Charles line. And its not like the San Francisco trolley or some experiential tourist attraction. Paying ridership includes *both* tourists and regular folks who use it to get around. They cost more to maintain, but they also drive ridership and are the crown jewel of what would otherwise be just another cash strapped public transit system.


----------



## joelkfla (Oct 12, 2021)

enviro5609 said:


> And its not like the San Francisco trolley or some experiential tourist attraction. Paying ridership includes *both* tourists and regular folks who use it to get around.


I assume you're talking about the cable cars.

First of all, a cable car is not a trolley car. By definition, a trolley car is electrically powered from an overhead wire.

Secondly, I don't know about today, but when I lived in SF some 40 years ago, the cable cars were used by both tourists and locals. True, tourists outnumbered locals, but there were always riders hopping on or off along the route. Cable car fares have nowadays become excessive, but they are still included in all monthly passes.

SF also has the historic streetcars running on Market St. & beyond, which are mostly PCC's but with a smattering of other cars from various cities. They were brought back by popular demand, and are heavily used by locals at regular fare.


----------



## enviro5609 (Oct 12, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> I assume you're talking about the cable cars.
> 
> First of all, a cable car is not a trolley car. By definition, a trolley car is electrically powered from an overhead wire.
> 
> ...


My mistake.

In New Orleans we are just as protective of the correct nomenclature. Its a streetcar, not a trolley. If someone asks about the trolley you know they are from out of town.

My only experience with the cable cars in SF was as a tourist as a kid many years ago. Didn't realize locals used them as well. It seemed like we were all packed in just to ride it for the experience. But its been so long and I was so young its hard to really remember.

That is a shame about the prices. Fare prices really do dictate what kind of usage it gets (tourist vs. locals). Not sure about the cable cars in SF, but in New Orleans the Streetcar is $1.25 one way and has been for years. Same fare as the bus with a free transfer in system. So while there are definitely tourists, it is just another part of the public transit network and treated as such by the locals.

Great to hear about the Market St. streetcars!


----------



## zephyr17 (Oct 12, 2021)

San Francisco Muni also runs historic trolleys as well as cable cars. They run a fleet of PCCs painted in historic liveries of various transit systems (including my beloved Pacific Electric) on the "F" line that goes between Fishermen's Wharf and the Castro along the Embarcadero and Market St.


----------



## MARC Rider (Oct 12, 2021)

Hey, don't forget the Mattapan-Ashmont "high speed line" in Boston. Authentic PCC trolleys in regular service.


----------



## Cal (Oct 12, 2021)

enviro5609 said:


> They have modern streetcars running on other lines,


Links? I did some quick Google searches and didn't find anything. I'd like to see what they're operating


----------



## Cal (Oct 12, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> San Francisco Muni also runs historic trolleys as well as cable cars. They run a fleet of PCCs painted in historic liveries of various transit systems (including my beloved Pacific Electric) on the "F" line that goes between Fishermen's Wharf and the Castro along the Embarcadero and Market St.


It's truly a shame how LA's network used to be compared to now. I was on a Wikipedia binge last weekend looking at old lines, it's kind of amazing how much is left of some of the lines all things considered. The fact that some bridges and tracks are still in place is amazing. And some ROW (specifically the Santa Ana branch) is very visible on Google (technically Apple) maps.


----------



## Leex (Oct 13, 2021)

Four cars on the Texas Eaglet southbound Sunday/yesterday: two coaches, one sleeper and the dinette.


----------



## Bob Dylan (Oct 13, 2021)

Leex said:


> Four cars on the Texas Eaglet southbound Sunday/yesterday: two coaches, one sleeper and the dinette.


----------



## joelkfla (Oct 13, 2021)

Cal said:


> Links? I did some quick Google searches and didn't find anything. I'd like to see what they're operating











Our Streetcars







www.norta.com





The original line dates back to 1835. *Each green and crimson "Perley Thomas" streetcars, first appearing on the line in 1923, is a National Historic Landmark.* In so many ways, a ride on the St. Charles streetcar is a ride through history.​​And then ...
​The Canal Street line was reopened it in 2004 after having been replaced by a bus route in 1964. *Its bright red cars are modeled on the historic Perley Thomas streetcars, but the newer vehicles feature modern amenities such as air conditioning and wheelchair access. *​


----------



## Cal (Oct 13, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> Our Streetcars
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks! I like it, instead of having a modern-looking streetcar.


----------



## nti1094 (Oct 26, 2021)

Ryan said:


> Not to mention the fact that his gambit was for entities other than Amtrak to make with the funding for the SWC route.
> 
> Since that occured, the world will never know if was serious about the bus thing or it was a clever ploy that worked.


The thing is a lot of the money, including a TIGER grant covering the trackage across Kansas and into Colorado, was already in place. Even BNSF signed off on and committed a share of the funding for that. What Anderson was doing was rejecting that money and trying to kill that part of the route. I don’t get the impression at all that he was trying to squeeze more money from other parties.


----------



## AmtrakMaineiac (Oct 26, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> Our Streetcars
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I remember the first time I rode the St. Charles line in 1971, the fare was still 5 cents and they still had conductors on the cars (although they were in the process of phasing them out for one person operation). Talk about "a ride through history"!


----------



## Willbridge (Oct 27, 2021)

nti1094 said:


> The thing is a lot of the money, including a TIGER grant covering the trackage across Kansas and into Colorado, was already in place. Even BNSF signed off on and committed a share of the funding for that. What Anderson was doing was rejecting that money and trying to kill that part of the route. I don’t get the impression at all that he was trying to squeeze more money from other parties.


Correct. And they sent their withdrawal letter to only one of the coalition members (and didn't indicate that they needed to circulate it) so that reaction to the news was delayed.

They also had not really worked out their alternative. The transfer times at each end of the bus link and the running times on segments of two-lane highway with minimal shoulders would have meant losing connections in Chicago and/or Los Angeles.

The transfer at Dodge City on occasions would have looked like this October 1997 scene at Garden City.




US350 from Google Maps at Model, Colorado. A 55 mph highway vs. 90 mph railway. (Yes, I know that pick-ups will drive faster than 55, but that's one of the hazards at road junctions as on the right.) It appeared to us in Colorado that the Gardner Plan hadn't been researched.


----------



## neroden (Nov 1, 2021)

The SW Chief "bus bridge" was such a ludicrously incompetent, stupid, and unresearched proposal that people were saying it had to be a phony, an over-the-top attempt to get more funding -- but it appears that the people who proposed it were actually that stupid and actually believed it was a serious proposal. Which... well, I don't know exactly who proposed it, but as far as I am concerned that disqualifies them from *all* management jobs in anything related to transportation.


----------



## zephyr17 (Nov 1, 2021)

Well, Gardner was a prominent member of that management team and "fell" upwards to become Amtrak's COO. Obviously, being an oblivious moron is no impediment to gaining the C-Suite at Amtrak.


----------



## lordsigma (Nov 1, 2021)

nti1094 said:


> I don’t get the impression at all that he was trying to squeeze more money from other parties.


I'm sure they probably had it at the back of their minds - they'll either let us do what we're saying here and go with buses or they'll throw money at us for the Chief route and we won't have to pull it from somewhere else. They did the latter. I'm sure if you asked Anderson or Gardner they'd tell you now it paid off and got them federal funding to deal with it. I didn't like it, but it did result in extra funding.


----------



## zephyr17 (Nov 1, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> I'm sure they probably had it at the back of their minds - they'll either let us do what we're saying here and go with buses or they'll throw money at us for the Chief route and we won't have to pull it from somewhere else. They did the latter. I'm sure if you asked Anderson or Gardner they'd tell you now it paid off and got them federal funding to deal with it. I didn't like it, but the move did pay off in that regard.


Yep, hostage taking is always a smart move by executives.


----------



## zephyr17 (Nov 1, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> I'm sure they probably had it at the back of their minds - they'll either let us do what we're saying here and go with buses or they'll throw money at us for the Chief route and we won't have to pull it from somewhere else. They did the latter. I'm sure if you asked Anderson or Gardner they'd tell you now it paid off and got them federal funding to deal with it. I didn't like it, but it did result in extra funding.


They why did they try to refuse the grant that they had already received? By your reasoning, they added another level of extortion to hostage-taking.


----------



## lordsigma (Nov 1, 2021)

Not defending it on its merits and its not ethical - but they did get more money out of it.


----------



## zephyr17 (Nov 1, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> Not defending it on its merits and its not ethical - but they did get more money out of it.


I don't actually credit them with being evil geniuses. I think Anderson just had a knee jerk reaction to the lack of PTC on the line, despite the fact it was not required due to light traffic. That and an obvious disregard for long distance services in general.

Anderson didn't understand the business he joined and didn't appear to care. I just think he was an over confident know-it-all and it was a blunder, a blunder compounded by his arrogant and dismissive attitude towards Congress.

I do not ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity.


----------



## lordsigma (Nov 1, 2021)

In my observing them at Congressional meetings and other venues neither struck me as particularly stupid. I certainly have some disagreements with their points of view on various Amtrak issues but they did not strike me as idiots. But that's just my take - others are certainly free to feel otherwise.


----------



## zephyr17 (Nov 1, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> In my observing them at Congressional meetings and other venues neither struck me as particularly stupid. I certainly have some disagreements with their points of view on various Amtrak issues but they did not strike me as idiots. But that's just my take - others are certainly free to feel otherwise.


Being an over confident know-it-all is a less obvious and more subtle form of stupidity, but remains stupidity nevertheless.

I have seen many well spoken executives whose knowledge was severely lacking and whose confidence in their unfounded ideas was boundless. They did not appear overtly stupid but to quote an overused but applicable Forrest Gump truism: "Stupid is as stupid does."


----------



## jis (Nov 1, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> In my observing them at Congressional meetings and other venues neither struck me as particularly stupid. I certainly have some disagreements with their points of view on various Amtrak issues but they did not strike me as idiots. But that's just my take - others are certainly free to feel otherwise.


I think one can be ignorant in a particular context thus proving to be ineffectual and counter productive without being generically stupid though. I think both Moorman And Anderson suffered from this malady in spades, Anderson with arrogance added on for good measure. In that sense they were more foolish in a situation rather than stupid overall.


----------



## zephyr17 (Nov 1, 2021)

jis said:


> I think one can be ignorant in a particular context thus proving to be ineffectual and counter productive without being generically stupid though. I think both Moorman And Anderson suffered from this malady in spades, Anderson with arrogance added on for good measure. In that sense they were more foolish in a situation rather than stupid overall.


Well said. "Foolish" works for me. Manipulative, Machiavellian genius, not so much.


----------



## jis (Nov 1, 2021)

Cal said:


> I’m confused, so Boardman didn’t want to downgrade dining on any trains?


He pretty much said that if his hands were not forced he would have preferred to not downgrade. But some early downgrades did happen in his time though nothing remotely like what happened after he left. He also criticized those later downgrades and the attempts to decimate the LD network. Who knows whether he meant it or not and we have no way of asking him any more.


----------



## west point (Nov 1, 2021)

What anyone from middle to upper management needs are certain skills. Those persons have to be able to know if what they are being told is the whole story or even the truth. But even more important is to find out what they are not being told that can affect their decisions. From what has been posted by many more knowledgeable people here is that is especially important in managing a RR of any kind.


----------



## lordsigma (Nov 1, 2021)

Anderson was definitely arrogant there’s no doubt about that.


----------



## Willbridge (Nov 2, 2021)

west point said:


> What anyone from middle to upper management needs are certain skills. Those persons have to be able to know if what they are being told is the whole story or even the truth. But even more important is to find out what they are not being told that can affect their decisions. From what has been posted by many more knowledgeable people here is that is especially important in managing a RR of any kind.


In the early years of Amtrak it was said that a couple of their presidents read _Rail Travel News _to find out what was really going on.

I do know that Western P.R. director Art Lloyd showed Graham Claytor a set of 5x7's of the City and County of Denver's proposed sites for an Amshack replacement for Union Station. According to Art, Claytor "used Navy words" when he saw them and put a stop to consideration by Operations of relocating. That was totally outside the chain of command but Art recognized the effects on ridership the relocation would have and the end of a potential he foresaw for commuter rail use of DUS. Claytor knew that he could get the straight **** from Art.


----------



## west point (Nov 2, 2021)

Is Amtrak short personnel ? The answer is a definite yes. The present careers section has openings 283 listed. T hat includes 7 engineers in the NE . Cannot remember number of OS but had several openings for Chefs as well as other OBS.


----------



## Devil's Advocate (Nov 2, 2021)

lordsigma said:


> I'm sure if you asked Anderson or Gardner they'd tell you now it paid off and got them federal funding to deal with it. I didn't like it, but it did result in extra funding.


When Anderson was asked about the Southwest Chief he repeatedly stated that he wanted to turn it into a bus bridge. So far as I am aware his position and reasoning never wavered despite being challenged by grassroots activism and undermined by additional maintenance funding.



lordsigma said:


> In my observing them at Congressional meetings and other venues neither struck me as particularly stupid. I certainly have some disagreements with their points of view on various Amtrak issues but they did not strike me as idiots. But that's just my take - others are certainly free to feel otherwise.


Regardless of intelligence Anderson never came across as especially clever, which seems to be a core requirement of the reverse psychology theory.


----------



## lordsigma (Nov 2, 2021)

I think that’s exactly what he wanted and i wasn’t arguing that he didn’t - I just wouldn’t be surprised if they figured the worst thing that could happen is congress says no and they get money thrown at them and then they don’t have to pull it out of the operating margin - either way they win. Maybe I’m wrong and they aren’t that smart and didn’t think of that. But I kind of thought that’s exactly what was going to happen at the time and I’m not going to call myself any sort of genius. Just my take - I could easily be wrong.


----------



## nti1094 (Nov 6, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> Correct. And they sent their withdrawal letter to only one of the coalition members (and didn't indicate that they needed to circulate it) so that reaction to the news was delayed.
> 
> They also had not really worked out their alternative. The transfer times at each end of the bus link and the running times on segments of two-lane highway with minimal shoulders would have meant losing connections in Chicago and/or Los Angeles.
> 
> ...


Oh I think it was researched completely, and that is exactly why it was proposed. It’s like the spirit of the Southern Pacific liven on in Amtrak to this day. 
It’s sacrilege that they would pull a very SP move on the sacred ground of the Chief.


----------



## Palmland (Nov 21, 2021)

I saw 98, the northbound Silver Meteor, in Deland Fl. I was pleased to see it was back to its full consist: 4 coaches, cafe, diner, VII, VI, VII sleepers, baggage. Big crowd getting on.


----------



## neroden (Nov 22, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Well, Gardner was a prominent member of that management team and "fell" upwards to become Amtrak's COO. Obviously, being an oblivious moron is no impediment to gaining the C-Suite at Amtrak.


I still consider Gardner a problem. He has a record of proposing really stupid ideas designed to sabotage national rail service, over and over again. I am open to the idea that he's "changed his stripes", but....


----------



## enviro5609 (Nov 23, 2021)

We were on 21 Texas Eagle that left Chicago yesterday 11/22.

There was a third coach but still only 1 sleeper and 1 CCC. The cafe line was crazy. I felt bad for the staff— clearly overworked and overwhelmed. We tipped a little extra.


----------



## lordsigma (Nov 23, 2021)

I could be wrong but I think Gardner is more big on expanding corridors than he is any sort of principled against long distance service - if Congress gives him the money to do both he’ll take it. I think Anderson was also similar. I think they saw cutting LD as an opportunity to redistribute money to corridor building rather than any sort of principled hatred for the network. I think the idea was - all that money to fix the SWC route would be better spent on Atlanta - Charlotte as an example. They saw operating a few luxury LD routes and then otherwise focusing on corridors. But again if congress says run LD AND build out the corridors here’s the money I don’t think Gardner will object too loudly so long as he can build his corridors and gets his NEC money.


----------



## Amtrakfflyer (Nov 23, 2021)

As per above Gardner and Flynn’s actions especially with the Texas Eagle don’t show a management that wants to run a successful long distance network in its entirety. We should have a clearer picture in a year, post CoVid issues with stable funding in place.

It’s hard for me to get past Gardner and Anderson’s shouting match with what they had to know was falsified facts regarding the SWC. Amtrak’s accounting has to get in order more so now than ever.


----------

