Southwest Chief discussion Q4 2023 - 2024

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I want to understand why the SWC has some late trains. I have a trip coming up on it and would like to monitor it's schedules. Even though I've been told that it could be on time for weeks straight and then one day very late, I still want to follow it.
To monitor the SWC schedules, go to https://www.amtrak.com/train-schedules-timetables and click on TRAIN STATUS, then SEARCH BY (drop down to Train Number: 3 westbound and 4 eastbound.) You can use this to find out the arrival times of today's trains and the arrival times of previous days' trains.

As to WHY a train is late, go to https://www.amtrak.com/service-alerts-and-notices.

As you pointed out, a SWC train may run on schedule for days on end then come in 7 hours late. There are so many factors that contribute to late arrivals: equipment problems, freight interference, heat-related slowdowns, derailments up ahead, etc. One can never always anticipate what will happen so plan accordingly.
 
Cal. All this info is very interesting. Please, can you tell me where, and how you found all this? I want to understand why the SWC has some late trains. I have a trip coming up on it and would like to monitor it's schedules. Even though I've been told that it could be on time for weeks straight and then one day very late, I still want to follow it.
I went to https://asm.transitdocs.com/ and clicked on the rewind icon in the top right corner. it allows you to select a date (the day the train you want to look up departed it's origin) and the train you want. Then it will show you a list of all it's stops, it's scheduled arrival/departure, and it's actual arrival/departure, plus a map and it's trackings on the map (the tracker updates every few minutes with a trains speed and this map is all that data for the specified train). Once you are viewing that train's data, if you scroll down you will see "View on statusmaps.com" and when you click it, it will first show you arrival/departure information, but if you scroll down on the page it will show you all the notices that Amtrak has sent out about that train, which is where I got the reasons for the delays.

If you want to track a train's on-time performance (OTP) across a long stretch of time, go to https://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archive/html/history.php and you can select the train you want to track, the station you want to track it's OTP at, and the date-range you want to track it in (I think data goes back to 2017?). If you want to track the OTP for an entire long-distance run, I'd just check the arrival status at it's destination.
 
It appears that SWC No. 3 which left Chicago on 7/10 on time will arrive at LAX today a little over 6 hours late. (This is the third No. 3 in succession to arrive quite late since the new departure and arrival times went into effect on July 8th.)

Westbound SWC No. 4 seems to be doing much better. The No. 4 that left LAX on 7/10 on time will arrive in CHI today a little over an hour late which most people would find acceptable.

We never have a problem with a westbound No. 3 running 6-7 hours late since we get to see things that we’d ordinarily miss because we’d still be asleep when we went passed them. On one occasion, when our train was running 7 hours late, we even were served lunch, although the choices were limited to Angus Burgers or Toasted Cheese Sandwiches. On that occasion, we got off at Fullerton and caught the next southbound Pacific Surfliner there, which saved us having to ride all the way to LAX.
 
Today’s (7-15) SWC No. 3 was cancelled due to “equipment issues.” Does anyone know how far in advance passengers were informed of this cancellation?
Probably why 4 was cancelled today. I hope they gave the passenger time to re-book on different train sets to get back to where they needed to go.

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As a relative newbie to all things Amtrak... what do they do for passengers that have booked a trip? Sleeper car vs coach?
 
Probably why 4 was cancelled today. I hope they gave the passenger time to re-book on different train sets to get back to where they needed to go.

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This cancellation leads us to believe that there are no extra train sets available for the SWC at this time. (Because No. 3 was cancelled in Chicago on the 15th, no No. 3 train arrived at LAX today and there was apparently no train set available for the No. 4 train, which was to depart today, hence the cancellation.)

This being the summer travel season, it’s probably safe to assume that today’s No. 4 was fairly well booked up, including the coaches, roomettes, and bedrooms. (Some of those sleeping car reservations were probably made months in advance, too.) What are the chances that the people with bedrooms will be able to book another bedroom in the near future? Will there even be coach seats available on tomorrow’s No. 4? As a result of these cancellations, a lot of people had their vacation plans messed up royally, especially those who were trying to get home.

A priority should be given to getting more Superliner cars back in service ASAP.
 
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They have the option of rescheduling on a later date, subject to availability, or a full refund.
If this happened to us, rather than requesting a full refund, we’d call Customer Relations and have them reschedule our trip to some future date when we could be sure of obtaining bedrooms to Chicago and back and on dates that work for us. This probably would be months into the future. One consolation is that, when we finally do travel, the cost of those bedrooms would have gone up, yet we’d only be paying what they cost us when we’d originally made our reservations.
 
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Two extra sleepers were run on yesterdays #3, no doubt to accommodate those on the cancelled train of the day before. No extra coaches were added though.
Were the people who had sleeping car reservations on #3 for the 15th (which was cancelled) in fact, re-booked onto those two extra sleepers? If so, than my feelings of goodwill towards Amtrak have been renewed. Those feelings will become even stronger if two extra sleepers are added to tomorrow's No. 4 train to accommodate those sleeping car passengers with reservations on today's No. 4. We'll see.
 
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If this happened to us, rather than requesting a full refund, we’d call Customer Relations and have them reschedule our trip to some future date when we could be sure of obtaining bedrooms to Chicago and back and on dates that work for us. This probably would be months into the future. One consolation is that, when we finally do travel, the cost of those bedrooms would have gone up, yet we’d only be paying what they cost us when we’d originally made our reservations.

Sounds good... but imagine being 1500 miles from home, midway through a rail pass trip, standing at the station with wife and all your luggage. And that presents another question, if you have checked a bag - can you retrieve it if the train is cancelled?

Reading about all of these recent problems I reckon we lucked out on our recent trip. A two hour delay leaving Atlanta carried all the way through to NYP. A two hour delay leaving CHI to NOL was made up enroute and we arrived on time. I do wish I had been a bit more cognizant of things after our delay leaving ATL. Scheduled to leave at 11:30 PM was our "day 1" of a rail pass. We didn't actually leave until after 1 AM. I would like to have had the day to spend in CHI before leaving...
 
I think these were cancelled before they started accepting baggage. But if they had, yes, it would be returned since it would never leave the station.

But yes, dealing with a cancellation is a pain. You're looking at waiting days or trying to book alternate transportation on your own, which can be expensive at the last minute.

You can also ask Customer Relations for additional compensation for the inconvenience, normally Amtrak vouchers.
 
Sounds good... but imagine being 1500 miles from home, midway through a rail pass trip, standing at the station with wife and all your luggage.
We came close to being in this situation on our 2023 trip while we were in Toledo, expecting to catch Capitol Limited No. 29 to Chicago where we were to catch SWC No. 3 to LA. At 3:00 a.m. we got a “changes to your trip” message saying that No. 29 had been cancelled due to “mechanical issues.” The cancellation message provided a phone number to call for assistance, and we got through to an agent right away. When asked to book us whatever was available on that day’s Lake Shore Limited No. 49, she did some checking and said that the only thing available was Roomette 2 in Car 4910. With seemingly no other choice available to us, we took it, saying that we would pay for our ticket at the station. An e-mail confirming this reservation arrived almost immediately.

Arriving at the station, we immediately went to the ticket counter to pay for our roomette. Peter, the agent in charge, said that Roomette 2 wasn’t available because the tracks had been washed out. Being unfamiliar with the Lake Shore Limited, we didn’t realize that Car 4910 was in the Boston section which is added to No. 49 before it reaches Toledo. We assumed that Train 49 had been cancelled, leaving us stranded in Toledo.

After Pat explained that we needed to get to Chicago to catch that day’s Southwest Chief, Peter talked on his phone, typed on his keyboard and came up with two coach tickets for us on that day’s Lake Shore Limited No. 49, which was due in shortly. Those tickets didn’t even cost us anything since they were replacements for our Capitol Limited No. 29 coach tickets.

This might be a good question to throw out to the AU membership: what would you do if you were 1500 miles from home, midway through a trip, standing at the station with wife and all your luggage and it was announced that your train had been cancelled?

In our case, we now pretty much require a bedroom for a long-distance train trip. A bedroom reservation “in the hand” is not something we’d give up if we could help it, so, we’d reschedule it to some future date in the distant future with the idea that we could always revise it. We'd then use our Amtrak Guest Rewards card to pay for whatever was available. In an emergency we could probably make do with a roomette. In an extreme emergency we might even consider spending the first night in coach if we knew that we could move into a bedroom that would become vacant the next day.

Hopefully, we’ll never be in that situation, but it always pays to have a contingency plan or two in reserve.
 
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Albuquerque and La Junta are crew change points so they are longer stops. Albuquerque seems to always be a half hour to an hour and they wash the train windows there. Take a short walk to the city bus station and look at the panels explaining the history of the Alvarado Hotel which was at that location. I assume that they are still there. La Junta seems to be about 10-15 minutes in my experience.

Raton is usually a five to ten minute stop and passengers are encouraged to step outside and enjoy the air. In my experience Gallup is a short stop and I have never heard passengers encouraged to step outside. However, in looking at the Gallup webcam from time to time it appears that Gallup is sometimes a smoke stop with passengers outside.

Lamy and Las Vegas tend to be very short stops and I have never heard of passengers being encouraged to step outside there.

Of course the situation on your train may be different. Hope you have a great trip and will post a report.
OMG, they actually wash the windows?
 
OMG, they actually wash the windows?
Yes

Were the people who had sleeping car reservations on #3 for the 15th (which was cancelled) in fact, re-booked onto those two extra sleepers?
Well I don't see any other reason why Amtrak would suddenly decide to have 4 sleepers + a transdorm on a random Chief.

Coach passengers do not count. This makes one wonder what the real reason for the cancellation Was?
Zephyr was 16 hours late into Chicago and they couldn't turn the set in time (a bunch of issues with the set like plumbing). So they stole the Chief's set (or at least some of it), leaving #3 without a train. Tonight's #4 was also cancelled because it was meant to use that set, and LA doesn't have spare superliners for a Chief either.
 
Y'all are just a wealth of information!
I am in the midst of planning a rail trip to CA - out on the SWC and back on CZ. When I first started planning it was to start in mid-July... we could have been right in the middle of all this :( with the result being any future train travel out of the picture - no matter how many vouchers Amtrak provided :(

@Eric in East County - I really appreciate your response. As a seasoned Amtrak traveler you can for sure say "been there, done that"! And whatever might happen in our future travel I can tell the better half that we're not the first to experience any type of delay.

I've never considered any type of trip insurance before, reckon I will at least look at that now, but that's another topic for another thread :p
 
Well I don't see any other reason why Amtrak would suddenly decide to have 4 sleepers + a transdorm on a random Chief.
There is some precedent here. On our 2023 trip, we were among a large number of coach passengers with guaranteed connections who missed Capitol Limited No. 30 in Chicago due to the late arrival of Southwest Chief No. 3. All of us were put up in a hotel for the night and then sent out on the next day’s CL No. 30 which was rumored to be sold out. To accommodate all the extra people, another coach was added to No. 30’s consist.

Does anyone know if extra sleeping cars will be added to today’s (7/18) SWC No. 4 to accommodate those passengers who had sleeping car reservations on yesterday’s SWC No. 4 which was cancelled?
 
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