#300 & #302 right behind each other

[ParanoidAndroid]

Why are #300 and #302 right behind each other? #300 is 5.5 hours late (!!) and #302 is about 3 hours late. They seem to be late right out of St. Louis. Texas Eagle #22 5 hours late seems pretty normal to me.

Maybe St.Louis put them together as 1 long train? Or equipment shuffling messed-up? Who knows?

 

[jphjaxfl]

The Silver Meteor and Silver Star often run very close to each other south of Jacksonville. They are disable along US 17. Those not knowledgeable about Amtrak comment they are surprised the trains are so frequent.

 

[adt1982]

I was going to ask the same question. When leaving St. Louis today I noticed that the 22 and 301 were passing each other on the MacArthur Bridge.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

... i mean #300 & #302 Lincoln Services, not Silver Services. They're supposed to be 2 hours apart, but today they were just minutes apart, both hours late out of st.louis as I looked on "track a train" and saw them at bloomington IL.

And yes, the silver services are barely 40 minutes apart when they reach Miami.

#3 and #5 are 1 hour apart out of Chicago, and #4 & #6 are less than 1/2 hour apart into Chicago.

 

[C855B]

I can edu-conjecture that the clustering of trains like this may be the result of "fleeting". This is a practice on single-track sections of railroad where the dispatcher lines-up multiple trains in the same direction, holding the opposite traffic which is then eventually released under the same scheme. I suspect the change in the performance incentives might have a role in this, allowing the RRs to simply treat Amtrak like their normal trains. The priority most of the time is just to get the train from A to B without having to patch crews, the precise schedule not important.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Maybe St.Louis put them together as 1 long train? Or equipment shuffling messed-up? Who knows?

That's actually what happened. It was a double draft. They were combined on some wye after the switch to bring them out failed and a freight train broke down. It delayed their turns in CHI too.