Assistant Conductor pleads guilty to extortion

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Superliner Diner

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Conductor pleads guilty to misconductHAVRE (AP) — An assistant conductor for Amtrak has pleaded guilty to federal charges of stealing nearly $19,000 in passenger fares he collected.
Full story is here.
 
I read about this in today's Billings, MT, paper. Really sad. As if Amtrak doesn't have enough money problems, it has employees ripping off the money from ticket sales.
 
Excuse my ignorance and/or stupidity. The link takes me to a story that has nothing to do with Amtrak or a conductor or the stealing of passenger fares. :blink:

seajay
 
Seejay,

Unfortunately, the story was part of the newspaper's headlines page. As they updated the headlines, the story dropped off.

However, you can still read the full story here thanks to Altamont Press. Just scroll down, it's the second story.
 
Thanks, Alan. I thought for a moment I was either in the Twilight Zone or had lost it completely. Of course, now I don't have an excuse to tell my boss I need to go home and rest. :rolleyes:

seajay
 
Selfish people! :angry: No wonder Amtrak is having so many financial problems. It took THREE YEARS for Amtrak to discover this problem? There needs to be a better accounting system in place to prevent this from happening. At least he was caught, even if it is three years later. Weel, the big question is who will receive the money collected from the $250,000 fine. It would be nice if it goes to Amtrak.
 
You know what else? I hate to admit it, but I heard a couple of times over the summer, that there are a few conductors out there that don't mind letting the train get a little late...it ups there overtime. Too bad....too bad that so many of the Amtrak employees are so selfish that they feel willing to possibly put this company out of business...
 
Maybe they should cut the Conductors base salary, and then pay a bonus for on-time performances???
 
Sounds like a great idea to me....but that would mean one thing. That management would have to know it was going on. Maybe Mr. Gunn and his team will get this figured out.
 
WoodenMike said:
Maybe they should cut the Conductors base salary, and then pay a bonus for on-time performances???
While this does sound like a good idea, it would probably only help minimally with the on-time performance. While I have ran into quite a few slow & lazy conductors (sorry to throw this term out, especially if any Amtrak conductors are reading this - I know many of you work very hard) they can usually only cause small delays which can be made up by the trains with the built in padding. As we know, most of the delays come from Omaha dispatching incompetence and lack of caring for Amtrak trains vs. their freight trains. Amtrak has tried and continues to try to "win-over" these dispatchers by providing monetary incentives to the freight railroads for good dispatching and putting the passenger trains through on time. Unfortunately, many of the freight railroads don't care about the incentives and many of them remain unclaimed every year (did someone say U.P.?). It is too bad that we could not begin a massive track building program that would double all the tracks in all locations/routes served by Amtrak passenger trains. THIS would solve our on-time performance problem. B)
 
jccollins,

I think you are probably right. However, unfortunately, in most cases, I think the problem is that there is not enough land available to build that much more track...especially in the cities. I think we would be doing well if the freight companies would just double track more of the lines we use.
 
tubaallen said:
jccollins,
I think you are probably right. However, unfortunately, in most cases, I think the problem is that there is not enough land available to build that much more track...especially in the cities. I think we would be doing well if the freight companies would just double track more of the lines we use.
The government takes land away to expand highways and freeways from ten to twenty lanes (and they think it will really help - ha!) :rolleyes: If we had one track for each direction of train travel THAT would really help. Imagine what it would be like if roads only had one lane for two directions of travel (for ten and twenty mile stretches) and motor cars had to wait for oncoming motor cars to pass. It would be a joke, and cause huge delays for motor car travelers. That is what the railroads deal with every day. Double tracking should be the bare minimum acceptable. I would be willing to bet that at least 95 percent of the tracks traveled on by Amtrak have enough room for double tracking. Probably 5 percent or less of the tracks are in such heavily congested areas that there wouldn't be room for a second track. It needs to be done - when will the Federal Railroad Administration ever realize this? All subway and most commuter rail systems have all double tracking throughout the system, and, low and behold, all the trains usually run within a minute or two of their schedules. :)
 
jccollins said:
I would be willing to bet that at least 95 percent of the tracks traveled on by Amtrak have enough room for double tracking.  Probably 5 percent or less of the tracks are in such heavily congested areas that there wouldn't be room for a second track.  It needs to be done - when will the Federal Railroad Administration ever realize this?
I would tend to agree with that statement, most areas that I've traveled have room for double tracking. If they don't already have room, then it wouldn't be too big a deal to acquire the extra room. Most cities already have double tracks or greater. The problem is out in the country where far too much is single tracked.

Also let's not forget that many of these lines at one time were double tracked or even triple tracked. The freight RR's ripped up the extra track to save money on the maintenance costs. Also when they did this, there was less freight traffic than there is now.

Therein also lies the problem, getting the government to build the tracks is only half the battle. Then you've got to get the freight RR's to maintain and repair the extra track. That's a cost that many of the freight RR's don't want to acquire, especially if it will only benefit Amtrak.

The freight RR's also don't want to accept money from the FRA, even if it had any to give, since they don't want to beholden to anyone. The freight companies are afraid if they accept public money, then they will have to give up some measure of control of their company or its tracks.
 
Oh, oh, oh....

I completely agree that there would be enough room most of the time to add on a second track. I just was arguing that I didn't think that there was enough room for Amtrak to get it's own set of tracks. You're right about the government being able to build highways...but c'mon...they aren't even sure they want to give 1.2 B to the company....they aren't even going to CONSIDER taking away land from people for the company!
 
There is a difference in situations where the government wants to expand a road and when a railroad might want to expand their ROW. For instance if private individuals own the land that would be needed for expansion the government can exercise their power of eminent domain condemning the property only having to pay fair market value for it. If UP, BNSF, CSX, NS, etc., wants to do the same thing they have to enter into negotiations with the landowner as they are private corporations, and then the land owner cannot be forced to sell if they do not desire.

This is why expansion in places where the railroad (or even the state or municipality) owns the land needed is a very difficult, expensive and time consuming endeavour.
 
I know some of you are amtrak employees, and probably do a great job, and I met some fantastic employees last summer during my five-segment trip. But I have to say thta compared to Canada or Europe, Amtrak's people are lagging far behind. Why on earth aren't some of them fired? Where on Earth can you find companies that cannot fire people who don't do their job well? Well, I know the answer to that. Wherever there are government workers. Shame. Amtrak isn't going to succeed until the problem with surly/inefficient employees is dealt with.
 
We realize that... but if this was going to be for Amtrak...public transportation...it would be something the government would exploit eminent domain over. Which is why I still say it won't happen...government wouldn't do that for Amtrak.
 
tubaallen said:
We realize that... but if this was going to be for Amtrak...public transportation...it would be something the government would exploit eminent domain over. Which is why I still say it won't happen...government wouldn't do that for Amtrak.
I disagree with the exception being the NEC which is owned and operated by Amtrak. Since most of the tracks Amtrak operates over are owned by freight railroads who would receive a direct benefit from the aquisition of any additional property the government would not bother to exercise eminent domain over. Even in the case of the NEC I don't think the government would bother seeing their love for Amtrak.

Two interesting bits of trivia I discovered recently. Many of the stations Amtrak uses are owned by municipalities and not Amtrak itself (I never knew this), and UP is America's largest private landowner. Interesting stuff.
 
Ah, but they wouldn't. That is what we are talking about...more tracks laid for the sole use of Amtrak.
 
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