EB mess

[montana mike]

At least part of this mess could be solved by the darned pipeline. Lesser of two evils by far........

Source?

???? When you look at etas on rail tanker car accidents vs pipeline spills there is no question that pipelines pose a far less hazard. Look at the Alaskan pipeline as an example.

 

[montana mike]

At least part of this mess could be solved by the darned pipeline. Lesser of two evils by far........

Source?

Here's a table from the North Dakota Pipeline Authority. It shows how much quicker railroad capacity can be ramped up, compared to pipelines.

Note that the Keystone XL pipeline would only handle 100k barrels per day. Enbridge's projects, which don't require State Department approval and seem to not attract much notice, will move much more Bakken oil. For me one very interesting aspect of this table is the size of railroad projects not yet online. I know that some of them are on the former Northern Pacific line or the Soo Line (now CP), but there are lots of planned transhipping projects still being built on the Hi Line.

Good Point

 

[montana mike]

Anyone have any idea what is going on between SPT and LIB in Montana today? Both east and westbound Empire Builders lost multiple hours in this area overnight. Disappointing to see such big delays in an area that normally runs smoothly. My local BNSF guy hasn't contacted me yet on this, so not sure if this is freight related or something else.

:-((

Update: BNSf guy says they had a derailment in Bonners Ferry, ID last night-arrrrrrrgh!

 

[Palmetto]

Anyone have any idea what is going on between SPT and LIB in Montana today? Both east and westbound Empire Builders lost multiple hours in this area overnight. Disappointing to see such big delays in an area that normally runs smoothly. My local BNSF guy hasn't contacted me yet on this, so not sure if this is freight related or something else.

:-((

Update: BNSf guy says they had a derailment in Bonners Ferry, ID last night-arrrrrrrgh!

I know only some of the 3-letter station codes, and SPT is not one of them. Please tell those of us who don't know all codes just where SPT is. Oh. Oh. I think it's Sandpoint, given the context of the post. Am I correct?

 

[Palmetto]

Anyone have any idea what is going on between SPT and LIB in Montana today? Both east and westbound Empire Builders lost multiple hours in this area overnight. Disappointing to see such big delays in an area that normally runs smoothly. My local BNSF guy hasn't contacted me yet on this, so not sure if this is freight related or something else.

:-((

Update: BNSf guy says they had a derailment in Bonners Ferry, ID last night-arrrrrrrgh!

According to another forum, a grain train "fell off the rails" in Bonners Ferry, ID. Then an eastbound ran into the derailment. That would put a big dent in operations. :lol:

 

[montana mike]

Anyone have any idea what is going on between SPT and LIB in Montana today? Both east and westbound Empire Builders lost multiple hours in this area overnight. Disappointing to see such big delays in an area that normally runs smoothly. My local BNSF guy hasn't contacted me yet on this, so not sure if this is freight related or something else.

:-((

Update: BNSf guy says they had a derailment in Bonners Ferry, ID last night-arrrrrrrgh!

I know only some of the 3-letter station codes, and SPT is not one of them. Please tell those of us who don't know all codes just where SPT is. Oh. Oh. I think it's Sandpoint, given the context of the post. Am I correct?

Yup

 

[Green Maned Lion]

SPT = Sandpoint

 

[montana mike]

In the final hours of my journey on the Empire Builder (8/17). About three hours behind the "new" schedule, perhaps a bit more late over the next several hours of travel. Some observations:

1. The Minot delays are frustrating. We arrived 45 minutes early, only to sit in Minot for almost two hours because there was no fresh crew available for us to depart on time. According to our attendant this happens often---arrrrgh.

2. BNSF freight caused about an additional 1 hour delay thru ND, not really that bad considering all of the issues.

3. CP Rail has caused an additional 1 hour delta due to both some minor construction and freight traffic

4. The dining experience: Same food as before (although I was told Amtrak will eliminate many of the "specials" shortly and just stick with some basics), just on plastic plates, paper cups and paper napkins. The dining steward said they no longer have a dishwasher assigned, so everything is now "disposable". I have to wonder here, doing the math, the cost of thousands of these items each trip would appear to outweigh the cost of that person??? Plus the mountains of trash they lug off the train at each service stop is amazing!!

5. I know this is a sore subject, but gosh we miss those nice little amenities. The trip is much more boring without all of those little things, and yes the wine and cheese event. Even the dining car people lamented the loss of this fun time, even though it meant more work for them.

Oh, well........C'est La Vie'

 

[greatcats]

Well put, Mike. I certainly agree with those points. To give the perception if being frugal......what a crock.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Surprised nobody ever try to do the math on the pastic dishes. Going to ask prices next time I am at a Resturant supply company. No it will not be perfect but it will be a interesting posting.

 

[yarrow]

In the final hours of my journey on the Empire Builder (8/17). About three hours behind the "new" schedule, perhaps a bit more late over the next several hours of travel. Some observations:

4. The dining experience: Same food as before (although I was told Amtrak will eliminate many of the "specials" shortly and just stick with some basics), just on plastic plates, paper cups and paper napkins. The dining steward said they no longer have a dishwasher assigned, so everything is now "disposable". I have to wonder here, doing the math, the cost of thousands of these items each trip would appear to outweigh the cost of that person??? Plus the mountains of trash they lug off the train at each service stop is amazing!!

5. I know this is a sore subject, but gosh we miss those nice little amenities. The trip is much more boring without all of those little things, and yes the wine and cheese event. Even the dining car people lamented the loss of this fun time, even though it meant more work for them.

Oh, well........C'est La Vie'

i sure agree with you,mike. we will travel amtrak long distance only as an agr reward anymore as the value for the money spent is no longer there if we purchase tickets. wonder what amtrak did with all the "china" from the eb?

 

[montana mike]

Quick Update: Have lost another hour both north and south of MKE-more freight delays. Ironic that the delays caused by CPR have been greater than the BNSF issues today!

 

[neroden]

4. The dining experience: Same food as before (although I was told Amtrak will eliminate many of the "specials" shortly and just stick with some basics),

Disgusting and stupid. Amtrak already eliminated my dessert spending by eliminating all the good desserts; maybe if there are enough cutbacks, Amtrak will cause me to start taking a cooler of my own food. I'm sure that will help Amtrak, not.

just on plastic plates, paper cups and paper napkins. The dining steward said they no longer have a dishwasher assigned, so everything is now "disposable". I have to wonder here, doing the math, the cost of thousands of these items each trip would appear to outweigh the cost of that person??? Plus the mountains of trash they lug off the train at each service stop is amazing!!

Way to be wasteful and un-environmental, Amtrak.
Even if the dishwasher costs a few bucks more, the payback in reputation and customer reaction from having actual plates and washing them would be very large.

We need to keep complaining to Amtrak about this every chance we get. This is just *stupid*.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

The dishwasher adds a million bucks a year to the overall trains bottom line. Keep that in your calculations.

That being said, that's odd, because the new schedule specifically says meals served on China.

 

[greatcats]

I think it has been said that those plastic plates get thrown away. How much cost is that vs. having real plates and a dishwasher?? This whole downgrading which I wrote them a long letter about recently, really has me disgusted. Superficial, but tacky, changes, to give the perception and illusion of saving money. Timetable says china - another Amtrak inconsistency. Maybe I should get my travel partner friend, who is obsessive about recycling, on their case about their waste of materials.

 

[yarrow]

The dishwasher adds a million bucks a year to the overall trains bottom line. Keep that in your calculations.

That being said, that's odd, because the new schedule specifically says meals served on China.

the plastic plates may well be made in china

 

[neroden]

The dishwasher adds a million bucks a year to the overall trains bottom line.

Honestly? I simply don't believe this. This is phony-baloney. I'd need to see a breakdown, but it sounds like the famous Amtrak accounting. If each dishwasher (2 trainsets, recall) is paid $500,000/year including benefits, Amtrak has larger problems.
Edit....oh, right, we're talking Empire Builder here, I was still thinking Auto Train. OK, I can believe $1 million a year for the Empire Builder with its six trainsets, but again, the real problem is somewhere else. Like the on-time performance preventing those six trainsets from filling up at high prices.

Keep that in your calculations.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

It's not baloney. 6 sets of equipment. Six employees per day. With full benefits, housing cost at layover, etc etc, if it was less than a million bucks is be astonished. You need at least two teams, probably three, plus back up. 20 people. Think the cost per employee is less than $50k a year with all the basic benefits?

 

[neroden]

Maybe I should get my travel partner friend, who is obsessive about recycling, on their case about their waste of materials.

Please do. I'm pretty disgusted by the tonnes of plastic being thrown away, myself. It stomps on any attempts to advertise Amtrak as "green".

-- GML, see my edit, I was still thinking of a different train.

If you think it through, though, the problem is evidently the fact that the Empire Builder is requiring six trainsets, when it should only take five.

In short, it's horrendously expensive and inefficient to run slow, unreliable trains.

Cutting service quality is pointless.

 

[montana mike]

When we got off the train in CHI last night (4 hours late as usual) there were at least ten large bags of plastic disposables form just the lunch meal, all being tossed in the garbage that the kitchen staff had offloaded. It would indeed by an interesting exercise to see how much this costs Amtrak, not just the cost of all of the plastic, but the cost to landfill this mess, etc...not sure how they can call themselves "green" when they run a virtual disposable operation of stuff that gets dumped into the local landfills.

There was not a piece of china to be seen anywhere on the Empire Builder, so I would imagine it is a case of the marketing people not catching up with reality rather than a deliberate effort to deceive. It was strange indeed having "water" as our only amenity in the sleepers-well, I take that back the attendant asked us if we needed ice twice during the trip.......and I did see a few of the residual "amenity kits" lying around on the first day-all gone by day #2.

I do wonder about the delays on CPR. This is my second trip where CPR added a couple hours to the lateness of the EB. The conductor in this segment even mentioned that these delays were increasing and were a significant part of our overall delay into CHI. The good news for a bunch of CONO people last night was that they held that train for a few minutes so these folks could make the connection-whew!!

 

[neroden]

When we got off the train in CHI last night (4 hours late as usual) there were at least ten large bags of plastic disposables form just the lunch meal,

If they were disposing that in MY county that would be $2.40/bag if taken directly to the waste transfer station; $3.50/bag if picked up. I have been told that our disposal rates are underpriced and the county loses money on disposal, subsidizing it heavily with local taxes.

all being tossed in the garbage that the kitchen staff had offloaded. It would indeed by an interesting exercise to see how much this costs Amtrak, not just the cost of all of the plastic, but the cost to landfill this mess, etc...

At $3.50 per bag of trash, 10 bags per meal, 3 meals per day per trainset, 6 trainsets, 365 days, it would be about $230,000 / year for disposal. The plastic

I expect that Amtrak is getting away with less expenses than that by dumping their trash in communities which subsidize trash disposal even more heavily. I don't respect that. At all.

Of course, there'd still be some trash if they used washable China. Maybe as much as 1/10th as much trash.

--- more estimates follow --

I did some quick checking up on plastic plates.

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/45833/plastic-plates.html

For the cheaper ones pricing seems to be a little over 25 cents per plate for 6-inch plates, or 34 cents per plate for 10 inch plates. Amtrak gets bulk discounts, but Amtrak's plates are on the sturdier side so they probably cost more than this. The average Amtrak meal ends up using at least three plates or bowls. I'd call it a minimum of 93 cents per person served. These estimates are very rough because there's such price variation.

But anyway, suppose three full Superliner sleepers and no coach passengers eat in the dining car. 126 passengers / meal * 93 cents / passenger * 3 meals / day * 6 trainsets * 365 days is about $770,000.

There's no way this is actually significantly cheaper than hiring a dishwasher.

If Amtrak has extra-cheap plates and gets away with dumping the disposal costs on localities, it might be marginally cheaper on the cost side. I could believe a total cost for plastic as low as $500,000 if I were told it. On the other side, I could believe maybe $100,000 in broken china per year, plus $1,000,000 for the dishwasher. I'm really trying to err in Amtrak's favor here. This would make a cost savings of $600,000 on the Empire Builder.

The revenue losses are going to be at least of the same order of magnitude, and probably larger. A 0.8% revenue loss (yes, that's less than one percent) would eat up the entirety of these savings.

It's probably not sure how they can call themselves "green" when they run a virtual disposable operation of stuff that gets dumped into the local landfills.

They're not going to be able to call themselves "green". Amtrak: the wasteful, oil-dependent, trash-generating way to travel. It's hard to estimate how much this hurts Amtrak's bottom line in the long run, because the effect of marketing (and negative marketing) is always hard to estimate. Personally I think it's hurting Amtrak significantly, but it's hard to estimate.
The marketing side of Amtrak should be screaming to get the washable china restored.

I do wonder about the delays on CPR.

I'm morally certain that what's happened is that E Hunter Harrison is ordering the dispatchers to delay Amtrak. It's too consistent.

 

[montana mike]

We can't forget about the plastic juice and drink cups, plus the paper coffee cups, vs the glasses and mugs, plus the paper napkins vs cloth napkins .

PS-#7 in MT tonight is over 6 1/2 hours late and #8 in WI is over 4 1/2 hours late--not a good day for the "new schedule" at all.

:-((

 

[yarrow]

.

PS-#7 in MT tonight is over 6 1/2 hours late and #8 in WI is over 4 1/2 hours late--not a good day for the "new schedule" at all.

:-((

what happens in less than 3 weeks when the eb goes back to the old schedule?

 

[CHamilton]

.

PS-#7 in MT tonight is over 6 1/2 hours late and #8 in WI is over 4 1/2 hours late--not a good day for the "new schedule" at all.

:-((

what happens in less than 3 weeks when the eb goes back to the old schedule?

No one is expecting a return to the old schedule anytime soon. Odds are that it will either stay where it is, or be lengthened even further.

 

[yarrow]

.

PS-#7 in MT tonight is over 6 1/2 hours late and #8 in WI is over 4 1/2 hours late--not a good day for the "new schedule" at all.

:-((

what happens in less than 3 weeks when the eb goes back to the old schedule?

No one is expecting a return to the old schedule anytime soon. Odds are that it will either stay where it is, or be lengthened even further.

 

i don't see how the old schedule can be reinstated but a reservation from 6/9 on gives the old times and the old schedule is the one published in the summer/fall timetable. what sort of cretins are running amtrak?