Daylight Savings time coming to an end

[VentureForth]

Hopefully this thread will be visible at least through this weekend if folks are looking for an explanation. Help me out here if I'm wrong.

Daylight Savings Time will officially end on Sunday, November 6th at 2 AM in each time zone. As this is "Fall Back" season, we will be gaining an hour. In other words, 2 AM becomes 1 AM.

Trains arriving at a station after 2 AM will then wait until the new 2 AM arrives. For example, the Southwest Chief will be scheduled to arrive in Newton, KS at 2:45 AM. But, being really 1:45 AM, it will sit until it's new 2:45 AM departure time.

In other words, midnight smokers should have a blast, and all overnight trains should arrive on time!

 

[Ryan]

Yep, I'll be on the Cardinal headed east that night and am hoping that the extra hour will get me into WAS on time.

In another thread, I wondered about the stop at Connersville, IN (scheduled for 0126). Will the train be allowed to leave there at the "first" 0126 EDT, or will it have to wait until the "second" 0126 EST to depart?

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Hopefully this thread will be visible at least through this weekend if folks are looking for an explanation. Help me out here if I'm wrong.

Daylight Savings Time will officially end on Sunday, November 6th at 2 AM in each time zone. As this is "Fall Back" season, we will be gaining an hour. In other words, 2 AM becomes 1 AM.

Trains arriving at a station after 2 AM will then wait until the new 2 AM arrives. For example, the Southwest Chief will be scheduled to arrive in Newton, KS at 2:45 AM. But, being really 1:45 AM, it will sit until it's new 2:45 AM departure time.

In other words, midnight smokers should have a blast, and all overnight trains should arrive on time!

You have the right idea. And trains which are one hour late will suddenly by a stroke of magic be on time.

But in the Spring the opposite happens, everything automatically becomes one hour late when it had been on time. So they have to try to make it up.Airlines are affected twice a year also but usually not as much since so many planes are non stop it is no problem to be an hour early,dispatcher permitting, if they are not making any more stops anyway.

Trains and buses have to live with this reality twice a year. That is because they stop so much more than planes. But a non stop train like the Auto Train probably does not have to worry about it too much since it has no scheduled stops for passengers, and its service stops would not matter (so far as I know) Of course it is still up to the dispatchers because it has to operate around the other trains which are affected.

One group of passengers who have to be careful are those changing to something else the next morning. This whether train, bus or air. That connection leaving the next morning,if it is originating at that stop, will be automatically on the new time. That would be that in the Spring,possibly arriving late, you must allow enough time to make your next day connections.

Airlines are affected also but it often makes little difference since most planes make few if any intermediate stops. A non stop plane during the night does not have to wait anywhere. It will just terminate an hour early if it can.

 

[jis]

Yep, I'll be on the Cardinal headed east that night and am hoping that the extra hour will get me into WAS on time.

In another thread, I wondered about the stop at Connersville, IN (scheduled for 0126). Will the train be allowed to leave there at the "first" 0126 EDT, or will it have to wait until the "second" 0126 EST to depart?

Maybe courtesy of CSX you will be late enough by then for it not to matter

 

[fairviewroad]

Airlines are affected also but it often makes little difference since most planes make few if any intermediate stops. A non stop plane during the night does not have to wait anywhere. It will just terminate an hour early if it can.

In reality the flight won't be an hour early, it will be on time...since presumably the time change

has already been factored into the flight's schedule. You don't want a big jet with 300 people

arriving at an airport an hour early, especially coming off a red-eye, if the ground crew isn't

expecting it yet.

 

[Trogdor]

In reality the flight won't be an hour early, it will be on time...since presumably the time change

has already been factored into the flight's schedule. You don't want a big jet with 300 people

arriving at an airport an hour early, especially coming off a red-eye, if the ground crew isn't

expecting it yet.

Indeed.

Checking redeye departures LAX-ORD on November 5, for example, there is:

AA1092, dp 11:55pm, ar 04:50am+1.

The same flight on November 12:

AA1092, dp 11:55pm, ar 05:50am+1.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

In reality the flight won't be an hour early, it will be on time...since presumably the time change

has already been factored into the flight's schedule. You don't want a big jet with 300 people

arriving at an airport an hour early, especially coming off a red-eye, if the ground crew isn't

expecting it yet.

Indeed.

Checking redeye departures LAX-ORD on November 5, for example, there is:

AA1092, dp 11:55pm, ar 04:50am+1.

The same flight on November 12:

AA1092, dp 11:55pm, ar 05:50am+1.

That is good to know. I had no idea the airlines were that ahead of the game.

 

[VentureForth]

Then my mind thinks about the airline that hits every timezone right before the time changes back.

May need a flux capacitor for that.

Meanwhile, in the Spring, every Amtrak overnighter winds up being an hour late. But, in the world of Amtrak, no one notices.....

 

[fairviewroad]

If Amtrak operated in a world in which it owned all its tracks, it could theoretically factor the time change

into its reservations systems so that an on-time train on the "fall back" night would not have to wait around,

and an otherwise on-time train on the "spring forward" night would not wind up an hour late.

And since time changes are known about far in advance (years, in fact) you could easily notify all affected

customers at the time of ticket purchase and thus inconvenience no one. You could even, if you wanted to

get fancy, put a footnote into the printed timetables indicating that train #XYZ will operate an hour

earlier/later from stations AA through BB on such-and-such a date.

So why don't they do that? The complicated dance with freight railroads probably has something to do with it.

But in reality it's probably because the current system "works." In the fall, a few trains wait around for the

clock to "catch up" and this takes place in the middle of the night in places like Fargo or Hastings. Many

people will sleep through it and never be the wiser.

And as others have pointed out, in the spring you do end up with late trains but many of these trains are late

anyway, and others have padding built into their schedule (see the #11 coming into SAC, for example) so the

lost hour is offset somewhat thataway.

 

[abcnews]

The Richmond Times Dispatch once did a small feature on the time change and their main subject was the Amtrak Silver Meteor (or maybe Star), but they mentioned it would be a some specific station in NC or SC and would wait in the night for the time to change over. The writer painted a good description of the train and crew waiting on the mainline track at a small town station - and it made for good reading. Until I saw that article I had never given it a thought.

 

[jis]

In reality the flight won't be an hour early, it will be on time...since presumably the time change

has already been factored into the flight's schedule. You don't want a big jet with 300 people

arriving at an airport an hour early, especially coming off a red-eye, if the ground crew isn't

expecting it yet.

Indeed.

Checking redeye departures LAX-ORD on November 5, for example, there is:

AA1092, dp 11:55pm, ar 04:50am+1.

The same flight on November 12:

AA1092, dp 11:55pm, ar 05:50am+1.

That is good to know. I had no idea the airlines were that ahead of the game.

That's not surprising specially for an international airline, since they have to deal with this multiple times even for a single transition from summer to winter, since all countries do not change from DST to ST on the same day. E.g Israel changed on Oct 2, Europe on Oct 30. US on Nov 6, and the Russian are still trying to figure out whether they change or not.

So if you had a flight EWR (Newark) - FRA Frankfurt) - TLV (Tel Aviv), its timings bounced around several times between 1 Oct and 10 Nov.

 

[rile42]

I was traveling from Chicago to Cleveland this past Saturday night when the time changed. As we arrived in Cleveland, my SCA pointed out that the train would basically sit at CLE station for an hour because of the time change. I had just finished my CL-SWC-CS-EB-CL loop trip and was totally unaware that the time change was happening. Maybe I get to into Amtrak travel?

 

[Oldsmoboi]

I wonder what DB does.

 

[sitzplatz17]

I wonder what DB does.

DB? Deutsche Bahn?

Even if that wasn't your original point it still begs a good question. What do railroads in other countries do?

 

[Big Iron]

The Richmond Times Dispatch once did a small feature on the time change and their main subject was the Amtrak Silver Meteor (or maybe Star), but they mentioned it would be a some specific station in NC or SC and would wait in the night for the time to change over. The writer painted a good description of the train and crew waiting on the mainline track at a small town station - and it made for good reading. Until I saw that article I had never given it a thought.

Probably written by Doug Riddell, a great writer of rail related stories, he can paint a great picture of a railroad.

Regarding the topic, I was waiting to board the Eastbound CL when the time changed. This was before the Metropolitan Lounge and though I was in sleeper we all mass boarded from the Concourse. Miraculously, the train boarded exactly one hour late......things that make you go hmmmmmm.

 

[Oldsmoboi]

I wonder what DB does.

DB? Deutsche Bahn?

Even if that wasn't your original point it still begs a good question. What do railroads in other countries do?

Yes, Deutsche Bahn.

I usually look to them as an example of how things should run in a passenger train system. They seem to get it the most right from both a customer and efficiency perspective.

 

[jis]

I don't know what DB does, but the logical thing to do is publish a special timetable for those two days just like say a special timetable is published for the Thanksgiving weekend.

The airlines regularly do it. It should not be a problem for railroads to do it specially in this day and age where a significant proportion of timetable access is via the internet, and the printed timetables are known to be somewhat approximate often by their own admission.

 

[sitzplatz17]

I wonder what DB does.

DB? Deutsche Bahn?

Even if that wasn't your original point it still begs a good question. What do railroads in other countries do?

Yes, Deutsche Bahn.

I usually look to them as an example of how things should run in a passenger train system. They seem to get it the most right from both a customer and efficiency perspective.

"Usually" being the key word here. As an ex-DB weekend commuter (Utrecht, NL - Duisburg, DE on the ICE) I have a few horror stories to tell.

Then again cross-boarder service has it's own issues anyway.

 

[Oldsmoboi]

Every transportation system has its horror stories. I just feel that DB is usually the one to have the best plan in place at the get go.