Which Train has the most Padding?

[Amtrak Slow Poke]

Has anyone ever figured out which Amtrak LD train has the most time padding?

This isn't scientific by any means, but I've eyeballed a lot of the schedules and it seems the Texas Eagle takes the prize, especially between Dallas and San Antonio. An armadillo could probably make the trip quicker than the TE.

But maybe there are other routes as bad?

 

[Bob Dylan]

I agree that the Texas Eagle has the most padding but the Sunset Ltd. also has lots of Padding built in West of San Antonio to LAX which results in the 4:30AM Arrivals into LAX!!! <_<

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

I'd say that the CS has a lot considering how long it takes to get anywhere. But it's still late all the time.

 

[Nathanael]

There's some very substantial padding on the Lake Shore Limited at Albany, NY. Given the handoff between hosts and the train split/join and the single-track to Schenectady, there's some justification for it; in the Performance Improvement Plans, however, it appears that the plan is to remove much of this padding when the LSL is shifted back to an earlier timeslot. (The track to Schenectady is also being double-tracked.)

 

[gswager]

Southwest Chief usually arrives about an hour early into LAX.

 

[TCRT]

448/449 get my vote for having one hour of padding in a five and a half hour schedule - that's nearly 20% padding!

 

[guest in the west]

I guess what seems so bad about padding are several points, above and beyond the obvious fact that trains end up running A LOT slower than they have to.

1. The padding seems to make a mockery of many mid-route station stop times. A train can be hours and hours late and all of a sudden get to the endpoint and miraculously be on or close to on time. I stand corrected by anyone on this forum if I assert that I can't imagine that the pre-Amtrak passenger trains had anywhere nears the padding that the Amtrak LD trains, and I guess even some of the shorter distance trains, have as part of their schedules.

2. The padding seems to indicate just how manipulated Amtrak is at the hands of the freight railroads. If some trains are coming into intermediate stop stations consistently ahead of schedule, what possible reason is there for the schedule to year after year continue to have the same padding unless Amtrak is so incredibly weak in contrast to the freight railroads that the system just acquiesces year after year to the ridiculously slow schedules. Is Amtrak so cravenly prostrate and on its knees to the freight railroads that it never tries to get the schedules alterted to reflect current reality?

Or is the reality so disgusting i.e. that the padding allows the freight railroads to shunt Amtrak LD trains to the side for their freight trains, that the padding ends up the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, that Amtrak is for people either too poor to travel by plane (so they go in coach) or for people who love railroad travel so much that they will put up with and excuse almost anything that happens to Amtrak or for people who have so much time on their hands and have already figured that Amtrak delays are simply part of their time wasted calculations.

No matter how you slice it, the larger perspective of the padding leads to some pretty discouraging thoughts about the status of the Amtrak system.

 

[Heading North]

Padding is a way to deal with uncertainty and congestion. It's nothing new, and isn't confined to Amtrak (or trains). Would you rather get in surprisingly ahead of time, or late? And should a train that starts an hour late, and runs for another 24 hours, have to stay late or get even later?

Two examples from flying in and out of JFK Airport a few years back. There's an evening flight from NY to Richmond that's scheduled for 2+ hours. Clearly it doesn't take that long to fly--maybe an hour. But the first hour is spent on the ground waiting for takeoff from JFK. Similarly, I flew in from London once and landed a full hour early. (Woo hoo!) We then spent the hour traveling to the gate. According to FlightStats this was common. I'd say most flights have padding too--have you ever taken off on time?--and they don't even have to deal with multiple stops much anymore.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

I guess what seems so bad about padding are several points, above and beyond the obvious fact that trains end up running A LOT slower than they have to.

1. The padding seems to make a mockery of many mid-route station stop times. A train can be hours and hours late and all of a sudden get to the endpoint and miraculously be on or close to on time. I stand corrected by anyone on this forum if I assert that I can't imagine that the pre-Amtrak passenger trains had anywhere nears the padding that the Amtrak LD trains, and I guess even some of the shorter distance trains, have as part of their schedules.

2. The padding seems to indicate just how manipulated Amtrak is at the hands of the freight railroads. If some trains are coming into intermediate stop stations consistently ahead of schedule, what possible reason is there for the schedule to year after year continue to have the same padding unless Amtrak is so incredibly weak in contrast to the freight railroads that the system just acquiesces year after year to the ridiculously slow schedules. Is Amtrak so cravenly prostrate and on its knees to the freight railroads that it never tries to get the schedules alterted to reflect current reality?

Or is the reality so disgusting i.e. that the padding allows the freight railroads to shunt Amtrak LD trains to the side for their freight trains, that the padding ends up the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, that Amtrak is for people either too poor to travel by plane (so they go in coach) or for people who love railroad travel so much that they will put up with and excuse almost anything that happens to Amtrak or for people who have so much time on their hands and have already figured that Amtrak delays are simply part of their time wasted calculations.

No matter how you slice it, the larger perspective of the padding leads to some pretty discouraging thoughts about the status of the Amtrak system.

You are correct, pre Amtrak trains usually did not have so much padding...minutes sometimes, not hours.

 

[abcnews]

There's some very substantial padding on the Lake Shore Limited at Albany, NY. Given the handoff between hosts and the train split/join and the single-track to Schenectady, there's some justification for it; in the Performance Improvement Plans, however, it appears that the plan is to remove much of this padding when the LSL is shifted back to an earlier timeslot. (The track to Schenectady is also being double-tracked.)

Are they planning on having an earlier departure from NYP? Is this in the immediate future (like this year?)

 

[Anderson]

The biggest pad in the east is probably the EB LSL, which not only has padding to deal with congestion, but also to get it into NYP after rush hour. The pad isn't there WB, just EB...and that's what the PIP was referring to as well. The plan for that train is to move the EB departure from about 9 PM to about 6 PM IIRC, and slide the Cap's EB departure a bit later.

 

[Guest]

"Padding" would be a train that always arrives at its final destination earlier than its published schedule time (not just sometimes early and sometimes late).

"Most Padding" would be the largest average early arrival time.

I guess Amtrak Status Maps could provide the data to determine if there is indeed a winner, and by how much.

 

[zephyr17]

Most long distance trains have some mid-route pad as well as end point. The best way to determine pad is to compare the inbound and outbound timing between the last station and the "pad"station, with the outbound time reflecting the actual running time and the difference between the outbound time and inbound time as "pad". If someone would care to dig into the timetables in detail, it would be a straightforward, if tedious, effort to find all the "recovery time" points and compute the amout of pad at each.

Finally, a definition of "most"? The greatest absolute amount of pad or the percentage of scheduled time that is pad?

 

[Trogdor]

"Padding" would be a train that always arrives at its final destination earlier than its published schedule time (not just sometimes early and sometimes late).

"Most Padding" would be the largest average early arrival time.

I guess Amtrak Status Maps could provide the data to determine if there is indeed a winner, and by how much.

There is no train in the system that "always" arrives earlier than its scheduled time. That's not really the correct definition of padding.

Padding is simply the ability to make up time (or arrive early), not that it always will beat a certain time.