Empire Builder's Troubles continue into the Fall

[greatcats]

It appears that today's #8 was in fairly good shape and then something went down the tubes between Fargo and St. Cloud. Now 6+ hours late. Montana Mike was pretty lucky yesterday!

 

[acelafan]

It appears that today's #8 was in fairly good shape and then something went down the tubes between Fargo and St. Cloud. Now 6+ hours late. Montana Mike was pretty lucky yesterday!

Yep, MM snuck through. The NY section of the Lake Shore Ltd he was on arrived early. The Boston section wasn't so lucky; 90 minutes or so late.

 

[montana mike]

I have been traveling in the east the past couple days and just noticed #8 is now over 11 hours late today and #7 in WA isn't doing much better--what the heck happened yesterday and today? This is as bad or worse than last summer. I sure did luck out with a delay of "only" 3 hours on the 25th--whew!!!!

 

[montana mike]

I see #7, still in Central MT is now over 16 hours late--Holy Cow!!!!! What a disaster these least couple days have been. Something must have happened besides just "freight congestion"?

:-(

 

[greatcats]

Would somebody in the know please let us know what happened? Just wunnerful, as Lawrence Welk from North Dakota might say.

 

[EB_OBS]

Would somebody in the know please let us know what happened? Just wunnerful, as Lawrence Welk from North Dakota might say.

Disabled freight train at Saaco, MT cost about three hours to an already four hours late #7.

Of course then the cumulative delays to freights and #7 resulted in multiple Hours of Service issues for the crews.

 

[TraneMan]

Yikes. :-( I really do feel for the crew and people who are on this train.

 

[NW cannonball]

Yikes. :-( I really do feel for the crew and people who are on this train.

Indeed. And unlike the people on the coasts, or CHI, or middle Texas -- there is no alternative -- none -- at CHI like when ORD failed last May 12-13 -- I took the blue line and the Lincoln service and got to STL a day late. Coulda been worse. Out on the Hi-Line the options are few to none.

When the EB fails like this -- between Fargo and Spokane, or for those who expect NY or CHI service levels between MSP and SEA - wait a day or two -- or find a local General Aviation guru and pay $10,000 -- or maybe the one bus that might be failed also-- that's all the options there are out there in the cold North.

Between SPK and FAR it's the EB or nothing -- well, not nothing -- theres a few airports with sky high fares, and there's US 2, which is 2-lanes and sometimes OK driving, but never OK in the frequent blizzards --

and who posted that cute line -- nothing to stop the wind between here and the North Pole except that one bob-ware fence -- and it'll be blown away in January.

 

[montana mike]

17 hours late for #7 in WA today--wow. With the other #7 in MT catching up. It should be an interesting group of arrivals in SEA later today.

:-(

 

[greatcats]

I see today's #7 is 4 hours late leaving Chicago and #5 was over 2 hrs late. Could it be that smooth running Chicago yard? Wunnerful. Montana Mike is on 7 , I believe.

 

[fairviewroad]

Don't know if it's related, but the weather was pretty brutal in Chicago today. Lake Michigan decided to relocate onto Lake

Shore Drive. more than 700 flights canceled at O'Hare by 4 p.m. Etc, etc.

 

[montana mike]

The 4 hour delay in the departure for #7 yesterday was due to extra time to put three private cars on the EB and to switch a bad ordered locomotive. This leg of my journey has been one screw up after another. First the big delay in departing CHI, then a "minor" 20 minute pit stop somewhere outside of MKE to do a quick repair of something--they never said, then we all wake up this AM to find out that the two forward sleeper's toilets do not work, now we have been sitting between Grand Forks and Fargo for almost an hour waiting for a very slow freight to pass us so we can enter Grand Forks. Now well over 6 hours late and counting. Plus the conductor says we can expect more "significant delays" in ND and MT due to very heavy freight traffic. Looks like I will not arrive at my station (WFH) until some time Sunday AM at best........oh, well at least the oatmeal for breakfast was OK this morning.

 

[montana mike]

11 AM Update on #7 today in ND: After losing an hour behind a very slow freight into Grand Forks we caught up to the same freight train just west of Grand Forks and the Conductor has said to be prepared to lose at least another 30 minutes before we get to Rugby. NO place to get around him. All of the sidings are already full of stored cars and other freights. We are crawling along at 20 mph now just a mile or so behind him--arrrrgh. It would b so bad if he was going 50-60 mph, but this pace is just killing us. Even with the benefit of the extra hour gained when we switch to standard time it looks like a 7-8 hour delay at least into WFH, which means tomorrow AM, not tonight. It would have been nice to sleep in my own bed tonight!!

 

[CHamilton]

Meanwhile, 8(30) arrived in CHI 12 minutes EARLY! How did *that* happen??

 

[Derailed]

Because whenever a host RR can't run a train around a Christmas tree, Big A just adds more time to the already super-slow schedule, instead of addressing the issue with the host railroad. It's pathetic.

 

[Phil S]

Looks like MM's #7 made up, an hour. Some dispatcher wasn't paying attention? My turn comes Monday. Don't really care when we get into PDX, but it'd be nice if it's still daylight. Packing lots of extra food and actually looking forward to some new daylight rail miles (if I can tell the difference in ND and MT

 

[montana mike]

Well, we lost that hour and then some (now just under NINE hours late now). Arrrgh. No toilets, nine hours late, just one heck of a ride......

We sat just outside of Williston and watched as a Z-train and a lonnnnng grain train passed us by. Clearly, when we lost our slot (by starting out 4 hours late) #8 is invisible to BNSF now. Looking like arrival in WFH around 6 AM now. Oh, well, it's 2 hours better than my last run on the EB.......

 

[Bus Nut]

montana mike, that just sounds grueling. No way can I take riding in a train at 20mph. This is why I hate excursion trains, btw. (So funny, my family assumes I'll love them, because choo-choo's. They don't get that I like to ride fast. And I don't like stopping all the time and traveling in circles.)

It seems like EB is just going to get worse before it gets better. One bright spot (maybe?) is that Saudi Arabia is overproducing oil to demand so demand for North Dakota oil may soften somewhat. This should reduce those freight volumes. Might be a year off and there's no telling if SA will switch course this winter and start choking down supply.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

What are the odds that Amtrak reestablishes west coast connections to the EB any time soon?

Ideally, I'd like to plan a trip from somewhere out west to Montana next summer, and Amtrak currently says "you can't get there from here."

For a national rail network, that's pretty sad.

 

[montana mike]

Sunday AM Update: I arrived in WFH around 6:15 AM (scheduled arrived was 10:26 PM Saturday--and this arrival was helped by our fall back hour too)!!! Soooo glad to get off the train. A ton of snow at Marias Pass last night. First big snow of the season for them. So, despite all of BNSF's and Amtrak's efforts to make things better, the timekeeping on this EB at least was just as miserable as the summer runs.

A couple of important points to note from my trip:

1. Between Minot and Stanley BNSF has laid double track for about 75% of that segment. Of which perhaps 50% of the new track was actually usable at this time, with the rest hopefully coming on line before the snow flies. Between Stanley and Williston a lot of preliminary track bed work, perhaps 50% of that segment, but no actual new track that I could see. It appears they are doing a lot of bed work and will lay track next year. What will take longer are several bridges that will need to be built/completed. Despite the additional trackage in eastern MT completed this year (about 40 miles worth and a couple new longer sidings), our EB was pulled aside several times and lost 3 hours in the stretch from eastern ND thru central MT last night and early this AM. I lost this amount of time going eastbound in this same area last week as well.

2. Sadly, the equipment is really, really showing its age. The toilet failures are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. During one of our numerous delays I had an opportunity to speak with a conductor and several attendants, who all independently said that BOTH this crazy schedule (or lack thereof) and the equipment failures are taking a severe toll on Amtrak and her people. I saw this firsthand in Minot when two maintenance people and three train folks tried their best to fix the broken toilets in both of the sleepers (the third sleeper-which had lost all of its water early on the trip was "fixed" by hammering the intake valve shut with a really big sledge). They toiled for 20 minutes, but with no success, mainly because the parts needed for repairs are not carried on board or at ANY of the service spots along the way. The MOT maintenance guy said Amtrak may either have to fly the needed parts out to SEA (if they can't "borrow" the parts from another car) to try to fix the toilets there, or send the two sleepers without working toilets back to CHI for final repair. He said he was betting on the second option. I pity the poor folks who get those cars if they can't fix them in SEA. None of the heat regulation devices appeared to work well on my EB. I went from car to car and temps varied hugely--and when I asked the attendants they said the adjustments just don't work well on many of their cars anymore. I know on my sleeper it was that way as well--one temp and that was it, no room adjustments worked in any of the rooms. I could list a litany of other "minor" issues (like our shower being on and really hot, or nothing else at all), but the bottom-line is the maintenance is not getting done. One attendant showed me copies of maintenance requests he had submitted for his car (it was long) and the CHI yard folks just checked things off as being done or no problem found. In each instance the problem was still very evident in his car.

The crews are remarkable people, who are putting their heart and souls into their jobs--I saw NO one just "phoning it in" on my EB run, but they are running out of reserves and fast. The huge swing in hours has really taken its toll on both morale and home life as well. Two conductors said they had absolutely no idea from day to day what their real schedule will be.

I also noted the train was very sparsely filled. Partly due to the time of the year, but as the crew also said, people now tell them that they just cannot count on the Empire Builders anymore. I poor fellow got on board in Browning (where there is NO indoor waiting area) early this AM. He was drenched. He had been waiting outside in the rain and snow for hours, having first showed up at the platform when Amtrak informed him to expect a 2 hour delay and he finally hopped on board 6 hours later!

Just my two cents worth. Happiness was having a hot shower and a working bathroom this morning!

 

[neroden]

Sounds like maintenance needs to be moved out of Chicago. You usually can't fix a dishonest site culture like that, you have to toss everyone and start fresh. I don't know how hard it will be under union contracts to do that.

 

[PaulM]

We sat just outside of Williston and watched as a Z-train and a lonnnnng grain train passed us by. Clearly, when we lost our slot (by starting out 4 hours late) #8 is invisible to BNSF now.

It's amazing that these mythical "slots" only seem to exist when the train starts out late.

 

[montana mike]

Perhaps not actual hard "slots" per se, but I did note during my last two trips, and this was partly confirmed by my BNSF contacts, that BNSF occasionally runs a number of their freights in "packs", ie. perhaps 3 trains running almost together in the same direction. I saw this during my just completed trip, as we sat on sidings and watched an energy train, then just a couple minutes behind a grain train, then an intermodal or mixed freight immediately behind that train. Our EB then went in between a couple of these groupings, and of course was bogged down by the fact that they were usually going 50-60 mph, thus we continued to lose time over hundreds of miles. We would then stop at an Amtrak station and a couple times waited for another group of these trains to pass on by. This combo occurred at least 4 times that I noticed on my last trip (can't say for sure what happened when I was asleep though).

I asked what happened when two of these groups met traveling in different directions and they said, first most of these groupings head westbound from ND and MT. Any groups heading east do not encounter traffic going the other way from MOT all the way to Fargo, where at that point they are sent onto different BNSF segments. As far as west bound, they pointed out that in at least two spots now in MT (and soon in ND) BNSF has constructed "super-sidings" that consist of three separate tracks off the main line where the pack can pull off to let trains moving in the opposite direction go by. I did see this once myself, and it was full of one of those packs (energy, ag and intermodal), just as they said. It was interesting to observe.

 

[PaulM]

So then a "slot" is a temporary spot in between packs of slow moving freights.

Several times I've asked whether slots actually exist when posters had claimed their train had lost is slot. I never got an answer.

 

[montana mike]

Well, perhaps at least on the Hi-Line in the congested area. It think that may be why the very few EB's that do arrive in CHI or SEA/PDX close to on time are able to do so-by timing the move thru this zone to coincide with how BNSF loads and schedules its trains thru this specific sector and they are fortunate on that day to also not have any or many BNSF trains out of sequence either. Once the timing is off, like we were at starting 4 hours late this weekend or if BNSF has a SNAFU on one or more of it's trains, then the EB gets "bounced around" as it and any BNSF trains who are operating outside their normal schedules are worked thru the heavy congestion zones. Those big very high priority freights are moved and scheduled to be in and out of the various loading areas, sidings, super sidings and the east and west flowing sectors on a fairly rigid schedule themselves, that's the only way BNSF is able to keep things moving for their expedited needs. Throw in a very late EB in the mix or a BNSF freight that has had timekeeping issues when they enter the challenging territory in ND and MT and you experience exactly what happened to us. Four hours becomes 9 hours pretty darn quick as the out of sequence trains try to cope with those very high priority trains that are on schedule.