Locomotive Down Time

[George K]

Talk in other threads about locomotives going down got me to thinking (please, hold your laughter).

I have a friend who was a co-owner of a WWII B25 Mitchell. He and his buddies bought the thing in the late 70s and lovingly restored it to airworthiness over a decade. Though his group sold the airplane about 4 years ago, he’s still nostalgic about it. When I had breakfast with him last week, he commented that it cost about $3000 an hour to fly the thing, and ground maintenance was enormously expensive and time consuming. He estimated that it took three hours of ground work to get one hour in the air.

So…about locomotives.

What is the average downtime for the P42s? What about other motive power that Amtrak owns? I remember reading (somewhere) that steam was notoriously inefficient, not only in terms of energy (5%?) but also in terms of how much non-revenue-producing time the locomotives demanded.

Does anyone have an idea where I could find such info?

 

[Acela150]

Most Locomotives make a quick turn. Most times engines will turn in 2 hours or less in WAS. I can give you an example of Acela turns.. I rode 2163 NYP-WAS last year went back to Philly on 2126. 2163 arrives just before 6pm. 2126 is the 7pm trip to NYP. So that was about an hour. 2190 turns for 2165 which will then turn for 2128. 2150 turns for 2167. 2154 turns for 2173. 2158 turns for 2175. Not much down time for the Acela sets. When it comes to regionals. That's a whole different ballgame. I can tell you that 66 turns for 67 and vise versa. 190 will turn for 175. 170 will turn for 177. 172 turns for 179, 179 when at NYP will be used for 181. That's some of the ops for turning trains at BOS. So that should give you an idea.