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This. Here's an example of padding on just one smallish and wee-hours segment of the Floridian. Snipped from the timetable at https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/20928/floridian.pdf:[ATTACH=full]38771[/ATTACH]Do a little math and you can see that, eastbound, there's 20 minutes of "padding" between Alliance and Pittsburgh (i.e., the schedule allows 2 hours rather than 1 hour 40 minutes). Westbound, there's an astonishing 33 minutes of padding between Connellsville and Pittsburgh, which explains why the Cap (I stubbornly continue to call it that) often chugs into Pittsburgh a half-hour early; and 15 minutes of padding between Elyria and Toledo.This is just one segment of a much longer route, but it shows why you'd be doing a disservice to passengers by automatically adding (say) 45 minutes to every stop further down the line if there's a delay at one. It depends on the reason.(As to where Amtrak pads schedules, and why, I'll leave that to the bigger brains. But I hypothesize that there's almost always padding somewhere in stretches between major cities.)
This. Here's an example of padding on just one smallish and wee-hours segment of the Floridian. Snipped from the timetable at https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/20928/floridian.pdf:
[ATTACH=full]38771[/ATTACH]
Do a little math and you can see that, eastbound, there's 20 minutes of "padding" between Alliance and Pittsburgh (i.e., the schedule allows 2 hours rather than 1 hour 40 minutes). Westbound, there's an astonishing 33 minutes of padding between Connellsville and Pittsburgh, which explains why the Cap (I stubbornly continue to call it that) often chugs into Pittsburgh a half-hour early; and 15 minutes of padding between Elyria and Toledo.
This is just one segment of a much longer route, but it shows why you'd be doing a disservice to passengers by automatically adding (say) 45 minutes to every stop further down the line if there's a delay at one. It depends on the reason.
(As to where Amtrak pads schedules, and why, I'll leave that to the bigger brains. But I hypothesize that there's almost always padding somewhere in stretches between major cities.)
