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Its like a ghost town not one worker seen at all. Granted some people are probably inside but seeing no one at all just seems weird. He makes a comment in the video that it’s less busy than this time last year fwiw.
Recent Beech Grove Tour
- Thread starter Amtrakfflyer
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A lot of equipment sitting around there!
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If ever a picture (video) is worth a thousand words, this is it. I knew there were a lot of Superliners rusting away in Beech Grove while LD consists run short and full, but this is staggering to see.
I'd love to hear what Gardener's plan is to return these cars to service, because whatever they've been doing is unquestionably not working.
I'd love to hear what Gardener's plan is to return these cars to service, because whatever they've been doing is unquestionably not working.
Chopin's Funeral March would have been a better music of choice.
Filmed on a weekend. So no staff seen. I count 5 Viewliner sleepers.
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Maybe it’s my airline background but if heavy maintenance isn’t a 24/7 job it should be or at least 7 days a week, ( if labor is an issue). Either way this is a bad omen.
Yeah, well, you seem to have forgotten that there has been labor shortages for 3 years now...and not just at Amtrak.
Maintenance 24/7 is lacking in most industries at this point. Getting to the point of causing anxiety & fear of reporting anything wrong. Because you then wasting a half or full day waiting for repairs. Sorry too many jobs that pay better, and jobs that you will not have dirty hands afterwards.
Most are going to be their for their refurb, and we've seen cars coming out of said refurbs. Stuff takes time, and current labor conditions certainly aren't helping things. There is no magical plan that will make this stuff go faster, besides being able to hire more staff of course.
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I hope these Superliners are not "mostly" awaiting the cosmetic refresh as you surmise. If they are then it's management malpractice. Pulling a serviceable car out of revenue service so it can sit in a long line awaiting a cosmetic refresh would be... incompetence. Let 'em run until there are actual slots available to get the refresh done.
Based on Amtrak's narrative I'd guess these are mostly bad ordered cars or otherwise awaiting regular inspections or service. Amtrak's excuse of not being staffed up is wearing thin, though. We don't need a "magical plan", just good management that knows how to adapt, improvise and overcome.
Maybe it's just my railroad background but the management response was typically, "You are just trying to create more Union jobs."
Still is, too.
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This is the back shop so these cars are awaiting heavier duty work - in most cases overhaul work. Work related to bad orders, regular inspections, and service take place at the regular mechanical shops (Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Sanford, etc.)
Any idea which of the tracks are designated to hold cars ready to be put back into service?
Lot of fresh track work seen in these video. You don’t need much track to access these shops. Most buildings have a transfer table to move equipment into each bay.
The northwest tracks can be used for storage, and are generally the arrival and departure tracks. It close to the guard shack. The northeast track are generally long term storage, heavy damage equipment waiting deposition. Anything on the south east or west is usually scrap or awaits a buyer.
When looking at the engine shop leads it’s pretty easy to see the engine that are gutted, waiting a museum or a scrape dealer.
The northwest tracks can be used for storage, and are generally the arrival and departure tracks. It close to the guard shack. The northeast track are generally long term storage, heavy damage equipment waiting deposition. Anything on the south east or west is usually scrap or awaits a buyer.
When looking at the engine shop leads it’s pretty easy to see the engine that are gutted, waiting a museum or a scrape dealer.
No this is all heavy overall work. Many of these cars have been in crashes and so they'll need quite a bit of work.
Nice to see some missed equipment such as 66, 42, and 90208. It's so cool to see some old P40's and other equipment as well. Hopefully a lot of these cars will come back, but some of them have probably been there a while as there's graffiti.
The diner is phase 3 is surprising. I wonder why it hasn't been scrapped or sold yet.
EDIT: If you want to see some footage from two years ago to compare, there are two threads on it. This one and this one. Also includes some tidbits. Some of the cars have been sold to people but are still sitting there. Many haven't been touched in a LONG time (10+ years).
You can look to see how long they've been there (potentially) here. Won't include anything set out the past decade or so I believe.
The diner is phase 3 is surprising. I wonder why it hasn't been scrapped or sold yet.
EDIT: If you want to see some footage from two years ago to compare, there are two threads on it. This one and this one. Also includes some tidbits. Some of the cars have been sold to people but are still sitting there. Many haven't been touched in a LONG time (10+ years).
You can look to see how long they've been there (potentially) here. Won't include anything set out the past decade or so I believe.
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The refurbs aren't simply a cosmetic refresh. While not a total teardown, these cars are going through a major overhaul to breathe ~10 more years into them. A simple cosmetic refresh (repainting, replacing cushions) would go wayyyyy faster. The issue is combination cars being out of service for refurb, cars recently being wrecked on the builder and swc, and the lack of crews. Blue collar jobs, especially in niche fields are very slowly coming back. Plane refueling, my line of work, is still short staffed these days.
You can't easily "adapt and overcome" yourself out of a labor shortage. It just doesn't work that way. We have to play the waiting game for more repairmen to get trained up and for them to work through the backlog of work (both with bad orders and refurbs).
cirdan
Engineer
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I believe maintenance is also time and / or mileage dependent, so you cannot just run a car until you have a slot in the workshop.
Any refurb work in the interior is just a cherry on top of the nuts and bolts of assuring the car's technical bits are safe and up to scratch for another n years of grueling service.
Of course it is management incompetence to know you have x number of cars coming up for maintenance -something you know years in advance - and to not set about assuring you have the capacity to actually do that maintenance when the time comes.
cirdan
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I do think it was management incompetence to lay off qualified staff for example over the Covid pandemic as it was totally clear back then that the pandemic wasn't going to last forever and that the people you were laying off were not going to sit at home twiddling their thumbs until you hired them back.
Did they have the funds to pay those workers while they cut back on service due to the pandemic?
20/20 hindsight isn’t going to help the current situation.
You have to also remember that there are NO parts on the market to repair these cars. Anything needed to repair has to either be cannibalized from other cars or custom ordered and built. This can add a lot of time to the length of repairs.
cirdan
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This may have been a problem 20 years ago, but modern maintenance techniques are all about monitoring the status of your equipment so there shouldn't really be any major surprises when you bring it in for overhaul. If you know certain parts are going to need replacement you just need to start on getting replacements a bit earlier, and this includes the budgeting as well.
From my own experience as an electrical engineer working on industrial stuff, there is virtually nothing you cannot get or cannot make. There are companies out there specializing in all sorts of niche production methods. But often it comes at a price and this should influence decisions on when to replace stuff and when it is viable or preferable to keep on fixing the old. This does of course require a long term vision and always being several years ahead of the game.
"We can't get the parts" is often an excuse to cover up the fact that somebody was caught off their guard.
