Time Before "X" and Text Delayed Train Alerts

What did we do before "modern technology" when a train was significantly late? I think about this a lot when I see trains are hours behind schedule. I am old enough to remember the days when you would sit at an unstaffed station ( granted, there were far more staffed stations back in the day) in all kinds of weather with no idea if/when a train would arrive. I recall around the early 80s Amtrak initiated an automated call-number to check on status, but that was before cell phones so obviously you had to have access to a landline or pay phones, which were of course more plentiful in past years.

PaTrainFan said:

What did we do before "modern technology" when a train was significantly late? I think about this a lot when I see trains are hours behind schedule. I am old enough to remember the days when you would sit at an unstaffed station ( granted, there were far more staffed stations back in the day) in all kinds of weather with no idea if/when a train would arrive. I recall around the early 80s Amtrak initiated an automated call-number to check on status, but that was before cell phones so obviously you had to have access to a landline or pay phones, which were of course more plentiful in past years.

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Oddly enough I have no recollection of using a notification service. The train status thing worked just fine, and that is what I tended to use.

That does not mean there was no notification service. It is just that I did not use it enough to remember what it was like.

Pay phones were a lot more prevalent, even at unstaffed stations. Looks like 800-USA-RAIL debuted in 1983. Prior to that there were regional numbers but I don't know how helpful they would have been for train statuses.

Here's the pay phone at Benson, AZ in 1999.

I can remember using those regional toll-free numbers that existed before 800-USA-RAIL. You could use them to get train status information. Of course, there was no Julie in those days, so if you called you were connected to a live person and maybe had to wait on hold for one to become available if it was a busy time of day. Then as now, the agents at the call center sometimes didn't know the details of what was happening on the ground, so a train sometimes would show up sooner or much later than they predicted. In the '70s and early '80s, I remember station phone numbers being listed in the national timetable, so you also could call the nearest staffed station, which in my experience was more likely to result in accurate information about delays.

At a staffed station I'd hope the staff would keep you apprised of delays. Failing that, I guess there was the bar if one was available; I was just a little too young for pre-Internet rail travel.

At unstaffed stations? Payphone call to 800-USA-RAIL.

Either way I'd have a book handy, and probably something to eat or drink. (Hence, my signature line.)

I started riding Amtrak with technology at my disposal, but it seems like it would be such a headache to figure out train status back then. Even now sometimes you have no idea why a train is late, but at least you can usually find out where it is. Having no information at all seems like it could be very frustrating.

When I was bored at work I used to call Julie and ask about train status just for fun. As a kid when we took Amtrak - we would just arrive and then look at the sign or ask the station agent - they would tell us if the train was delayed. Even as a kid I loved the old dome cars that were at the time still on the City of New Orleans - my parents asked the agent if he knew if the dome car was on the train that day and he said "let's find out" - and printed out the manifest for the train and let me keep it. This was the old-style computer paper with the hole on either side - goodness now I feel old. But I still have that memory!

I also still have the memory from last summer of a VIA rail agent in Vancouver refusing to print me a ticket saying "I'm not wasting my ticket stock - you can show them on your phone" - my how times have changed.

crescent-zephyr said:

I also still have the memory from last summer of a VIA rail agent in Vancouver refusing to print me a ticket saying "I'm not wasting my ticket stock - you can show them on your phone" - my how times have changed.

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He took a page out of Amtrak "customer service."

crescent-zephyr said:

I also still have the memory from last summer of a VIA rail agent in Vancouver refusing to print me a ticket saying "I'm not wasting my ticket stock - you can show them on your phone"

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If this attitude ever becomes widespread, those who don't have smart phones will be out of luck. (This is why we always travel with multiple hard copies of our e-tickets distributed among our various carry-on bags.)

Before all but the major station phone numbers described above, it was possible to call the dispatcher. That continued into early Amtrak days, when the customer service telephone centers got their status reports from the station agents at stops. In Salem, Train 14 was frequently reported on time at KFS, and then would jump to one or two hours late reported at EUG. The SP dispatcher in Portland knew where the train really was in the long non-stop stretch. In the other direction, the NP (BN) dispatcher in Tacoma knew what was going on. The Tacoma dispatcher could be reached from SLM via the state phone line to Portland and then dial the SP&S switchboard operator and ask to be put through to the Tacoma dispatcher.

This required talking like a white-collar railroader, but it helped a few times when the governor's office wanted a status report in bad weather. No one ever asked who I was.

In or about 1995 I received a memorable location report from Amtrak customer service. I was in unstaffed Greeley waiting for Train 26. Several other passengers and I were disappointed to see an underpowered cement train pull onto the main line from the siding it had been idling on at exactly the time that 26 was due. Up till then, as passengers took turns calling, it had been reported on time. Now it was my turn -- and the customer service agent told me that the Pioneer had just left Everett. Luckily, she was open-minded enough to check her info again. It had gone from on-time at Laramie to late at Borie.

I used the Fredericksburg, Va., station hundreds of times per year riding both VRE and Amtrak beginning in 1996. For many years there was no Amtrak status information in the station. You could go down to street level and call Amtrak from a pay phone, but for years the only information you could get was when the train had left Staples Mill Road or Washington. If it was somewhere in between, the person on the Amtrak phone line could only guess when the train might get to Fredericksburg. If the train was hours late, it was a difficult choice to consider walking two blocks to the nearest public restroom: the train might arrive while you were gone, but what if the delay lasted another hour?

Alexandria, Virginia, which I also used a lot during those years, offered no train status information either. Train time would come and go without an announcement of your train's status or even an acknowledgment that your train existed. Only a few years ago the Alexandria station got an electronic information board, and it mostly worked.

Cal said:

I started riding Amtrak with technology at my disposal, but it seems like it would be such a headache to figure out train status back then. Even now sometimes you have no idea why a train is late, but at least you can usually find out where it is. Having no information at all seems like it could be very frustrating.

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Off-topic a bit, but I took three international trips before the Internet was reliable on cell phones. One was a thru-hike in Wales, which meant I was mostly concerned with sunrise and sunset. Another trip was to the Caribbean where transportation was pre-arranged. But the third trip was to the Greek islands.

At the time I had reliable DSL at home and a couple of ferry timetables were online, so before I left I could sketch out a rough itinerary for my parents and everyone else who wanted to follow along. (Someone at work printed a map so co-workers could follow along as I sent emails from Internet cafes... how times have changed.) Once I was on the ground, all I had was a relatively up-to-date Lonely Planet guidebook; you had to otherwise rely on travel agents, ticket sellers, other tourists and visitors you met in town, the owner of the place you were staying, or head to the port to find out the ferry schedules and/or the situation in the water. I'd say at least half of the time, delays were met with shrugs in the absence of information. It was a little frustrating as someone who "needed to know" but it was an opportunity to roll with the seas, as it were....

I almost had similar experiences with my August/September 2023 trip to Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, as I wasn't on any real schedule for the vast majority of my trip. However, most of the train rides were regional and thus had a fairly set and frequent schedule so turning up at a station rarely yielded more than a half-hour wait.

Also relevant - CNN: What travel was like before the internet.

When I worked at the Denver station in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, we had a local phone number that we had a recording machine attached to. Each day the Agent would check the status of Train’s 5&6, and make a recording with the arrival and departure times. The recording would be updated throughout the day, whenever necessary. It mirrored what was posted on the station bulletin board.

Oddly enough, the number (303-534-2812) is still in use. They also had separate numbers to actually speak to the ticket office and baggage/express rooms, which are now non-published.

Regarding the Greeley station, which as @Willbridge mentioned above being unstaffed for the Pioneer in the ‘90’s…back in the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, it was still staffed by a UP employed agent for the San Francisco Zephyr.
One day, due to a derailment blocking the BN line between Denver and Brush, CO., Number 6 detoured over the UP from LaSalle to Union (line is now gone, I believe), then down to Brush, and back on regular route.
Amtrak chartered some buses to bring Denver passenger’s from and to the train at Greeley, and the station supervisor sent 5 baggagemen up to Greeley to help the Greeley agent with the transfers.

From a 1974 Amtrak system timetable, via timetables.org -- I assume most of these were a version of what railliner describes in the previous post.