Amtrak Cascades Service discussion

Actually, what tweet was that? I haven't seen it.

Cal said:

Those aren't in revenue service. Anything with the basic coupler can be hooked onto anything else. Now, the bilevels are compatible with horizons. Frontrunner routinely has bilevels and single-levels in the same consist.


I find Metrolink seats very comfortable actually, they're not bad at all. There is substantially less legroom, however. Also the Ventures really aren't that bad.

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At least the Sounder cars aren't advertised as having reclining seats.

Harmon Shay said:

Actually, what tweet was that? I haven't seen it.

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Posted a few messages earlier in this thread.

Couldn't they just use midwest fleet cars that have been displaced by the Ventures?

I'm not able to access it for some reason.

Harmon Shay said:

It's past time for the NEC to do a little sacrificing.

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Please correct any error I may make. The unfortunate problem with this statement is that the NEC is extremely busy itself and (believing Amtrak’s accounting at my own risk) makes an above the rails profit. If the state of Oregon was willing to pay more or even equal to displace NEC revenue loss, Amtrak would likely ink the deal. The equipment damaged was not Amtrak owned, not damaged by Amtrak malefaction, and clearly the state had not contracted for coverage out of the national or Northeast pool in the case of such an event. When trains get wrecked out here, there is no “let’s rob so and so.” The pool gets adjusted and life goes on. It is unfortunate that the Cascades pool is small, but Northeasterners have spent the better part of two centuries working to get and maintain service that works for us. We throw our fare dollars at it and make it suit the railroad to keep serving us. We need money for capital work, so there’s a national agreement we get capex funds the National Network gets opex funds, so I would hear the argument for long distance service needing an equipment displacement. Oregon, however, decided to expand service during an equipment shortage. Beech Grove pushed to squeeze equipment for it, putting that LD system on the backburner, and now Oregon has an issue with their equipment on their service. I’m glad service was expanded, but it was a decision with risks, and now there’s a problem. I fail to see why that necessitates multiple other pools being adjusted. The entire country sacrificed for Oregon (because we also make serious use of the long distance network) and I see no need to disrupt the busiest service in the country because their accommodated risk isn’t panning out. If the state of Oregon was that serious, they would rent idled commuter equipment and run a trainset as a substitute or buck up and offer the real cost of displacing NEC fare dollars.

Harmon Shay said:

I'm not able to access it for some reason.

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What’s to access? It was a screenshot. Here’s a screenshot of the screenshot.

I'd agree, but the NEC's been heavily favored by this particular Amtrak management. I believe it and the Empire and Downeaster corridors and the Virginia services have all of the the Amfleet I coaches now, some 340 of them, and that really should do it. The Cascades Corridor often has to turn away or bus riders when consists have to be shortened for mechanical reasons. I have to wonder how many riders are turned away or bussed in the NEC. I'll bet very few. By the way, we only need a maximum of four more coaches and maybe even as few as two to put together another trainset, depending on how we run the trains. I admit that I'm not fully familiar with Oregon's and Washington's equipment arrangements with Amtrak and that, while I find business details like really boring, I do understand that they're important.

OK. I saw that. I thought it was something official from the states or Amtrak. I've speculate that myself, but haven't seen it yet. One of our Horizon sets is short a coach right now because Amtrak sent two of our coaches to Beech Grove recently and we have three out of service in Seattle at the moment. I've just learned that they're sending us another Horizon club-dinette on the Empire Builder as we speak, but that car type isn't confirmed.

Harmon Shay said:

I thought it was something official from the states or Amtrak.

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It is.

We'll find out for sure very soon.

Septa9739 said:

Please correct any error I may make. The unfortunate problem with this statement is that the NEC is extremely busy itself and (believing Amtrak’s accounting at my own risk) makes an above the rails profit.

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The other thing is that the NEC is probably the only part of the country where passenger rail is actually a significant portion of the total intercity passenger market. Shut down the Cascades and very few people in the "Cascadia megaregion" (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, population 13.5 million) would notice, but shut down the NEC (population 58.4 million), and it would be a transportation disaster of major proportions.

It might be nice to do something to make passenger rail as significant a part of the transportation mix of the Cascadia megaregion as it is in the NEC, but that's going to be a long term project, and there might be other regions of the country with a higher priority, like the "Great Lakes megaregion", population 60.7 million, Southern California at 29 million, the Texas Triangle at 24.8 million, and the Piedmont Atlantic at 21.7 million. And doing it is going to require more than sending over a few extra passenger cars so that the trains don't get sold out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_States

The 503/508 train set has been running without 1 coach for a few days. All the others still have 4 coaches + the cafe car as of now.

In addition to that post from the Amtrak Cascades Twitter account, I’ve also heard talk from OBS about the creation of a new train set using horizons.

Harmon Shay said:

I hope they don't shorten the other Cascades Horizon sets to build a seventh Cascades Horizon set. What they should do is take four Horizons off the Downeasters and replace them with Amfleets from the NEC. It's past time for the NEC to do a little sacrificing. Remember, too, that Amtrak took two of Seattle's Horizon coaches back to Beech Grove recently, apparently for work. It's time to get them and any others back on the road. There's no room for any Horizon retirements right now and won't be until the first Airo trainsets get (reliably) into service.

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I don't think we should be removing cars from the NEC at at a time when it is seeing record ridership and is one of the few Amtrak routes that is breaking even or better.

MARC Rider said:

The other thing is that the NEC is probably the only part of the country where passenger rail is actually a significant portion of the total intercity passenger market. Shut down the Cascades and very few people in the "Cascadia megaregion" (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, population 13.5 million) would notice, but shut down the NEC (population 58.4 million), and it would be a transportation disaster of major proportions.

It might be nice to do something to make passenger rail as significant a part of the transportation mix of the Cascadia megaregion as it is in the NEC, but that's going to be a long term project, and there might be other regions of the country with a higher priority, like the "Great Lakes megaregion", population 60.7 million, Southern California at 29 million, the Texas Triangle at 24.8 million, and the Piedmont Atlantic at 21.7 million. And doing it is going to require more than sending over a few extra passenger cars so that the trains don't get sold out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_States

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I think a lot of the problem is that railroading has been trying to hide itself for generations, and unfortunately that has worked well for them. And mainstream media is in this "most people fly" mode, even though statistically by far more people drive. So you seldom if ever see trains mentioned in holiday travel coverage, and I suspect that's at least somewhat true even in the Northeast Corridor.

MARC Rider said:

The other thing is that the NEC is probably the only part of the country where passenger rail is actually a significant portion of the total intercity passenger market. Shut down the Cascades and very few people in the "Cascadia megaregion" (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, population 13.5 million) would notice, but shut down the NEC (population 58.4 million), and it would be a transportation disaster of major proportions.

It might be nice to do something to make passenger rail as significant a part of the transportation mix of the Cascadia megaregion as it is in the NEC, but that's going to be a long term project, and there might be other regions of the country with a higher priority, like the "Great Lakes megaregion", population 60.7 million, Southern California at 29 million, the Texas Triangle at 24.8 million, and the Piedmont Atlantic at 21.7 million. And doing it is going to require more than sending over a few extra passenger cars so that the trains don't get sold out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_States

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I most definitely agree that a shutdown of the NEC would be a complete catastrophe.
Truncating or eliminating the Cascades routes might not be as disastrous, but only because the Cascade ridership isn't as great as the NEC. However, for someone who travels a lot in the Pacific Northwest, it would be disastrous for me. I would also miss the rapid customs check when crossing the Canadian border.

I think chopping the 3 major east-west long distance Amtrak trains would be terrible for people in small towns along those routes. Especially with long driving distances and hazardous roads during the winter. I'm not a Richard Anderson person.

Harmon Shay said:

I think a lot of the problem is that railroading has been trying to hide itself for generations, and unfortunately that has worked well for them. And mainstream media is in this "most people fly" mode, even though statistically by far more people drive. So you seldom if ever see trains mentioned in holiday travel coverage, and I suspect that's at least somewhat true even in the Northeast Corridor.

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That hasn’t been my experience out here. Maybe @MARC Rider or others from different parts of the Northeast could say differently, but in Philly SEPTA commuter rail and the Keystone and NEC are reported on just like highways, because tens of thousands of people step aboard every day. At the end of the traffic reports you just hear (E.g.) “And on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service is disrupted to to signal failure at Trenton. SEPTA’s Trenton Line Trains are suspended and Amtrak services are subject to delays of 15-30…”

Harmon Shay said:

I'd agree, but the NEC's been heavily favored by this particular Amtrak management. I believe it and the Empire and Downeaster corridors and the Virginia services have all of the the Amfleet I coaches now, some 340 of them, and that really should do it. The Cascades Corridor often has to turn away or bus riders when consists have to be shortened for mechanical reasons. I have to wonder how many riders are turned away or bussed in the NEC. I'll bet very few. By the way, we only need a maximum of four more coaches and maybe even as few as two to put together another trainset, depending on how we run the trains.

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I will dispute this particular favoritism. We use the oldest equipment in the country, but new trains are coming to Cascadia first. Our pool is also overstretched with states and Amtrak struggling to keep capacity available. In October almost 35,000 people stepped onto an NER every day, plus the probably 20,000 trips that travel over it and begin off the corridor. We have sellouts the same as the rest of the country. There’s no bustitution because NER trains on average pull about 600 passengers now, leaving hourly or better. It would be impossible to replace the capacity by buses. If the railroad’s down, tens of thousands of people are stuck, congestion gets appreciably worse. Congress voted to fund the capital work going on here, not Amtrak management. Amtrak obeying its contractual obligations to other states and assigning equipment where it gets the most and revenue use isn’t favoritism, it’s sensible allocation of equipment. The only reason you seem to think the NEC pool should cover this is that it’s big. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s highly utilized. If you need so few coaches as two for a couple months, why waste the better part of a week displacing things all over the country to get two cars to the PNW. Some train sets will be a little busy for a couple weeks. Again with things tight as they are, a problem with state owned equipment on a state owned service is a state problem, and they seem to have come up with the cheapest, simplest solution they could, and that shouldn’t be a problem for the Midwest pool, the Downeaster pool, the long distance pool, or the Northeast pool.

Septa9739 said:

Again with things tight as they are, a problem with state owned equipment on a state owned service is a state problem, and they seem to have come up with the cheapest, simplest solution they could, and that shouldn’t be a problem for the Midwest pool, the Downeaster pool, the long distance pool, or the Northeast pool.

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These shortages bring up the factor that addition cars & spare locos need to be at each of these locations. Then when there is heavy demand such as this time of the year, they can be part of a surge fleet. Keep the other proposed replacement Amfleets as surge fleet.

BlackDiamond said:

I don't think we should be removing cars from the NEC at at a time when it is seeing record ridership and is one of the few Amtrak routes that is breaking even or better.

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It's not breaking even. David Gunn confirmed that some years back, saying the NEC was in about as much trouble as the long distance system. And we're only talking between two and four coaches out of something like 340, counting the connected Empire, Downeaster and Virginia corridors. Those two to four coaches would make a huge difference out here.

Harmon Shay said:

It's not breaking even. David Gunn confirmed that some years back, saying the NEC was in about as much trouble as the long distance system. And we're only talking between two and four coaches out of something like 340, counting the connected Empire, Downeaster and Virginia corridors. Those two to four coaches would make a huge difference out here.

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Those 2 or 3 coaches are needed on the NEC. NEC trains are already full. Some NERs are running with 10-11 cars because of demand.

We're turning away people from the Cascades Friday through Sunday, too. I think the NEC is simply given enough coaches to meet demand regardless. We out here are not, and I suspect that's true in Chicago as well. California was wise to buy its own equipment.

Let's just hope Amtrak is able to procure enough cars to increase capacity on all routes, as clearly all routes need it.

I don't think there can be any Amtrak expansion until the Airos start going into service in 2026. Once New Orleans-Mobile starts up, that will be it. By then there should be no more coaches or food service cars to pull out of mothballs or repair.

Harmon Shay said:

We're turning away people from the Cascades Friday through Sunday, too. I think the NEC is simply given enough coaches to meet demand regardless. We out here are not, and I suspect that's true in Chicago as well. California was wise to buy its own equipment.

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You aren’t given enough equipment because your state is unwilling to contract for it. What I’m trying to convey is that it isn’t Amtrak’s job to maximally equip the Cascades. It’s up to Oregon and Washington to contract for an appropriate amount of “rented” cars or buy their own. Amtrak is responsible to Congress (its boss) to operate the NECSL and the LDSL. They are the mandated priority services. Amtrak is a contractor to states for the operation of trains in the SSSL. States get what they pay for. If you were Amtrak, why would you move a coach that can easily pull $10,000 a day to a place where it might pull half that? The NEC is given coaches to meet demand regardless, provided Amtrak has fulfilled its equipment commitments to contracted state partners. (By the way it isn’t meeting demand regardless.) They’d love to pull the fifth coach off the Keystones and string together another NER set, but Pennsylvania has a contractual right to them.

As to the David Gunn comment, I adore the man. He built the Keystone into (I think) the most effective SSSL train in the country. But 20 years ago, NEC ridership was almost half of today. I don’t think it is sound to say the LDSL and NECSL trains are on the same financial footing today. LDSL numbers are much worse and NECSL numbers are much better.

Harmon Shay said:

I think a lot of the problem is that railroading has been trying to hide itself for generations, and unfortunately that has worked well for them. And mainstream media is in this "most people fly" mode, even though statistically by far more people drive. So you seldom if ever see trains mentioned in holiday travel coverage, and I suspect that's at least somewhat true even in the Northeast Corridor.

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I don't know about other cities in the NEC, but one of the features of our local TV coverage about the holiday travel rush is a reporter standing outside Penn Station in Baltimore talking about how busy the trains are going to be.