Anyone have any idea as to what happened for #5(20) btwn Creston and Hastings - seems that for each of the legs btwn the two it lost about 40 minutes per hour of travel time. I can understanding waiting once or twice for a freight to pass; or maybe a tree down; or a single mechanical problem... but to lose more time per each of the three legs? Or, simply dispatching (lack of) priorities? I'm going to be on #5 in a couple of weeks, so have been watching it pretty carefully in terms of OMA arrival times and making plans to get there, and when is likely. As the title says: doesn't seem #5 (or #6) can buy a break (never mind get a break) and just for once be anywhere near on time... this seems to be the worst summer (or any period of time) I've ever seen for CZ OTP. :-(
#5(20) can't buy a break?
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jis
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When we passed through that area both a few days back on 6 and last week on 5 there were host of issues including but not limited to severe storm, signal failures, tree on track which was sawed down by a conductor who surprisingly had a saw in his kit, saving us possibly from an additional two to three hours of additional delays, and on and on. Add to that summer track work and the general tendency of BNSF these days to park trains on main line like UP used to do in the past and the picture becomes complete. In short BNSF is having a summer melt down this summer for whatever reason. It is not like they are screwing passenger trains selectively. Their own trains are not doing any better, and even their own hot shot trains have had their schedules extended by as many as a dozen hours in some cases.
CaliforniaMom
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I wondered if 2011 was as bad or worse because that was the year I joined AU while planning my fall trip on the CZ.
Many thanks for the replies... One has to wonder how much of this is an artifact of underinvesting in infrastructure? Yes, I understand that we're just coming out of a bad economic downturn, not exactly a time when companies will spend wildly on infrastructure, but one has to wonder if there was more capacity, then maybe some of the 'life happens" events would be less consequential? (eg, I assume one parks a train on the mainline, simply because there isn't a siding available... but if there was, then would such have become a non-event? etc etc.) One has to likewise wonder if for UP or BNSF, OTP is less of an issue vs Amtrak, ie, when the load of coal or oil gets to where it's going, then so be it, ie, the just-in-time mfg paradigm hasn't reached the refining or power production businesses like other major parts of the economy?
On time performance is a big deal to UP and BNSF. According to the latest Trains magazine, the BNSF shippers aren't very pleased. There is a backlog of grain to be moved - before it rots. Coal stockpiles at power plants are very much depleted. Know what happens when a power plant shuts down? All hell breaks loose.
And while all those trainloads of commodities are parked everywhere, they can't be unloaded in order to go back to the oil field or coal mine or agri-silo to pick up another trainload. Trains are outlawing and to recrew trains costs MONEY.
So, between the extra money that it costs to run the trains, the money that's not being made because products can't be shipped, the loss of business to trucks and the money that has to be spent in a hurry to increase capacity, it would seem that UP and BNSF do care about on-time performance and are trying to get back to it.
jb
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They care even more about on time performance of their TOFC/COFC trains. Those are the ones that hurt immediately with loss to trucks. Usually not much coal traffic is lost to trucks, and only some grain traffic is lost to trucks. But the container traffic? It will disappear in a flash if the railroads are consistently unable to meet delivery contracts. And that is the nightmare scenario that is starting to unfold for BNSF, more so than for UP this summer.
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