Last month, we had to reschedule our trip to Ohio when our confirmed Southwest Chief bedroom reservations were shot out from under us as a result of Amtrak replacing the second sleeper with a Trans-Dorm sleeper and then not being able to downgrade us because our SWC No. 4 train was sold out.
Ironically, we’d been scheduled to depart the day after the derailment of a SWC No. 4 train near Mendon, Missouri. As a result of that derailment, the on-time arrivals and departures of both east and westbound SWC trains were seriously impacted.
To satisfy our own curiosity, we tracked the OTP of the trains we were supposed to have been on to see how we would have made out. Here are the results:
The Pacific Surfliner No. 777 that we were supposed to have been on left San Diego on time at 12:01 p.m. and arrived at Los Angeles Union Station 4 minutes late.
SWC No. 4 left LAUS on time at 5:55 p.m. and arrived in Chicago two days later 3 hours and 6 minutes late, but still in enough time for us to have made connections with Capitol Limited No. 30, which departed on time and arrived in Toledo 52 minutes late.
For the return trip, our CL No. 29 train departed from Toledo at 6:15 a.m. (53 minutes late) and arrived in Chicago 59 minutes late.
SWC No. 3 departed Chicago on time at 2:50 p.m. Two days later, and largely due to “freight train interference” in Arizona and California, it arrived at LAUS 9 hours and 2 minutes late, but still allowing us 8 minutes to have made connections with southbound Pacific Surfliner 784 to San Diego. (Since we would have had all our luggage with us, we would probably have detrained from the SWC in Fullerton and made connections with No. 784 there.) No. 784 departed Fullerton at 5:33 p.m. and arrived at the Old Town Transit Center (which is closer to where our car would have been parked) at 7:52 p.m.
So, despite the derailment, the trains we were supposed to have been on performed about as well as we expected them to. If the trains we’ll be on when we make this trip in late September-early October perform as well, we’ll be satisfied.