Daylight Savings and Amtrak

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ALC Rail Writer

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This Sunday after the next (March 9th) I am scheduled to board 29 at 1:39AM, just 21 minutes before DST begins. Last fall I was on 30 during the fall back hour and we stopped outside ALC to kill time. Am I correct in assuming DST shouldn't affect my travel plans as the scheduled stop is before the missing hour and (assuming all delays are equal) should I plan on arriving an hour later in Chicago?

Thanks,

-M.
 
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Correct. In the spring, if there are no further delays going westbound, trains that cross the time zone line will be 1 hour late after 2 am, in the fall since a train can not leave a station early, it will sit at the first stop it makes after 2 am for an hour. Thus it may be at the station in Nowhere for an hour.
 
Can we pin it in a special way to be an active pin two weeks before and one week after the clocks change and become a regular post that's berried the rest of the year?
 
Can we pin it in a special way to be an active pin two weeks before and one week after the clocks change and become a regular post that's berried the rest of the year?
I don't know if that is even possible.
Can't do that. And for a couple of weeks a year, not worth having it pinned. Easier to just start a new thread each time the time changes.
 
Even with the hour of lateness, many of the LD trains may still reach their ultimate destination "on time", given the amount of padding in the schedules.

For example, I was on a #5 recently that departed GJC more than an hour late, but we still wound up early into ELK, just 5 stops further west.
 
Correct. In the spring, if there are no further delays going westbound, trains that cross the time zone line will be 1 hour late after 2 am
Time zones have nothing to do with it. The change to/from Daylight Savings Time affects all trains active at that hour of the night, regardless of whether they

are crossing time zones. Think of the Silver Service trains, for instance, They travel north-south within the same time zone, but they too will be an (extra) hour late

after 2 a.m.

If a train is traveling westbound, it will simply be an hour late in Central Time instead of an hour late in Eastern Time (for example.)
 
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