Amtrak Shaves 2 Hours From Sunset Limited Schedule

[jccollins]

Amtrak Train 2, the eastbound Sunset Limited, will be scheduled to arrive into Orlando, FL at 6:45pm, two hours earlier than its current schedule, beginning with the schedule change on October 26. The train will still depart from Los Angeles Union Station at its current time of 10:30p Su,W,&F. This news can be found on the NARP news hotline at http://www.narprail.org and verified with the Amtrak fare finer at http://www.amtrak.com The earlier arrival should be more convenient for passengers arriving in Orlando to make other connections or even check in to thier hotels.

Amtrak Train 1, the westbound Sunset Limited, will continue to operate with its current schedule.

 

[amtrakmichigan]

Amtrak Train 2, the eastbound Sunset Limited, will be scheduled to arrive into Orlando, FL at 6:45pm, two hours earlier than its current schedule. The train will still depart from Los Angeles Union Station at its current time of 10:30p Su,W,&F.

LOL !!!!!!!!!!! Wow that's a good one !!! I am not making fun of you "jccollins", I am just laughing at this one because I just had tickets for that train and turned them in to take a different route. I bought my tickets back in February not knowing how late this train runs all the time. I was going to go from CHI to NOL then ORL. I found this train to be 2 to 12 hours late practically everytime it ran, but the average was probably 4 to 8 hours. I traded those in on tickets for the Capitol to the Silver Meteor. I can't beleave that they could do this since they cant keep that train anywhere close to on-time as it is, let alone starting it out at the same time then having it arrive 2 hours earlier. Now the avg. should be about 6 to 10 hours late. :lol:

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Is it possible that somehow, someway the UP is beginning to cooprate more and the train will start running closer to schedule? If not, a speeded up triming on the SL is the biggest joke of the year.

 

[amtrakmichigan]

After reading the on line news for the NARP that "jc" left a link to, they are trimming the time between NOL and ORL on CSX. But your right Bill, this would be the joke of the year, since the it's almost always "very late" arriving into NOL. :lol: Also, it says that they trimmed the time going east, but it's the same time going west.......figure that one out ! <_<

 

[jccollins]

Amtrak cut about 1 1/4 hours from the eastbound Sunset Limited during their last schedule change. It is now scheduled to arrive into LAX at 6:40a instead of the previous 7:55a.

I can't really complain about the Sunset's OTP since it was on time on my only LAX-ORL round trip on it. We actually pulled into ORL about 20 minutes earlier than scheduled at 8:25p, although I know that it is often late.

Within the last few years Amtrak has cut the California Zephyr's westbound departure time from Reno while NOT changing its departure time from Chicago. The train went from dep RNO at 10:53a to 10:00a to (now) 9:20a. While I have NEVER seen the wb train 5 depart Reno on time (I don't think it actually ever has) it does seem to adjust earlier with each schedule bump earlier. When it was scheduled at 10:53 it would show up at noon every day, at 10:00 it would show around 11, and now it usually shows up at about 10. So Amtrak must (I sure hope) have some logic behind adjusting these arrival times. Hopefully we can at least see the Sunset showing up at ORL around the current time (8:45p) a little more often since it is now scheduled for earlier.

 

[battalion51]

I think part of the shaving of two hours has to do with crews. Right now the JAX-SFA crew goes on duty at 4:30, and arrives into SFA around 10-10:30, depending on how badly they get screwed while deadheading. They then go to the hotel, and are back on duty at 10:30 the next morning. Now if the train gets four hours late, then they will have to be set back for departure on 001 because of hours of service. So I think the schedule change is Amtrak encouraging CSX to run the Sunset more on time, and not sticking them so much for freights because "there's a lot of time in the schedule." But only time will tell if this is the case.

 

[AMTRAK-P42]

Amtrak tried to "shave" some time off from the zephyr back in April, that only came back to haunt them. I guess we will see if it happens this time.