Advance Notification of Delays

[MiniMax]

Long distance trains are always an adventure. We know that. We expect that. We plan for that. It's always best for our peace of mind to move away from disgruntled-looking people who keep looking at their watches. But, seriously, can't the information of expected delays be given to us in advance? No one can predict "acts of God" or accidents, but aren't most delays caused by sharing the tracks with freight trains? Someone, somewhere the train god knows when all trains will actually depart and which ones of them will be given priority to right-of-way along their routes. It's a mystery. I guess we'll never know.

It's unlikely that American trains will ever catch up with the technology enjoyed by the rest of the world. We can give up on that dream. I actually enjoy the serendipity of our "old west" train travel. Bring a book, listen to music, sleep, eat, enjoy the amazing scenery. Just a thought.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

VIA alerts passengers of it for its Canadian, but that train is delayed hours and hours every run. Amtrak is not. But if they emphasize that delays *sometimes* happen, on the website, a notification of it when booking LD trains would be nice.

 

[PVD]

text or e-mail notification for up to 6 trains is available is available, booked or not, with additional information (cancellation or service disruption) for booked passengers...

 

[Trogdor]

If you're asking for info about freight train interference delays before the train has even left the terminal, that's never going to happen. Train dispatchers generally won't know hours in advance which freight train is going to delay an Amtrak train, or exactly where, or exactly how long. Also, the railroad dispatching systems aren't connected to Arrow to provide train status updates. When trains are delayed, Amtrak's internal NTAMS (National Train Activity Monitoring System) is capable of estimating delays (based on present position and estimated running time) and posting updates to Arrow. Of course, these are more or less after the fact of a delay, but that system can't predict delays anyway.

If a train is late, Arrow uses running time and dwell times programmed into the system to provide downline status updates automatically (which can be overridden by user entries, if someone knows about an expected delay and is thinking to enter it into the system). In cases where trains are expected to be significantly delayed due to extreme conditions (major slow orders, major ongoing freight congestion, trackwork, severe weather disruptions, etc.), Amtrak can put notices alerting passengers, but these often just give general estimates of potential delays, not an actual prediction.

 

[ainamkartma]

John Mcphee's essay about operation of a modern coal train (a summary is available free at the New Yorker Magazine's web site) depicts dispatching on US freight railroads as fundamentally chaotic and unpredictable. He describes crews being called to trains just to routinely sit for hours in the cab waiting to be sent out of the yard. I have no idea how accurate this depiction is, but if the freight railroads are willing to leave good money sitting on the table like this, I can't imagine they are able to tell Amtrak when its trains will move. I think we all have this mental picture of the freight railroads adhering to a schedule like other forms of transportation with which we are familiar, but according to McPhee this is largely just not the way the railroads work, in practice.

Ainamkartma

 

[KmH]

It's unlikely that American trains will ever catch up with the technology enjoyed by the rest of the world.

Passenger trains, freight trains, or both.

Few other countries are as big as the US.

I wonder. How many countries own their entire rail system, both freight and rail.

What other countries have a national freight rail system as good, or better, than what the US has?

I don't think the high speed passenger rail systems in countries that have such, share their high speed tracks with freight trains.

I also wonder how the length of those high speed routes in other countries compares lengthwise to Amtrak's LD routes west of Chicago?

How do the rail systems in India and Russia compare to the US as far as technology?

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Russian railroads are a world better than ours. The Russians are far better about basic infrastructure than we are.

 

[neroden]

Pretty much every country in the world which has railroads at *all* has better railroads than the US. Cuba is ahead of us. India's and Russia's are *way* ahead of us, and of course China ia even further ahead of us.