# Transport Companys' handling of Daylight Saving Time



## Hans627

We will be traveling overnight this coming Sat., 11/9, and that will be when DST ends. Someone will be picking us up in BAL. Will our arrival time as per the schedule be accurate (excluding any delays of course)?

Thx


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## denmarks

Since the clocks are turned back an hour the train will just hold for 1 hour at the nearest station during the change. This assumes that they are not already late. When clocks move forward they just try to make up the time and can be late at some stations.


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## SubwayNut

The train will sit for an hour in the middle of the night (if it's running on time) closest to 2:00am


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## AmtrakBlue

The arrival time on your ticket takes into consideration the time change.


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## Danib62

SubwayNut said:


> The train will sit for an hour in the middle of the night (if it's running on time) closest to 2:00am


This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.


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## AmtrakBlue

Danib62 said:


> This is the most insane thing have ever heard.


The train cannot leave a station until its scheduled departure time. Scheduled departure times at and after 2 am are moved back an hour. So, what do you propose? My guess is not that many trains will have to wait a whole hour.


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## Danib62

You adjust the schedule for trains that night to reflect the clock change.


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## Rasputin

Danib62 said:


> You adjust the schedule for trains that night to reflect the clock change.


That would confuse people who do not receive notice of the schedule change, including those of us who have been waiting to see the regular schedules promised in September.


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## jis

Danib62 said:


> You adjust the schedule for trains that night to reflect the clock change.


Heck most of them are probably running late by some amount anyway. Even if they are not, the hassle of administering alternative timetable for a day is simply not worth it specially in the relatively lose scheduling used for LD trains in the first place anyway. It is really not a problem at all so it does not really need investment of resources for putting an unnecessary solution in place.


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## Danib62

Who needs notice? You just program the correct times into the schedule when you put the tickets on sale. The reservation should just always show the correct time. If anything the fact that there is no printed timetable anymore makes this easier to implement but even if there was a timetable you can easily fix this with a footnote that says "the scheduled train will depart an hour earlier than the scheduled time for all stops after XXX station on 11/7/2021."

Do you think airlines just have their planes circle for an hour that night in order to "stay on schedule"?


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## Danib62

Also I hate to be the bearer of bad news: as much as we all loved them (and I really do love my collection of national timetables) printed timetables are never coming back and no one outside of a few niche message boards on the internet cares.


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## Rasputin

Danib62 said:


> Also I hate to be the bearer of bad news: as much as we all loved them (and I really do love my collection of national timetables) printed timetables are never coming back and no one outside of a few niche message boards on the internet cares.


Based on Amtrak's recent history, digital timetables are not coming back either.


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## Danib62

And even fewer people care about that.


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## Ryan

Creating bespoke schedules for a single day sounds like an awful lot of work for almost no return.

The real solution is to get rid of the stupid time change twice a year. Pick a schedule and stick with it.


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## Devil's Advocate

Danib62 said:


> You adjust the schedule for trains that night to reflect the clock change.


Can you give an example of a problem your recommendation solves? So far as I am aware this is how it has always been done and it never seemed to be much of a problem during the 0.5% of the year that in-progress trains are affected.



Danib62 said:


> This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.


I would give almost anything for _this_ to be the most insane thing I had ever heard.



Ryan said:


> The real solution is to get rid of the stupid time change twice a year. Pick a schedule and stick with it.


A Real American solution is to launch a freedom war against clocks and government mandated timekeeping.


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## Brian Battuello

Devil's Advocate said:


> A Real American solution is to launch a freedom war against clocks and government mandated timekeeping.



I like it. Let's go back to when every town set noon by the sun over a convenient steeple or town hall. The railroads gaveth time zones and the railroads can taketh away.

BTW, pre-Amtrak the Santa Fe Hassayampa Flyer from Phoenix to Ash Fork/Williams happily left the station on Mountain Daylight Time in the summer, despite Arizona being on Mountain Standard Time. Santa Fe decided it was easier to keep the entire railroad on Daylight time. Caused more than a few (including me) to miss the train.


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## caravanman

Danib62 said:


> This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.


I take it you have never watched Fox News then?


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## jruff001

Danib62 said:


> This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.


You must live a pretty sheltered life.


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## Cal

jruff001 said:


> You must live a pretty sheltered life.


It doesn't even break the top 20 of insane things Amtrak has done.


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## yyy

denmarks said:


> Since the clocks are turned back an hour the train will just hold for 1 hour at the nearest station during the change. This assumes that they are not already late. When clocks move forward they just try to make up the time and can be late at some stations.


So, all the train will be late for 1 hour when DST begins?


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## CCC1007

yyy said:


> So, all the train will be late for 1 hour when DST begins?


Yes.


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## Ryan

Not really "late for 1 hour", more precisely it will become one hour later at the moment of the time change, where it may continue to lose or make up time for the rest of its journey.


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## Bonser

Danib62 said:


> This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.


Railroads are responsible for time zones and standard times were created in the 19th century for railroad efficiency and safety. It makes perfect sense that they'd stop for an hour if running on time.


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## Hans627

Thanks to all for answering my question. I had no idea it would spawn so many interesting comments!


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## Rasputin

I was on an overnight VIA train some years ago at the change of time. At close to 2 a.m., the train made an extended stop at one station for about 45 minutes after which the train left and proceeded (perhaps at reduced speed -I can't recall) in order to arrive at the next station on time. there was no announcement made and most passengers were asleep and I assume did not notice the extended stop.


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## AmtrakBlue

Hans627 said:


> Thanks to all for answering my question. I had no idea it would spawn so many interesting comments!


Happens all the time here.


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## jis

Danib62 said:


> Do you think airlines just have their planes circle for an hour that night in order to "stay on schedule"?


If necessary, they'd generally get to the end of the segment they are flying, then land and wait on the ground for their next departure. No different from what trains do. OTOH, many do fly around in circles for an hour before landing. Try arriving at London Heathrow early in the morning before the curfew has ended, due to favorable tail winds across the pond and have a repeated scenic tour of Epsom or some south of London suburb over and over and over again. 

However, several of the major airlines actually have more capable flight management systems and do not depend on hosts to manage their schedules as Amtrak does, so they have more flexibility in how they at least internally timetable their flights.

The other interesting point about airlines is that for all blocks and specially for the longer leg blocks their schedules are based on estimates of mean block time anyway. It is quite normal for them to be sometimes hours early or late depending on which way the winds were blowing that day. Nothing that anyone can do anything about short of creating timetables on the fly and modifying them in flight for each flight. Incidentally that information is usually available in _flight status_, just like Amtrak publishes similar information in _train status_.

Airlines on longer legs do fly wildly different routes on each flight based on wind, weather and sometimes political factors on that given day.

In conclusion I gather that the question asked was a rhetorical one and not a serious one, or that there is much unfamiliarity about how things operate in the real world involved.


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## Brian Battuello

And Hans627, with Amtrak it's a good idea to tell your pickup people either to check the status page (if it is working) or tell them you'll call an hour out.


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## Barb Stout

Ryan said:


> Creating bespoke schedules for a single day sounds like an awful lot of work for almost no return.
> 
> The real solution is to get rid of the stupid time change twice a year. Pick a schedule and stick with it.


Yep, not switching back and forth between MST and MDT is pretty much the only thing I miss most about living in AZ. The SWC is not scheduled to be in AZ during the 2 am hour, correct?


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## Lonnie

Brian Battuello said:


> I like it. Let's go back to when every town set noon by the sun over a convenient steeple or town hall.


Churches were (and still are) grouped around a central green in small towns and their steeples typically had one or more clocks. Most people couldn't afford a watch so these clocks and their chimings were the available timepieces. However, the clocks rarely agreed with each other, so you would specify: "I'll meet you at 4 o'clock Congregational time." Or Presbyterian time etc, as the case may be.


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## Ryan

jis said:


> Try arriving at London Heathrow early in the morning before the curfew has ended, due to favorable tail winds across the pond and have a repeated scenic tour of Epsom or some south of London suburb over and over and over again.


This got me curious, and looking at United 918 (IAD-LHR) has an entertaining loop or two every morning when she arrives in London (unless she's late):


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## Ryan

Lonnie said:


> Churches were (and still are) grouped around a central green in small towns and their steeples typically had one or more clocks. Most people couldn't afford a watch so these clocks and their chimings were the available timepieces. However, the clocks rarely agreed with each other, so you would specify: "I'll meet you at 4 o'clock Congregational time." Or Presbyterian time etc, as the case may be.


The tradition persists (in a way) - as a congregation, we are habitually... not punctual... to the point where folks refer to "Ark and Dove time" much to the chagrin of our head pastor who tries mightily to keep things moving in a timely manner.


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## AmtrakMaineiac

I don't recall ever arriving at Heathrow without circling for a while, usually over the Staines reservoirs. Even going back to my first trip in 1961 aboard a PanAm DC-7C, back when real airplanes had propellers


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## jis

Ryan said:


> This got me curious, and looking at United 918 (IAD-LHR) has an entertaining loop or two every morning when she arrives in London (unless she's late):
> View attachment 25356


I speak from personal experience. I don't need a map of south suburbs of London anymore ---- juuust kidding.

In the reverse direction, often the Canadians get to do the honors before feeding the oceanic flights into the hopper of the US en route flow control network.

US domestically tries mightily to avoid such by flow controlling a lot of things at the source by using select ground holds for selected routes based on expected congestion at destination many hours out. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. Afterall you cannot precisely guess the arrival details of thunderstorms over airport, which basically shuts down ground operations. When it doesn't work (NY TCO is notorious for that), approaching Newark from the West you get to enjoy the scenery around Williamsport PA or some such  and sometimes even get to enjoy at ground views at random airports here and there within the range of the remaining fuel One time coming back from Barabados we enjoyed several hours at BWI while a vicious front took its own time passing over the New York area.


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## Chatter163

Danib62 said:


> This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.


Really? Your life must be austere, indeed.


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## alpha3

Danib62 said:


> Who needs notice? You just program the correct times into the schedule when you put the tickets on sale. The reservation should just always show the correct time. If anything the fact that there is no printed timetable anymore makes this easier to implement but even if there was a timetable you can easily fix this with a footnote that says "the scheduled train will depart an hour earlier than the scheduled time for all stops after XXX station on 11/7/2021."
> 
> Do you think airlines just have their planes circle for an hour that night in order to "stay on schedule"?


Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads. The time at any given location in the world is the 'time.' Period. That's what computerized scheduling is for. It may look weird on schedules during a time change but so what. The train arrived x location at 2am and leaves 30min later at 130am. Time change. So what.


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## AmtrakBlue

alpha3 said:


> Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads. The time at any given location in the world is the 'time.' Period. That's what computerized scheduling is for. It may look weird on schedules during a time change but so what. The train arrived x location at 2am and leaves 30min later at 130am. Time change. So what.


Do planes run on host flight patterns?


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## AmtrakBlue

Ok, you naysayers, how about letting us know how many trains are affected by the Thome change - how many are scheduled to arrive/depart stations within an hour of 2 am?


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## Devil's Advocate

alpha3 said:


> Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads. The time at any given location in the world is the 'time.' Period. That's what computerized scheduling is for. It may look weird on schedules during a time change but so what. The train arrived x location at 2am and leaves 30min later at 130am. Time change. So what.


So it's ludicrous and prehistoric by "any measure" but the only measure considered is what you presume airlines might do with no regard to what other passenger trains actually do. Then you go into some circular logic about the time being the time because "period" and "so what?" Thanks for that helpful and well reasoned explanation.



jis said:


> For example there are two warring camps which actually agree that DST should be done away with but are ready to kill each other on the issue of whether the year round time should be the DTS for that time zone or the standard time for that time zone. And of course are warring on the same side with the DST aficionados simultaneously!


So far as I can tell the year-round DST camp seems to have most of the momentum despite also having the most difficult path to success among the three options.


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## alpha3

Devil's Advocate said:


> So it's ludicrous and prehistoric by "any measure" but the only measure considered is what you presume airlines might do with no regard to what other passenger trains actually do. Then you go into some circular logic about the time being the time because "period" and "so what?" Thanks for that helpful and well reasoned explanation.



You're not providing anything well reasoned; all you're doing is attacking what I said without providing any informed debate whatsoever. And I'm not presuming what air carriers do. I'm very familiar as I worked in the operations center of a major carrier for several years. Amtrak, as many people comment on here, has a need to upgrade lots of things, not the least of which is their IT - and their operations can use some upgrade as well. I'm not a fan of DST, it would be better by far to stick to one time like standard time, but I doubt that'll happen. All that's being said here is that in this day and age of computerization of all things, there are more efficient ways to handle the time change than by just sitting or becoming an hour late and trying to make it up.


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## jebr

alpha3 said:


> You're not providing anything well reasoned; all you're doing is attacking what I said without providing any informed debate whatsoever. And I'm not presuming what air carriers do. I'm very familiar as I worked in the operations center of a major carrier for several years. Amtrak, as many people comment on here, has a need to upgrade lots of things, not the least of which is their IT - and their operations can use some upgrade as well. I'm not a fan of DST, it would be better by far to stick to one time like standard time, but I doubt that'll happen. All that's being said here is that in this day and age of computerization of all things, there are more efficient ways to handle the time change than by just sitting or becoming an hour late and trying to make it up.



Ways that the host railroads will agree to? That the computer won't complain about? That passengers will easily understand? The Empire Builder leaves MSP at 8 am daily; why muddle that by saying "except on the two days after DST starts and ends, then it'll shift an hour?" 

The solution isn't elegant, but it works without breaking what people "know" is the time for "their train," it's something that everyone has agreed upon, and it's able to work with the current computer systems. Why spend hundreds, if not thousands, of people hours trying to make a few trains work slightly better a few times a year?


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## Qapla

And .... the people riding the trains on those days should already know that those adjustments are being made if they just pay attention


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## CCC1007

Qapla said:


> And .... the people riding the trains on those days should already know that those adjustments are being made if they just pay attention


"If they just pay attention"
See all the threads about collisions with vehicles? Do you think the general public actually pays any attention to stuff outside their own lives? Even a time change can sneak up on a person very easily...


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## Qapla

I guess it is a big *IF*


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## SarahZ

What is everyone so pressed about? If a train holds for an hour, it still arrives at the next station on time due to the time change.


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## Willbridge

The Daylight Time shifts also cause problems for intercity buses, urban transit, Sunday newspapers, delivery services, and the like. There also are various dates for the switch, depending on which country you communicate with.

That's aside from the proven health problems.


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## lstone19

alpha3 said:


> Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads.



As a former airline operations analyst with considerable involvement in schedules, I disagree that airline schedules are more complex than railroads (well, in some ways they are but in others they aren't). First, at least at my carrier, schedules are based in UTC (aka GMT) and are then converted to local. So the time change gets incorporated into the schedule as viewed in local time automatically.

Second, flights are managed by segment - a segment being a departure to an arrival. Even if the flight has multiple segments, each segment is managed on its own (if Amtrak ran a train by segment, a NYP-WAS Acela would be managed as NYP-NWK, then NWK-PHL, PHL-WIL, etc.). So an airline flight segment is affected by a time change only if it occurred during that segment; with Amtrak, a time change on the first night of a two-night train affects every segment downline of it until the train reaches it's terminus over 24 hours later.

Third, the only flights affected by time changes are red-eyes. At least for my carrier, that's a relatively small number domestically. And as for international, North America and Europe don't change on the same dates. While the U.S. moves off daylight time tonight, Europe did it a week ago so for my carrier, we had temporary schedules for all this week (in the Spring, Europe changes on the last Sunday of March). And then some countries don't change at all and it's largely backwards in the southern hemisphere.

So for tonight, let's say there is a San Francisco-Chicago flight that normally departs SFO at 11:30pm (0630 UTC) and arrives Chicago at 5:30am (1030 UTC). Tonight, it would still be in the schedule as 0630 to 1030 except the arrival time at Chicago would translate to 4:30am and that's what the passenger would see. And if the were then connecting to a flight further east at 7:00am, it's still going to depart at 7:00am so just like Amtrak, they get to sit for an hour only they do it at their connecting airport rather than having their flight hold for an hour.

Now if this were March when we turn the clocks ahead an hour, that normal 5:30am arrival becomes 6:30am. Does the passenger risk missing their connection? No, because the reservation system builds legal connections on the fly and never offers the customer the illegal 6:30am to 7:00am connection (or schedule planning sees the problem in advance and moves that 11:30pm departure up to 11:00pm for one night to restore the connections - and most people won't even realize it was changed for one night as I don't think any airline publishes full timetables anymore).


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## jis

@lstone19 you hit the nail on the head in pointing out that airlines are scheduled by segments whereas trains are scheduled by train identity. As you point out, trying to schedule trains like airlines would be quite ludicrous. I was alluding to this in my earlier post but did not do a very good job of it. So thank you for pointing this out so succinctly. 

And the knock on effect of this stretching into schedules for multiple days itself makes it worthwhile to not propagate it in timetable but let the normal course of late running take care of it in March and bring things to timetable close to the place where the time change occurs in November. It is perfectly logical and there is absolutely no need to change this.


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## joelkfla

So if a train is scheduled to depart at 1:30 am, is it the first 1:30 am, or the 2nd one? And does it make difference whether it's the originating terminal or a stop en route?

And what about an exact 2 am departure?


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## jis

It is an issue only in November fall back. One could just stick to the first occurrence. Things will iron out at the next stop assuming it is after 2am. If not rinse and repeat.


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## TheTuck

joelkfla said:


> So if a train is scheduled to depart at 1:30 am, is it the first 1:30 am, or the 2nd one? And does it make difference whether it's the originating terminal or a stop en route?


Obviously the first one. If I was a passenger boarding at 130am, I'd make sure I was there at the first 1:30.


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## Willbridge

lstone19 said:


> As a former airline operations analyst with considerable involvement in schedules, I disagree that airline schedules are more complex than railroads (well, in some ways they are but in others they aren't). First, at least at my carrier, schedules are based in UTC (aka GMT) and are then converted to local. So the time change gets incorporated into the schedule as viewed in local time automatically.
> 
> Second, flights are managed by segment - a segment being a departure to an arrival. Even if the flight has multiple segments, each segment is managed on its own (if Amtrak ran a train by segment, a NYP-WAS Acela would be managed as NYP-NWK, then NWK-PHL, PHL-WIL, etc.). So an airline flight segment is affected by a time change only if it occurred during that segment; with Amtrak, a time change on the first night of a two-night train affects every segment downline of it until the train reaches it's terminus over 24 hours later.
> 
> Third, the only flights affected by time changes are red-eyes. At least for my carrier, that's a relatively small number domestically. And as for international, North America and Europe don't change on the same dates. While the U.S. moves off daylight time tonight, Europe did it a week ago so for my carrier, we had temporary schedules for all this week (in the Spring, Europe changes on the last Sunday of March). And then some countries don't change at all and it's largely backwards in the southern hemisphere.
> 
> So for tonight, let's say there is a San Francisco-Chicago flight that normally departs SFO at 11:30pm (0630 UTC) and arrives Chicago at 5:30am (1030 UTC). Tonight, it would still be in the schedule as 0630 to 1030 except the arrival time at Chicago would translate to 4:30am and that's what the passenger would see. And if the were then connecting to a flight further east at 7:00am, it's still going to depart at 7:00am so just like Amtrak, they get to sit for an hour only they do it at their connecting airport rather than having their flight hold for an hour.
> 
> Now if this were March when we turn the clocks ahead an hour, that normal 5:30am arrival becomes 6:30am. Does the passenger risk missing their connection? No, because the reservation system builds legal connections on the fly and never offers the customer the illegal 6:30am to 7:00am connection (or schedule planning sees the problem in advance and moves that 11:30pm departure up to 11:00pm for one night to restore the connections - and most people won't even realize it was changed for one night as I don't think any airline publishes full timetables anymore).


Thanks for the details. One former colleague at RTD in Denver had worked at the (old) Frontier Airlines and he found that transit scheduling for a big system was far more complex than airline scheduling in terms of the possible connections and running time variations through the day but airline scheduling with its day to day variations had the unique complexities that you describe.


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## UserNameRequired

Ryan said:


> This got me curious, and looking at United 918 (IAD-LHR) has an entertaining loop or two every morning when she arrives in London (unless she's late):
> View attachment 25356



Guessing a hold southeast OCKHAM VOR 140 radial?


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## Steve4031

Here is an example for the Empire Builder which was running 2 hours late and now will probably be on time into Minneapolis.


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## Steve4031

Here’s the link Train Details


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## Hans627

I'm the OP on this thread and thought I would give an update on what happened relative to DST. The train *DID NOT *stop and hold for an hour overnight. We arrived BAL almost 45 minutes early. We waited for our ride and it was not a big issue. They also departed early from BAL. Not sure how those getting on the train handled this. Perhaps they were notified the train was going to depart early.

What was somewhat of an issue was scrambling to get dressed and get a cup of coffee before we arrived in BAL.

I thought I would post this for future reference.

Thanks!


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## AmtrakBlue

Hans627 said:


> I'm the OP on this thread and thought I would give an update on what happened relative to DST. The train *DID NOT *stop and hold for an hour overnight. We arrived BAL almost 45 minutes early. We waited for our ride and it was not a big issue. They also departed early from BAL. Not sure how those getting on the train handled this. Perhaps they were notified the train was going to depart early.
> 
> What was somewhat of an issue was scrambling to get dressed and get a cup of coffee before we arrived in BAL.
> 
> I thought I would post this for future reference.
> 
> Thanks!


What train were you traveling on? I'm guessing it was a long-distance train. Those trains are discharge/detrain only between WAS and NYP. So they can leave WAS early once they swap the engines and continue to be early all the way up to NYP.


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## Hans627

OK, I guess that makes sense. But it also left all the stations prior to WAS early as well (stations after DST ended at 2:00 AM).

I'm sorry as I should have mentioned it was train no. 98.


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## jis

Hans627 said:


> OK, I guess that makes sense. But it also left all the stations prior to WAS early as well (stations after DST ended at 2:00 AM).
> 
> I'm sorry as I should have mentioned it was train no. 98.


I suspect somehow your station time records got muddled somehow....

According to Amtrak it departed Richmond and Fredericksburg on schedule. It left Alexandria early. I am not certain but it is possible that Alexandria is a discharge only station.

Prior to that it left Fayetteville 1:57 late at 1:34am, and then left both Rocky Mount and Petersburg on time at respectively 2:09am and 3:33am. So it made good use of that one hour to make up time 

It did arrive Washington DC 38 mins early and depart 46 mins early, which is par for the course if it gets clear track north of Fredericksburg. Has happened to me many times even without DST change in the mix. It arrived Baltimore 51 mins early and departed 53 mins early which is par for the course.

Looks like it got a good run all through north of Fayetteville NC.


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## Barb Stout

Steve4031 said:


> Here’s the link Train Details


Looks like Amtrak considered 1:55 am to be good enough to be called 2 am. For sure 1:58 am has to be good enough to be called 2 am.

1383DVLDevils Lake, ND11/611:37P1:33A
1:34AArrived 1 hour 56 minutes late.
Departed 1 hour 57 minutes late.Station
History1468GFKGrand Forks, ND11/71:02A1:55A
1:58AArrived 53 minutes late.
Departed 56 minutes late.


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## saxman

Barb Stout said:


> Looks like Amtrak considered 1:55 am to be good enough to be called 2 am. For sure 1:58 am has to be good enough to be called 2 am.
> 
> 1383DVLDevils Lake, ND11/611:37P1:33A
> 1:34AArrived 1 hour 56 minutes late.
> Departed 1 hour 57 minutes late.Station
> History1468GFKGrand Forks, ND11/71:02A1:55A
> 1:58AArrived 53 minutes late.
> Departed 56 minutes late.


It left Devils Lake at 1:34 AM. Soon after that 2 AM came and the time became 1 AM between DVL and GFK. So it left GFK at 1:58 AM, after the time change had occurred. Instead of being nearly 2 hours late, it became only 1 hour late. It didn’t need to dwell in the station anywhere.


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## lstone19

jis said:


> According to Amtrak it departed Richmond and Fredericksburg on schedule. It left Alexandria early. I am not certain but it is possible that Alexandria is a discharge only station.



According to the last PDF timetable I could find, all stops from Fredericksburg north are discharge only so an early arrival at any of them is a possibility any day of the year.



> Prior to that it left Fayetteville 1:57 late at 1:34am, and then left both Rocky Mount and Petersburg on time at respectively 2:09am and 3:33am. So it made good use of that one hour to make up time
> 
> ...
> Looks like it got a good run all through north of Fayetteville NC.



There's something wonky with the schedule reported for 98-6, probably related to the time change. Normally, 98 is scheduled at Fayetteville at 12:37am. But on 11/6, it was shown as 11:37pm. So between the time being moved an hour earlier at Fayetteville plus the hour time change, easy to see why it lost 1:38 between Florence and Fayetteville (with the normal 12:37am, it would only have been 0:57 late at Fayetteville) and them make up the entire 1:57 between Fayetteville and Rocky Mount.


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## Danib62

yyy said:


> So, all the train will be late for 1 hour when DST begins?


This would actually be an improvement for most long distance trains.


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## alpha3

lstone19 said:


> As a former airline operations analyst with considerable involvement in schedules, I disagree that airline schedules are more complex than railroads *(well, in some ways they are but in others they aren't).*


 LoL. Glad you realized how silly that sounded. The Americans, Deltas, and Uniteds of this world have far more complicated ops. The bottom line is schedules are _managed ,_ to account for the vagaries of DST. Some flights operate, with times massaged, others are canceled to save crew usage, positioning, and other stuff. Trains could do the same. A buddy of mine in Germany just told me the overnite long distance Deutsch Bahns just keep going; he also said they don't operate many of the S-Bahns (intercity locals).


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## pennyk

MODERATOR NOTE: please keep your comments on the topic of Daylight Saving Time as it relates to Amtrak and also please post in a friendly manner focusing on ideas and not on the individual presenting those ideas. Thank you.


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## west point

Duty time limits can become a problem when going back to standard time. Airlines can have the problem also. The RR 12 HOS can rear its ugly head. Since most scheduled on duty times are much less cannot imagine much problem except with the usual freight train interference that happens to passenger trains.


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## jis

MODERATOR'S NOTES: A very large number of posts which had nothing to do with trains or transportation but are about Daylight Saving Time and Time Zones have been moved to their own thred in The Lounge:



https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/daylight-saving-time-and-time-zones-general-discussion.81483/



Please post only materials to do with how Daylight Saving Time is handled by transport companies in this thread and everything else to do with Daylight Saving Time or Time Zones in the general discussion thread in the Lounge.

Thank you for your consideration and understanding.


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