Amtrak Fall Foliage trips out of Philly

[Acela150]

I had my phone plugged in, and followed along on

the Verizon Navigator. I was not able to connect to the car's wifi for some reason, but the 4G coverage worked most of the way.

Based on the consist posted earlier the challenge likely lies in the fact that y'all had Amfleet II Cafes in the consist. My understanding is that the receivers for Wi-Fi for the single level fleet are in the Amfleet I Cafes, and then the signal is distributed to the trainline via COMM cables that carry the PA, door commands, etc. If you didn't have a receiver in the consist then it wouldn't have been possible to connect in any car, even if its normally capable.

You are 100% correct Battalion, this consist only contained Amfleet II cafes. The AMF II's have not yet been outfitted with WiFi. And it is the cafe cars that carry the cellular modems that provide the backbone connection to the Internet. The AMF I coaches only WiFi hotspots that connect to the uplink in the AMF I cafe cars. No AMF I cafes means no WiFi from Amtrak.

How do the Keystone trains, which don't have cafe cars, have wifi then? (Just curious.)

The Cab-Cars have the wifi equipment.

 

[PRR 60]

We were absolutely flying around Bird-in-Hand..... Anyone care to estimate the speed?

Maximum track speed in that area is 110mph. I doubt they were doing that with 16 cars, but 90 to 100 is certainly possible.

 

[jis]

We were absolutely flying around Bird-in-Hand..... Anyone care to estimate the speed?

Maximum track speed in that area is 110mph. I doubt they were doing that with 16 cars, but 90 to 100 is certainly possible.

I could be wrong, but I think the Bird In Hand curve is 90mph. But either way it is most likely to have been doing something like 90 around there.

 

[mignyc]

I haven't done any long distance train travel... I'm quite sure that was the fastest I've ever ridden on a train. It was great.

 

[Blackwolf]

The states in order of their listing: VA CA MI CT WI IN ME IL OK WA NY OR VT PA NC DC

Thank you!

In some ways I'm surprised to see California on there, in others I'm not. Time to sit back and be patient until Amtrak makes its decision!

 

[prr4400]

Saturday i timed a mile on NEC it was 90 mph a friend had on his gps at 83 mph east of Lancaster

 

[fairviewroad]

Thanks for the first-hand reports for those of us who couldn't be there. Hopefully some videos will surface of the train

in a non-corridor location!

On a side note: Anyone get their AGR points for this trip yet?

 

[mignyc]

nope.

 

[CHamilton]

Colin Leach from NARP has posted a nice blog entry about the excursion.

http://narprail.org/news/narp-blog/2424-autumnexpress13

 

[afigg]

Trains Magazine News Wire has an article on the special excursions trains, but it is only available to subscribers so I'll skip posting the link. Subscribers can find the news article easily enough.

The report concludes with this note on prospects for future excursions. Given the success of this one, odds are obviously good that there will be more next year with fall foliage trips being the draw to attract both the general public and railfans.

"The equipment came from Amtrak’s small reserve pool that moves around the country to cover private charters, plus some Northeast Corridor cars. Jagodzinski hinted that these would not be last such Amtrak excursions. He said a key consideration when running trains over freight railroads is that the excursion cannot interfere with the host railroad’s freight operations. Jagodzinski says that in each case “the business case has to be right,” but that there are several other future route possibilities in the Northeast and the Midwest."

Maybe by next fall, Amtrak could provide a couple of new Viewliner diners to the trains to serve as lounge cars with limited food sales.

 

[acelafan]

Thanks for posting that blog entry - by all accounts it seems this special trip was an outstanding success...weather, equipment, host railroads, staff, etc.

Next logical question - I think Amtrak will consider running something like this again given their survey questions. I assume they'd need to do it from a crew/maintenance base and from a city that could draw from a large population source or one that's easy for people to get to. Not to mention run a train over a unique route.

Some cities I was thinking of: Boston, Chicago, Saint Louis, Seattle, Portland, Denver, DC. Maybe San Diego or LA? Anyone else who wasn't on the train (and can't do the survey) have input? We could ask NARP to forward our feedback. The more people we can get interested in trains the better!

 

[CHamilton]

Good idea! Why don't you start a thread with a poll that would allow everyone to respond?

 

[acelafan]

Excellent....someone on here can probably do that faster than I can - I'm still multi-tasking at work while thinking about trains..

 

[CHamilton]

Okay, I'll add a new thread.

Poll posted here. http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/57379-amtrak-excursion-ideas-for-2014-add-your-ideas/

 

[mignyc]

It's true that the staff aboard the train appeared to be quite happy to be working; someone upthread might've intimated that there were "volunteers" working? Can someone clarify that?

I even saw one of the folks in the "staff" polo shirts *checking the restroom* midway through the trip. Amazing! Never seen that on any other train, ever.

I will echo what someone else from the Saturday trip said about the cafe car staff - from what I saw on Sunday, they were in the weeds, big time. Despite there being two of them behind the counter on Sunday's train, they could not keep up and in fact seemed unable to express any urgency or speed in their motions. I had to remind them to stop chatting, please, and complete my transaction. Having to ring up and pay for food orders separately from the souvenir orders was a timesuck for them, as well.

 

[R30A]

I certainly experience people checking the restrooms on Amtrak trains. On LD trains it is the coach and sleeper attendants. On corridor trains, someone will often ride between two stops and clean restrooms/collect trash before riding a train the other way doing the same.

 

[fairviewroad]

At the risk of sounding like sour grapes (since I'd have liked to have ridden this but could not), I'd hold off a bit longer before pronouncing

it as a "success," Certainly from all accounts the on-board product (despite a few flaws noted in this thread) was a success. It was certainly

a success in the sense that it even happened in the first place, much less twice.

But while as a taxpayer I'm happy enough to help subsidize useful, safe, efficient rail travel to large cities small towns alike, I'm a little less thrilled

about subsidizing excursions like this. So I'd really like to wait to see if this trip "broke even" or not before I call it a success. Yes, I realize there

are intangible benefits to a trip like this, so I'm okay with perhaps a slight operating loss...but I really don't want to find out later that the $89 tickets

only covered roughly 50% of the cost (for example).

And yes, I also realize that many folks who rode this also took Amtrak as a positioning trip to/from Philadelphia. I'm happy to factor that into the

"success" of this trip, too. Bottom line is, make a case for doing this again beyond simply "the people on board had a nice time."

 

[acelafan]

As I understand it, Amtrak could only run this train IF the numbers made sense - they could definitely not run it as a loss. PRIIA 2008 said something to the effect "Amtrak should consider running excursion trains if they will help the bottom line".

I'm pretty sure Amtrak figured out all costs to run the train then set the ticket price appropriately. I would assume that there are fixed costs for doing this trip, so adding a second train (and additional coaches) helped the bottom line given both trains were a sell out. Would be interesting to see the bottom numbers, though.

 

[benjibear]

Face it the numbers will always be fuzzy. Amtrak can say they made x amount of profit but they may just forget to add some stuff in the bottom line to make it look good. .

 

[JoeRids]

I can clarify that all car hosts were indeed volunteers from various different facets of Amtrak operations; a passenger in my car asked about this and was told by our car hosts. However I couldn't deduce if they meant they were "volunteering to work on their day off" or if they were truly volunteering without getting paid. I'm sure the conductors and cafe attendants were paid.

 

[FreeskierInVT]

I can clarify that all car hosts were indeed volunteers from various different facets of Amtrak operations; a passenger in my car asked about this and was told by our car hosts. However I couldn't deduce if they meant they were "volunteering to work on their day off" or if they were truly volunteering without getting paid. I'm sure the conductors and cafe attendants were paid.

The employee who was covering my car was the head chef for Amtrak's Acela and state supported services. He said he was the one in charge for implementing Acela's first class menu, and for putting local food and beverages on state supported trains, such as Long Trail Ale on the Vermonter and Ethan Allen,

 

[Nathanael]

Back in the station. I was very surprised with thd number of folks on thr ground waiting for the train to pass by ...

When I was on a detour of the Empire Builder from Chicago to Minneapolis due to flooding, there were samll crowds out in every town and people at dozens of additional farmhouses waving at the train.

On the Adirondack Scenic Railroad from Utica to Thendara, there were people out waving in every town along the line -- and this train runs multiple times per week!

It's actually pretty impressive how many people come out to wave at trains, particularly in areas with less-than-daily service. Personally I think of it as a sign of the popular hunger for rail service.

 

[railiner]

I can clarify that all car hosts were indeed volunteers from various different facets of Amtrak operations; a passenger in my car asked about this and was told by our car hosts. However I couldn't deduce if they meant they were "volunteering to work on their day off" or if they were truly volunteering without getting paid. I'm sure the conductors and cafe attendants were paid.

That is the same impression that I got. The "car hosts", I believe all came from Amtrak salaried (management) ranks, so they probably did not receive any additional compensation for this 'labor of love'.......

 

[fairviewroad]

Face it the numbers will always be fuzzy. Amtrak can say they made x amount of profit but they may just forget to add some stuff in the bottom line to make it look good. .

Yeah, you're probably right. Still, I'd like them to actually say that as opposed to have everyone assume it was a "success" by all standards. In the

airline industry, it's well-known that a full plane is not necessarily a profitable plane. Amtrak has proved that it has the ability to pull off an excursion

in terms of the logistics, the on-board product (mostly), and getting butts in the seats. I guess if the fourth metric is profitability, then "3 outta 4 ain't

bad." But I'd like to see them get the 4th part right, too.

 

[AlanB]

Let's just look at this quickly. The Blue Water last year spent $1.1 Million operating 2 daily trains. $1.1/365/2=$1,506 per train in expenses.

Each excursion train had more than 800 people on it. 800*$89=$71,200

Even with pay NS for the pilots and assuming that they couldn't get NS to give away track rights for the run, the odds fully favor that these trains made money. It's not going to balance the budget for Amtrak; but I rather doubt that they lost any money on this. And it was great publicity too!