California Zephyr has great OTP lately

[DesertDude]

Has anyone else noticed this? At this very moment, I'm looking at the Amtrak live status map and all four trains along the CZ route are on time. Several months ago, it seemed that #6 from NorCal to Denver was usually on time or not too late. But Denver to Chicago usually fell behind, and westbound along the entire route was iffy.

Why do you suppose that is? Is it a combination of no grain traffic and declining oil traffic? Other factors?

 

[Bus Nut]

I noticed that too. I don't know the reason exactly but it does seem like the northern RRs are done with track work and there hasn't been any bad weather west of Chicago (Chicago and east of Chicago had some really cold weather that messed up a lot of trains).

I have heard trainspotters claim that carloads aren't down at all, so I'm thinking it's the lack of trackwork!

 

[Craig Smith]

Certainly great news!

In fact, I looked recently at the arrival times of #6 into Chicago for the past 3 weeks or so. Don't have the data in front of me, but recall that it arrived EARLY almost as many times as late. And typically was within 30 minutes of on time.

 

[acelafan]

Yep, definitely some early arrivals!

http://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archive/html/history.php?train_num=6&station=Chi&date_start=12%2F26%2F2014&date_end=01%2F25%2F2015&sort=schAr&sort_dir=DESC&limit=&co=gt&limit_mins=

 

[PaulM]

I was on the west bound CZ twice recently. Galesburg to DEN - early all the way. DEN to Davis - early all the way to Helper, UT. Shortly after Helper, we were held up 3 hours because of a rock slide. By DAV, we had made up 1 1/2 hours of that. Apparently, the 3 hour delay didn't put us out of the mythical "slot".

A few months earlier, my round trip Mount Pleasant - DEN experience was similar to the OP. Eastbound early into DEN. But both ways east of DEN the BNSF funk seemed to have migrated south.