What should the SWC do?

[johnny.menhennet]

Am I the only one thinking that NM Rail Runner really does not need any baggage cars? No one has mentioned it, but I think this is the sequence of the thread:

What should the SWC do?

Will it serve Albuquerque?

How will the Boy Scouts get to Philmont?

It is only a slightly longer ride from Santa Fe.

Just send Rail Runner up to Raton.

Well they have so much baggage.

Shouldn't we use all of the express mail cars for Rail Runner?

So I think that first of all, in the foreseeable future, NM Rail Runner has NO expansions. They already are at risk of being defunded, and so they want to stay under the radar for a while. The only way I see the service possibly running up there would be if NM gets taken to court over the deal to buy the line to the CO border and loses. The the state might mandate twice daily service or something along those lines up there. The Boy Scouts could easily coordinate and let them know when they are traveling and have NM Rail Runner add a car or two, which they have (I'm not comparing this to Amtrak at Comic-Con because Amtrak genuinely doesn't have the equip) and could throw the baggage and/or Boy Scouts in there. That is really all there is to it. There are no other circumstances where there are high needs for baggage storage and it can't be accommodated. Just not feasible to take/pay for then restore baggage cars for a service used a few round trips a year., plus the incurred extra time at stops if this amenity were open to everybody and the personnel costs, because with such frequent stops, you would need a whole crew member back there.

 

[Nathanael]

Honestly, if the bus trip to the Boy Scout ranch from their current arrival station is two hours and the bus trip from the ABQ stop is three hours... just run the bus from ABQ.

 

[ArchBishop]

Seems to me that the SWC like other Amtrak routes are held hostage by the host railroad, BNSF in this case. When ever the host wants to (or maybe needs to) spend money on maintenance they slow down the trains forcing Amtrak to kick in money to upgrade the system.

Never understood why Amtrak is treated so bad by the host railroads, they are a customer, so it seems like the host railroads provide terrible customer service to a pretty good paying customer.

 

[Eric S]

Seems to me that the SWC like other Amtrak routes are held hostage by the host railroad, BNSF in this case. When ever the host wants to (or maybe needs to) spend money on maintenance they slow down the trains forcing Amtrak to kick in money to upgrade the system.

Never understood why Amtrak is treated so bad by the host railroads, they are a customer, so it seems like the host railroads provide terrible customer service to a pretty good paying customer.

Except that Amtrak is not a particularly good paying customer. The freight railroads earn significantly more revenue from one of their hot-shot intermodal trains (with the fastest schedules, most comparable to passenger speeds/times) than from an Amtrak train.

 

[Paulus]

Seems to me that the SWC like other Amtrak routes are held hostage by the host railroad, BNSF in this case. When ever the host wants to (or maybe needs to) spend money on maintenance they slow down the trains forcing Amtrak to kick in money to upgrade the system.

Never understood why Amtrak is treated so bad by the host railroads, they are a customer, so it seems like the host railroads provide terrible customer service to a pretty good paying customer.

Amtrak's not a customer. They pay dispatching fees and incidental MOW costs, that's it, which means that, in theory, Amtrak is cost neutral. In the mean time, they represent a major problem for dispatching because of their speed, they take up multiple freight slots all of which represent far more valuable trains to the host railroads, they're frequently out of slot and so present an even greater headache, and Amtrak's reliability is not the greatest either and when their engines fail or Amtrak forgets to fuel up their locomotives (which they've done several times), it represents major financial losses to the host railroads.

Now, when the various operators are willing to work with and pay the freights more, in exchange for OTP guarantees, such as CCJPA does with the Capitol Corridors, things are fine and dandy. But for most Amtrak routes, the freights have absolutely no reason to treat Amtrak nicely.

Also, are there any routes which have had intermodal or other freight which operates at high speed where the hosts have put in slow orders on Amtrak trains? If not, as I suspect is the case, then you're unfairly criticizing the freights for not keeping the track up to a higher quality than is actually useful for them simply for Amtrak; a situation where they have more costs imposed on them without financial compensation. It seems only right that if the only one who wants to go more than 40mph on a particular stretch is Amtrak, that they should be the ones to pay for it to be kept to that standard.

 

[jis]

NM RailRunner was specifically for the purpose of people living in ABQ and commuting to Santa Fe. It seems to be fairly popular for that purpose, so it will probably stay around.

Three of the stations are for people living in ABQ, with a fourth planned.

Two are for worksites in Santa Fe.

Three are for Native American pueblos, in order to gain their support. This was important as they have some veto power.

One is to gain the support of the City of Bernalillo.

Two are designed as park-and-rides to catch people driving to Santa Fe before they hit Santa Fe downtown traffic.

Two are for towns (Belen and Los Lunas) with lots of commuters to Albuquerque as well as Santa Fe; their parking lots fill up reliably.

The final unfinished station was to get the support of the locals living near Zia Road, but that's been a mess since only half of the locals

want the station. I don't think RailRunner really cares whether or not it opens.

What makes RailRunner stand out among the various Commuter Rail operations, as I understand, is its extremely low farebox recovery. At some point they will have to fix that by raising fares that raises farebox recovery to something closer to the norm nationwide, or remain at risk of at least facing that criticism and hopefully nothing worse. I have no idea whether that is feasible at all or not.

If the SWC is rerouted, uninformed consensus seems to be that stations would (somehow) be built/rebuilt in Wichita and Amarillo, and that the SWC would continue to go to Albuquerque, reversing direction on the existing wye (refurbished, presumably) south of downtown.

I tend to consider a statement regarding Albuquerque continuing to be served irrespective of the routing east of it, at a meeting by the Chief of LD operations at Amtrak, somewhat informed, but opinions may vary

 

[Nathanael]

Also, are there any routes which have had intermodal or other freight which operates at high speed where the hosts have put in slow orders on Amtrak trains?

Yes. CSX has been known to put slow orders (for all trains) on its hot intermodal routes because it wasn't maintaining its tracks properly. This can only be called management incompetence, as it hurt CSX too. I think they've upped their maintenance and this doesn't happen as often now.

Though CSX also has a very restrictive heat order policy, again due to lax maintenance practices, which slows down its intermodals as well as slowing down Amtrak.

I guess you could say that in these cases CSX decided that its intermodals just weren't that urgent and didn't need to go very fast.

Then there's the BNSF "48 hour rule" after mudslides, where they allow freight trains through immediately upon repairs and make passenger trains wait 48 hours. (If they attribute this to concern for the safety of passengers, perhaps the BLET should have a word with them about their level of concern for the safety of the employees on freight trains).

Then there's the year when CN discovered trouble with their crossing signals and instituted a rule requiring trains to slow to a crawl -- unless they had more than a certain number of axles. Which only affected Amtrak. These crossing signals weren't actually based on axle counting, so the whole rule looked extremely suspicious: like a deliberate attempt to slow down Amtrak. They left this situation in place for the better part of a year rather than fixing their crossing signals.

There's a reason the Class Is are suspected of being actively hostile to passenger trains. There's all kinds of little nonsense like this which has been introduced over the years. It takes a while to live down that sort of reputation, although BNSF and NS have been making efforts to improve their reputation in this regard.

 

[George Harris]

Then there's the year when CN discovered trouble with their crossing signals and instituted a rule requiring trains to slow to a crawl -- unless they had more than a certain number of axles. Which only affected Amtrak. These crossing signals weren't actually based on axle counting, so the whole rule looked extremely suspicious: like a deliberate attempt to slow down Amtrak. They left this situation in place for the better part of a year rather than fixing their crossing signals.

the crossing signal issue had absolutely nothing to do with "axle counters" It had to do with the short light passenger trains not making a solid enough electrical contact to complete the circuit so that the gates would come down, or lights flash as the case might be. there is always a certain amount of gunk that gets on top of the rail so that if the weight is low, it may take the passage of several axles to clean the top of the rail enough for good electrical contact between wheel and rail.

 

[Ryan]

Yet somehow all of the other freight RR's didn't have to put axle limits on Amtrak in order for their crossing gates to work properly...

 

[Paulus]

Yet somehow all of the other freight RR's didn't have to put axle limits on Amtrak in order for their crossing gates to work properly...

Presumably they didn't have the same fault issue.

 

[Casinocim]

If they would change the SWC's route, do you think they would still do the thru-way from Denver?

I hate thinking about it :angry:

If it stays on the same route, I really do wish they would let us board in Trinidad instead of having to go over Raton Pass.

 

[George Harris]

Yet somehow all of the other freight RR's didn't have to put axle limits on Amtrak in order for their crossing gates to work properly...

Presumably they didn't have the same fault issue.

Have no idea. Other than the fact that it involves electricity in the rails and the wheels and axle completing the circuit, I know nothing about it. It is essentially a black art to me.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

If they would change the SWC's route, do you think they would still do the thru-way from Denver?

I hate thinking about it :angry:

If it stays on the same route, I really do wish they would let us board in Trinidad instead of having to go over Raton Pass.

Why don't you like Raton Pass? It's famous for the SWC.

 

[Casinocim]

If they would change the SWC's route, do you think they would still do the thru-way from Denver?

I hate thinking about it :angry:

If it stays on the same route, I really do wish they would let us board in Trinidad instead of having to go over Raton Pass.

Why don't you like Raton Pass? It's famous for the SWC.

I don't get to go through Raton Pass on the train. We are bussed over Raton Pass. And because of this, in the winter, I am always afraid they will close Raton Pass if it snows heavily, would result in missing the train. On our past trip, it started really snowing and the bus driver wouldn't leave Raton. I was getting nervous they would shut down the pass and we would have to spend the night in Raton. I am not fond of going down a mountain pass in a large vehicle, not even in a small one when the road is covered in snow.

We actually stop in Trinidad for a break. I would rather they leave us there. Another plus for this, I would be on the train sooner!

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

If they would change the SWC's route, do you think they would still do the thru-way from Denver?

I hate thinking about it :angry:

If it stays on the same route, I really do wish they would let us board in Trinidad instead of having to go over Raton Pass.

Why don't you like Raton Pass? It's famous for the SWC.

I don't get to go through Raton Pass on the train. We are bussed over Raton Pass. And because of this, in the winter, I am always afraid they will close Raton Pass if it snows heavily, would result in missing the train. On our past trip, it started really snowing and the bus driver wouldn't leave Raton. I was getting nervous they would shut down the pass and we would have to spend the night in Raton. I am not fond of going down a mountain pass in a large vehicle, not even in a small one when the road is covered in snow.

We actually stop in Trinidad for a break. I would rather they leave us there. Another plus for this, I would be on the train sooner!

So you were travelling on 3 instead of 4. If you stopped in Trinidad for a break, why not just leave the bus? BTW, it was a Greyhound, right?