CZ Schedule Change?

[Blackwolf]

This one caught me off guard.

Me and Mrs. Blackwolf are headed East from SAC on Saturday September 9 on the California Zephyr, which normally leaves at 11:09 am. This morning I got a revised itenerary from Amtrak that now has the departure from SAC at 12:39 pm. There is no reason stated for the change, and looking at different departure dates it seems that this change only affects that one train.

Anyone have an idea as to what's up?

 

[CCC1007]

Could be a Union Pacific request, or a very large group chartering the coaches...

 

[Blackwolf]

It's a request from one of the freight railroads, but it's not known which one or on what portion of the route. A call into Amtrak initially provided no information, but a second call that routed up to a manager turned up something about track work starting on September 4th. They're manually rebooking all passengers on the affected trains one by one, and ARROW has yet to be updated to reflect the changes in times. Guess it's a sudden change, and should last most of September.

Hopefully it won't cause any trouble with Chicago connections!!

 

[KnightRail]

Times have been changed. Should be reflected when searching dates/cities online now. A cursory glance shows this appears to affect origination dates of September 4-14 & 23-29.

 

[Tennessee Traveler]

Those dates and lengths indicates track work in Colorado will no rerouting of the trains. Since departure times are 1 hour 35 minutes later and arrival time at least in Emeryville is 4 1/2 hours later they will apparently also be a 3 hour delay built into the schedule.

 

[Blackwolf]

Those dates and lengths indicates track work in Colorado will no rerouting of the trains. Since departure times are 1 hour 35 minutes later and arrival time at least in Emeryville is 4 1/2 hours later they will apparently also be a 3 hour delay built into the schedule.

Trackwork in Colorado, eh? East or West of Denver, or do you know? It looks like all the normal on-line stations are still be served, and there is no Service Advisory for the train, so no obvious detour.

I'm not quite understanding the "three hour delay built in" part, though. With the trains scheduling later instead of earlier, wouldn't that be counter-productive to padding a schedule?

 

[Tennessee Traveler]

Those dates and lengths indicates track work in Colorado will no rerouting of the trains. Since departure times are 1 hour 35 minutes later and arrival time at least in Emeryville is 4 1/2 hours later they will apparently also be a 3 hour delay built into the schedule.

Trackwork in Colorado, eh? East or West of Denver, or do you know? It looks like all the normal on-line stations are still be served, and there is no Service Advisory for the train, so no obvious detour.

I'm not quite understanding the "three hour delay built in" part, though. With the trains scheduling later instead of earlier, wouldn't that be counter-productive to padding a schedule?

The delay is "precautionary" in my opinion. the "detour" could actually be a "stop" in place while waiting on crews doing whatever track work(I DON'T KNOW) or they could be even doing a forced slow down traveling like only 15 miles per hour over an extended distance. Like I said "I DON'T KNOW" what specifically is going on so am unable to be more helpful.

In previous years, the Zephyr has been routed from Denver to and from Salt Lake City through southern Wyoming for at least two weeks with a week or so breaking up those to weeks for Colorado track work. Only Union Pacific knows and can answer questions about this. Two years ago I rode the Zephyr eastbound on the southern Wyoming detour route and we were almost 6 hours late arriving Denver where I was disembarking.

 

[davidcsar]

A friend and i are traveling on the CZ on Sept 29 from Galesburg to Denver and both of us got revised tickets with the departure time from Galesburg being 6:13 Pm instead of 4:38 PM with arrival in Denver the next morning at 8:50 Am. We return on October 6th and the time out of Denver is the same for both tickets at 7:10PM. We were trying to figure out what the story was with our outbound travel. i guess we are hitting the last day of this delayed schedule.