Ryan
Court Jester
For those of us that don't have the luxury of a two day train ride, perhaps you can elaborate on what you're trying to say.
On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".When I was counting protect cars individually, I was specifically assigning one each to Miami, New Orleans, and Chicago, and two to New York (or one to New York and one to Boston). For the Cap to be single-level, I figured one really ought to add one at DC. This number doesn't scale according to the number of cars in use; it's just a baseline.I don't think protects are computed on a per train basis. They are counted based on the grossed up totals, and distributed as necessary.9 * 1.2 = 10.8, which means roughly 11 cars needed for the Cap to have 3 each for 3 consists.I just totaled up the consist counts and then took 20% as shop + protect, which is the way it is done now anyway.
The other issue is that in the case of both trains, looking only at NYP excludes the significant number of boardings at PHL and WAS (as well as lesser numbers at BAL, WIL, TRE, and EWR). What I've long wanted is some sort of consolidation of the WAS-north trips on the Silvers (basically, treat everyone who uses the train from "Washington or somewhere north" as a single station for purposes of the stats. You also might want to consolidate everything down in SFRTA territory into a single "stop" for this as well: MIA boards something like 90k/yr but your total is closer to 250k for all the South Florida stops. Granted, a decent number of those are going to Tampa or Orlando...but plenty of them are continuing onwards.Selecting NYP and MIA is a selective subset of the ridership stats for the Silvers. Orlando is a busier station for both the Meteor and Star than Miami. The top two city pairs by revenue for the Star are NYP-ORL and NYP to Tampa. The top two city pairs by both revenue and ridership for the Meteor are NYP-ORL and WAS-ORL. The Star gets a fair amount of intrastate FL business with TPA-MIA and TPA-WPB as the top two city pairs by ridership.Paulus had that only 6% of sleeper passengers go between NYP and MIA. I was afraid that such might imply that the other 94% of sleeper passengers only travel for a short couple of stops (and have no need for any meals), and was hoping to get some clarification on that point.
According to the 2013 NARP stats sheets, the average trip distance for the Star in coach was 471 miles and 844 miles for sleeper class. So the average trip in coach for the Star is still a longer distance then the NEC from WAS to BOS (457 miles). For the Meteor, the average trip in coach was 567 miles and 925 miles for sleeper class. Longer average distances than the Star, but not by a huge amount.
That's about right. IIRC, LAX-SFO and LAX-LAS are the two biggest air markets...but you have a slew of airports on each end which produce something like 40 main pairs (e.g. LGA-MIA, JFK-MIA)...and something like 20 of those pairs are quite large. A few are smaller (e.g. JFK, LGA, and EWR might not all dump much traffic on WPB) but I seem to recall coming up with this when I was tallying ridership once before. From what I recall as well, if Amtrak grabbed 5% of the air-rail market you'd need something like 8-10 long daily trains to deal with the load.When talking of NEC - Florida traffic, one might also wish to club together all the Florida destinations' traffic from NEC together to get a rounded up number for NEC - Florida, rather than considering just Miami or just Orlando or Tampa.
I read somehwere that when you do such clumping of airline traffic between NEC and Florida, it comes out to be the largest airline market in all of United States.
Yes, protect cars are insurance. That's why you need the same number whether you run one train between the two endpoints or 10 trains between the two endpoints.On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".
They're insurance, but the number needed does slide up (slowly) as the number of cars in service rises (with enough cars in service you can imagine multiple bad orders in a day); you also get to a point where you can tinker with your schedules and have a spare set ready to cover "meltdown delays" and/or to enable you to tighten equipment turns if you have enough trains in rotation. To offer an example, if you had a dozen overnight trains based out of NYP with roughly the same consists you can increase the number of same-day turns (and/or reduce the time needed for them) if you've got a spare consist that can be put out there when an inbound train is exceedingly late (e.g. the "spare Builder" situation in CHI).Yes, protect cars are insurance. That's why you need the same number whether you run one train between the two endpoints or 10 trains between the two endpoints.On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".
On the other hand, shop count is really a percentage of the cars, because each car is in the shop a certain percentage of the time.
This is why I'd really like a separate broken-out accounting for protect cars, on the one hand, and shop count, on the other hand. I don't have a good handle on how often Amtrak cars *ought* to be in the shop (required federal inspections, routine maintenance, etc.)
To save yourself time, unless there is a waiver for continuous maintenance, figure something has to come out of line every 92 days for inspections. Additionally, there are major inspections every 2 years requiring various components to be completely disassembled and serviced/replaced.Yes, protect cars are insurance. That's why you need the same number whether you run one train between the two endpoints or 10 trains between the two endpoints.On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".
On the other hand, shop count is really a percentage of the cars, because each car is in the shop a certain percentage of the time.
This is why I'd really like a separate broken-out accounting for protect cars, on the one hand, and shop count, on the other hand. I don't have a good handle on how often Amtrak cars *ought* to be in the shop (required federal inspections, routine maintenance, etc.)
Such a methodology would also require a great deal of labor. If you had enough manpower and a fully staffed back shop, you could turn a train with defect in probably an hour.As long as Chicago 14th St and Sunnyside are unable to turn a consist in about 3 hours when push comes to shove, the only if will be to keep a lot of additional rolling stock stabled as protection.
As an example on Indian Railways for the Kolkata - New Delhi overnight trains (Rajdhani and Duronto) which covers the 900+ miles in 16-17 hours, basically starting late afternoon arriving late morning the method used is as follows:
All consists are owned by the Kolkata end and the Kolkata end maintains enough protect to cobble together one additional consist in general and upto two in winter. So roughly speaking 3 trains are run using 9+1 consists normally, 9+2 in the winter. Incidentally that already is a huge amount of protect, way more than Amtrak can afford I suppose, considering that each consist is 18 cars to sometimes as many as 20 cars. But I am told that protect equipment when necessary can be cobbled together from shop equipment by delaying shop service or expediting completion of shop work. So protect and shop numbers are somewhat mixed up, and there never is actually the entire protect pool sitting around doing nothing.
The trains are run as if they are running on a 32 hour mission with a long stop half way through their mission. They are prepared and maintained as such. Which means they receive basic cleanup, safety inspection and prep in New Delhi, and any major work is done only at the Kolkata end. Only on rare occasions is any equipment change made at the New Delhi end. The turn time normally in New Delhi is something like 7 hours. In extreme cases they are able to turn the consist in as little as two hours, which means upto 5 hour delayed incoming can be handled with little impact on the departure.
Do cancellations due to lack of equipment happen? Yes they do, specially in winters when fog delays exceed 5 to 9 hours for multiple days in a row. But there is no allocation other than non-maintainable levels of protect that could sustain service through such disruptions. So no one bothers to even try.
Basically the New York - Chicago trains could be managed using such a pattern, which would reduce the need for a lot of single level protect equipment in Chicago. Afterall we don't park Superliner protect equipment in Denver and Albuquerque. The consists are maintained with a requirement that they must run all the way to the end without requiring consist changes.
Such a methodology would also eliminate the ping-ponging of defective equipment between Chicago and New york with no one taking the responsibility to fix it. Responsibility would lie at exactly one place to fix it.
Thanks! But *how long* is it out for inspections? If the inspections take one day, that's 1/92 shop time. If they take 10 days, that's 10/92 shop time.To save yourself time, unless there is a waiver for continuous maintenance, figure something has to come out of line every 92 days for inspections.
Again, thanks! But the key question is *how long* do these take? If the entire car can be disassembled, serviced, and reassembled in a day, that's 1/730 shop time. If it takes 30 days, that's 30/730 shop time...Additionally, there are major inspections every 2 years requiring various components to be completely disassembled and serviced/replaced.
Of course, you can still support that number of maintenance workers if you're running a train every 15 minutes (or more). If not, you can't.... Economies of scale strike again.Such a methodology would also require a great deal of labor. If you had enough manpower and a fully staffed back shop, you could turn a train with defect in probably an hour.
However, those types of level are long gone. I was talking to an old Superintendent and he remarked he used to be able to turn a train including cleaning, cutting an engine on one end while adding an engine on the other end, turning the seats vacuums, interior windows being wiped in 15 minutes. If he had to dump the toilets and service the bathrooms, it took him 30 minutes as long as the train was spotted properly. He also told me that he used to have 6 electricians servicing the Southern Crescent alone!
At some point, cutting staff means buying more cars, which may be a bad tradeoff financially. Has Amtrak passed that point?Now, he's lucky if he has six electricians in two locations (yard and station) on his busiest tour.
Actually, I think it's 16 days instead of 19 (the annual inspection does, I believe, cover one of the quarterly ones).OK, if we call the annual inspection 7 days and the 92-day inspection 3 days due to moving cars to the right place (this seems pessimistic), that's.... 19 days a year, or about 5% spent out of service.
Now, I assume that there is other routine maintenance based on when things *actually* break.
To get to a 20% shop count, you'd have to have something break taking each car out of service for an average of one day a week. OK, I suppose that's probably plausible... still seems high.
See, I'm absolutely sure of this. Larger fleets should require smaller shop & protect percentages, but it's hard to figure out how *much* smaller unless you break it down in detail. Economies of scale...I think the 20% shop/protect count (remember, protect equipment is also part of that) also has to do with the small size of some of the parts of the fleet
Most of the time there's a Coach and a Sleeper in SAS as protect cars for the Sunset and Eagle jis! FTW sometimes has a P-42 and a Coach car sitting in the yard!They keep protect cars in SAS?
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