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There's only a little more than two hours cushion for #7's arrival in order for the crew to get eight hours rest to work #8 on-time. If #7 is any later than 2 - 2.5 hours then #8 will have to wait for the crew to rest. At least for the moment St. Cloud doesn't have the manpower to protect 8's departure with an extra crew.
 
EB_OBS said:
There's only a little more than two hours cushion for #7's arrival in order for the crew to get eight hours rest to work #8 on-time. If #7 is any later than 2 - 2.5 hours then #8 will have to wait for the crew to rest. At least for the moment St. Cloud doesn't have the manpower to protect 8's departure with an extra crew.
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Oh joy Amtrak goes cheap.
 
Looking at the performance of the EBs today under the "new" schedule I don't see ANY improvement, in fact in 3 of the four EBs currently chugging along they are as late or worse than before the 90 to 180 minute padding that Amtrak added to the schedule. I can now see why my BNSF folks wanted at least a 4 or 5 hour bump going east and two to three hours going west. Oh, well. Another frustrating summer appears to await Empire Builder passengers......

BTW-BNSF has started several smaller track maintenance projects along the Hi-Line, but a couple of the major efforts will commence in about two weeks. I was informed that May thru at least September will be quite busy as far as slow orders and construction are concerned. They are also continuing to have both locomotive and crew "challenges" as they refer to them. Better then at the depths of last winter, but not where they need to be. Trained crews and reliable power is not something that materializes overnight, as we all know.
 
I do not think prioritizing freight over passengers is what is being seen. I think what is being seen when a freight train goes by the passenger train is the passenger train waiting for a rested crew when the freight goes by.
 
Two thoughts on the recent discussion:

1. I'm not sure there is a precedent for this, but it seems that BNSF would have been wise to assess its capacity to handle oil trains while keeping the system fluid. They could then have set a cap at, say, 400,000 barrels per day. There is no reason, short of financial greed, why North Dakota's oil needs to be extracted as fast as humanly possible. If the oil companies wanted to increase the cap, they would be responsible for funding capacity improvements either directly or through greatly elevated shipping costs.

2. There are four important elements to lengthening a train schedule:

A. Secure an extra trainset if turnaround times are tight.

B. Sever and/or adjust connections from other trains.

C. Negotiate a new schedule with the freight railroads.

D. Modify crew districts so that minor delays do not affect crew rest times or result in dogcatch crews.

So far we have seen A, B, and C, but no sign of D. Not surprising given the expense it would incur, but if the new schedule is to work (or if an even-longer schedule is adopted in the future), Amtrak needs to add a crew district. The current east-end crew districts are:

Chicago-St. Cloud

St. Cloud-Minot

Minot-Shelby

It is the St. Cloud-Minot crew that has to navigate the section with the most delays. One possible adjustment would be:

Chicago-St. Paul

St. Paul-Grand Forks

Grand Forks-Williston

Williston-Shelby
 
I saw one of the conductor stayed the night in Minot instead of getting on 8 right away that night since he was on the late 7, and they were able to leave MOT close to on time last night. Not sure if they sent a new crew up to MOT the night before?
 
When we were coming from MSP down to CHI on #8 on the April 16th we had to back out of most of the sidings we were placed in due to dead freights parked in most of the sidings along the way. The station agent in CBS said that there were only two open sidings open between MSP and MKE that day.

And were slowed down even more when we had to back up all the way to Mauston to drop off a teenager that was sick. It turned out that he was faking just to get off the train to go to the hospital to get meds according to the conductor.

We ended up about 6 hours late into CHI.
 
And then throw an additional 52 fertilizer trainloads into the mix--65 to 85 cars each--and see what happens. In yesterday's business section of the newspaper:

BISMARCK, N.D. | BNSF Railway Co. has told a federal oversight board that it will add 52 trains in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana over the next six weeks to boost fertilizer shipments.

The Surface Transportation Board this week ordered BNSF and Canadian Pacific Railway to report their plans by Friday to ensure delivery of fertilizer shipments for spring crop planting.

BNSF beat the deadline. Canadian Pacific had not filed a response by midday Thursday.

The federal board ordered the railroads to submit the plans in the wake of service disruptions. Increased crude oil and freight shipments have largely been blamed for causing the rail delays.

BNSF says in its response that it began expanding its fertilizer shipments this week and the railroad "already is seeing positive progress."
 
I am so glad I'm not in charge of prioritizing traffic on the way overloaded BNSF north.

Sheesh. Bless all the trainmasters and dispatchers.

Farmers need fertilizer to get good crops next fall, BUT already have grain backed up by the trainload from last years harvest. AND the passenger delays we all complain about. AND management wants us to totally exploit the insanely fast-growing fracking biz. AND got to get those high-revenue intermodals thru. AND the utilities are screaming about dwindling coal reserves - gotta fix that before the summer heat.

AND - every track work project to enlarge capacity means LESS capacity every shift we got to get all these trains through.

Guess it will be a while, huh?
 
Just-Thinking-51 said:
Can we get the STB to make BNSF move Amtrak trains on time?

Can the STB force BNSF to double track the Hi-Line?
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As things stand the answer clearly appears to be No, and you guessed it.... No. Sadly. At least not without many years worth of litigation and many millions spent first.

The good news is that BNSF is apparently taking on the giant task of double tracking significant portions of that route for the first time. Unlike on many other routes the High Line for most parts has never ever been a double track railroad. So it was not a case of a track having been pulled up that needs to be restored. It is new construction.
 
I just returned from a short visit to Minot. We were delayed several hours in both directions between Minot and Fargo because of slow orders, not freight traffic. The spring thaw is not doing any favors to the beat-up track on the Devils Lake and Hillsboro subdivisions, I guess.
 
Maybe the ex-con ex-pax was upset because there was no flower at his table during dinner? ^_^

From krtv.com:



Passenger assaults Amtrak conductor near Whitefish



WHITEFISH -- An Amtrak train was halted unexpectedly near Whitefish after a passenger was forcibly removed for allegedly hitting the train's conductor.

According to Amtrak officials, a male passenger had become unruly and BNSF police requested assistance from the Flathead County Sheriff's office.

The suspect, whose name has not yet been released, was allegedly in a physical confrontation with the train's conductor.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari says his officers acted quickly: "Our highest priority is the safety of our passengers and our crew and if there is someone who won't comply with directions from the conductor and if their behavior is disruptive, they will receive warnings but in the end if they still don't comply with those directions, we'll hand them over to the emergency responders whether they need medical treatment or they need to be somehow incarcerated."

[SIZE=medium]According to court documents, the suspect is already registered as a violent offender, and was taken to the Flathead County Detention [/SIZE]Center, but was not listed on the jail roster as of Friday afternoon.
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Monday AM: With the exception of #7, plugging along in ND and over 4 hours behind (started about 2 hours late from CHI), the other three EBs are all close to the new schedule--scary!!
 
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Why was 28 delayed today out of PDX -- lack of crew rest after 27 arrived late? More generally, doesn't leaving 3 hrs earlier make it even less likely crew will get enough rest?

Also, how is the padding eastbound distributed across the route? In my recent experience (27(14)) we lost at least as much time on CP track as on BNS, mostly nosing into 3 sidings and then having to back out.

What a mess.
 
One week into the newly padded schedule and here are the results so far:

delays into SEA: average delay 238 minutes (this is actually worse than the long term average)

delays into CHI: average delay 169 minutes, which is a modest improvement over the last 6-9 months performance (which was nearly double this amount)

It is only one week, but it would appear that BNSF was more accurate in it's recommendations to add 4 hours (or more) to the Eastbound EB and up to 3 hours for the Westbound version. It is troubling to see the trains arriving in SEA/PDX so late on a regular basis now, with many of the delays not just thru ND/MT, but in WI and ID/WA as well. It will be interesting to see if the trend of delay reduction continues or whether it stabilizes at these levels.
 
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