Recent content by ashleyryan15

Looks like some of it is to do with equipment failures due to the cold. My money is on the SC-44s/ALCs usual cold weather issues, with a healthy dose of frozen toilets sprinkled in. https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/amtrak-midwest-winter-shutdown-continues/

I see the Southwest Chief is due into LA Union Station at 8 AM, and often arrives earlier. I've seen some references to an abbreviated breakfast - what is that like? Are there fewer menu options?

Well, if it’s got a charger on it, that thing could terminate at any second ;) That said, ASM and Arrow seem to indicate it’ll run through.

trains are moving again. Amtrak is still selling tickets for tomorrow’s trains

Heh, I remember seeing some of those (FedEx trucks, right?) going through there on 43 earlier this year

Update: Watch live: Officials provide update on East Palestine train derailment Apparently as of this evening they’re already reinstalling tracks.

Update: 29/30 still cancelled tonight (7th) and tomorrow (8th). 29/30 were both zeroed on the 9th. (for the uninitiated: this sales were prevented in Arrow in situations where a train will likely cancel) but were both recently returned to sale.

Based on the fact that they’ve already moved 4 of the 5 vinyl chloride tankers, I imagine service will be restored more quickly than I expected - given how important that route is to NS it’ll probably be a “dump everything to the side and quickly put down new rail, get a more permanent fix later”

Luckily it would've had to be absurdly late or early for that to be a risk

According to @AmtrakAlerts on Twitter 29 and 30 are cancelled on the 6th as well…

50-car train derailment causes big fire, evacuations in Ohio Here's the first daylight aerial photo I've seen giving a good overview of the crash site. Looks like the damage is pretty isolated to the train and tracks, it's definitely no Lac-Mégantic. Looks like NS has a massive cleanup and...

Looking at openrailwaymap.org it looks like they have at least 2 diversion routes possible, one passing through ALC but just missing the platform, the other just bypassing it entirely. Hopefully someone has enough sense to reroute it instead of just canceling it indefinitely… I'm on 30 CHI-WAS...

Still ignoring the issue of seating available but no single seat for the whole journey. I get the incentives but overall it strikes me as a flawed system

Haven’t those been around for a while?

Yes, I mentioned that. I also mentioned some issues with electronic seat reservations, namely a situation where empty seats are available for every portion of a passengers journey yet there is no single seat available continuously, because when reserving seats online people will pick what they...