Empire Builder stopped

[colobok]

What can be said, however, is that nearly a third (31.7%, to be exact) of passengers definitely came from, or went to, stations east of Whitefish, as this is the percentage of passengers traveling 700 or more miles to or from the station on just the Empire Builder. The farthest Empire Builder station to the west of Whitefish is Portland at 630 miles.

Which means that 69% of Whitefish passengers came from the west. Thank you.

 

[EB_OBS]

I've been packing for the big move all day so I wasn't able to get any time to read the forums today.

Let's not forget though, that currently, due to the horrid winter we've had, the overall really bad OTP and numerous cancellations this year, that ridership numbers for the Empire Builder are quite a bit lower than normal. A lot, and I mean a lot of passengers have opted out of traveling the highline this season.

Working in Spokane recently, when we had some cancelled trains, we looked at the numbers and on quite a few nights there were from 5 - 20 passengers destined for Whitefish. So I know the numbers have been much lower than normal this season. On the nights we did run a motorcoach to Whitefish, there were occasionally only 3 - 6 people on it. It costs like $2500 per to charter these buses. I can guarantee though that it costs a lot more to run the train.

As far as parking the train, the track it Whitefish is a main track. It's used by BNSF during the day. Spokane has three of it own tracks. Both main 1 and main 2 bypass the Station in Spokane completely. We aren't tying up a main line when the train is parked in Spokane.

Mostly everything AlanB posted about the crew and other costs it spot on too. Yes the train can be and is sometimes turned in Whitefish but there's a lot more to it than just wyeing the train.

BTW, in case you all haven't already heard, I've gotten word that Amtrak is gearing up to run both 8/28 and 7/27 on 6/14/11. Let's hope it happens.

Safe travels

 

[mwmnp]

What can be said, however, is that nearly a third (31.7%, to be exact) of passengers definitely came from, or went to, stations east of Whitefish, as this is the percentage of passengers traveling 700 or more miles to or from the station on just the Empire Builder. The farthest Empire Builder station to the west of Whitefish is Portland at 630 miles.

Which means that 69% of Whitefish passengers came from the west. Thank you.

No, that's incorrect. I should have clarified that the other 68.3% came from or went to Empire Builder stations less than 700 miles away from Whitefish in either direction. There is no way of breaking that percentage down into stations either to the east or west.

I guess it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that slightly more passengers getting on or off the train in Whitefish are coming from or going to stations to the east. The average distance traveled on just the Empire Builder by all passengers using the station in Whitefish is 747 miles, which is over 100 miles more than the farthest station west of Whitefish on the Empire Builder route. The average distance for coach-only passengers is 699 miles, which is still more than the most distant western station. For the higher-revenue-generating sleeper passengers, the average distance traveled to or from Whitefish is 927 miles and is no doubt influenced most heavily by passengers traveling in sleeper space to or from either St. Paul (1208 miles) or Chicago (1626 miles).

 

[AlanB]

No, the difference is that this situation is part of a larger service disruption that prevents the train from running as normal. What you're describing here is an arbitrary decision to just decide that they shouldn't run to Miami one day. Miami and the rest of the east coast also has many, many more passengers than do the 3 stops in Montana that we're discussing.

Service disruption in ND doesn't prevent the train from running in Montana, so it's not an excuse. Also you can change Miami to any other destination.

For example everybody knows that Crescent has more passengers between Atlanta and NYC than to NOL, so can they cancel train to NOL if "not enough riders" bought tickets beyond Atlanta?

No, I agree that the service disruption doesn't prevent them from running the train in Montana. I wouldn't argue that.

But it is because of the service disruption that Amtrak has chosen not to run to Montana. Your other random examples aren't including a service disruption as the reason for why Amtrak has chosen to drop the cities indicated in your example. You're just saying that one day Amtrak is going to decide to simply drop those cities because of low ridership period. There is a big difference between making a random decision to just drop some cities for low ridership and deciding to drop a few cities during a service disruption because those cities have low ridership.

The train arrives into Whitefish and goes back on the same day. The crew does not. The operating crew will max out on hours before they can bring the train back to Spokane. In fact, the operating crew will max out on hours before its even time to start the run back to Spokane. Therefore Amtrak has to drive one crew out in advance, find room in the limited hotel space in that area during its peak season to put up an engineer and 2 conductors each in their own private rooms.

When the train arrives, that operating crew gets off and goes to the hotel, while the crew in the hotel heads for the train to take it back. This isn't negotiable either, as this isn't union rules, these are FRA rules.

And again, while I'm not 100% sure, I strongly suspect that the same thing will need to happen with the OBS crew, meaning still more hotel rooms that must be found and paid for. There is a chance that Amtrak could just send the OBS crew straight back, but I suspect not. Especially with the nearly 12 hour layover. Even if Amtrak can send them right back the same day, with that much down time Amtrak will still have to provide daytime hotel rooms for the crew to rest in.

Especially since there are no sleepers being run in the consist. And I also believe that Amtrak can't just add a sleeper either, as I think that union rules will demand on the ground time for such a layover. Perhaps EB OBS can speak more to the requirements that Amtrak would be facing for the OBS crews were Amtrak to operate this daily to Whitefish.

You are trying to find excuses and explain why it is impossible to turn the train in Whitefish. But please explain me why it is possible to do this on 06/10 and 06/13? They don't have to stay overnight on those days? Union rules work only on certain days???

I'm not trying to find anything and I resent the implications. When they ran those trains on those particular days they had to bring in crews to run the trains back out. Again, the FRA isn't going to allow the same conductors and engineers to work more than 12 hours. According to the timetable it takes nearly 7 hours to get from Spokanne to Whitefish. The conductors and engineers probably got to Spokane about an hour before the departure, so already they've uses up 8 of their 12 alloted hours by the time they reach Whitefish, assuming no delays. There is no way that they can then sit around from 7:30 when the arrive until the scheduled 9:15 departure without exceeding their 12 hours!

And just sitting in the coaches for 14 hours doesn't constitute proper rest under FRA regs. Therefore they cannot operate the train back to Spokane; their service hours would expire within 4 hours of arrival. So that means that they must be sent to a hotel for rest in order to be able to operate the next day's train back to Spokane. Repeat over and over! So you can rest assured that on the days where they did run a train, Amtrak had to bus/drive in a van, an entire operating crew out to Whitefish just to drive the train back. Most likely on those days, rather than getting a hotel, the also bussed/vanned the crew that took the train out to Whitefish back to Spokanne. But if they were doing this on a daily basis, then they'd be putting them up in hotels.

The same goes for the OBS crew apparently, the crew going out will at a minimum need hotel rooms from arrival until a hour before departure. That's assuming that an overnight isn't mandated under the union contract. Frankly if I were an employee I wouldn't want to have to spend 14 hours sitting in an otherwise empty train and worse, not getting paid for it. And they wouldn't be getting paid for sitting, as Whitefish being the terminating point for that train means that Amtrak stops paying them when they get there.

 

[Trogdor]

While I agree with most of what Alan says, one issue I must correct him on is the operating crew rest. If they have 14 hours in Whitefish, that's far more than the 8 hours rest they need. They'll just spend that time in a hotel, which is the exact same thing they would do if the train ran through to Chicago.

However, I think some of the crews are based in Whitefish anyway. But regardless of their base, the whole operating crew turns over there, so no change to operating crew procedures would be needed from what they normally do.

 

[Elise Nelson]

I am going to be traveling on the Empire Builder on June 21. My question is will the passenger train be running? I and 3 others have a reservation from La Crosse, WI to Seattle, WA.

 

[TraneMan]

I am going to be traveling on the Empire Builder on June 21. My question is will the passenger train be running? I and 3 others have a reservation from La Crosse, WI to Seattle, WA.

Elise, I think the train should be running for sure by then (unless more rain comes!).. It's suppose to be up and going mid week this week.

 

[Joaninha]

Trip report, of sorts

We're now back in Seattle after 23 hours of travel, only~ 3 of which were on Amtrak. At the Toledo OH station at 6 am yesterday, we learned that we were among several passengers with reservations for the EB for the 11th , who never called by Amtrak to notify us that the EB was cancelled! The Toledo station folks, who were quite helpful and cordial, said that the very latest info they had from Amtrak was that the cancellation was due to flooding. And when we subsequently called Amtrak during our wait for the 449/49 (which was almost 2 hrs. late, despite what website status checker said) we learned to our amazement that somehow we had been assigned a new reservation on the EB for June 14!!! Amtrak of course had no assistance to offer for what would have been a 3-day "layover" in Chicago for this to happen.

Upon arrival in Chicago, we did get this straightened out, cancelled our EB reservation and got a full refund. Meanwhile my husband had been able to find us last-minute flights to get home at a fairly reasonable cost, from Chicago to Phoenix and Phoenix to Seattle.

Prettyy sad scenario on the Amtrak customer serivce end of thing, We never even had an apology for the errors on their end, nor for the predicament they put us and so many others in, with callous disregard Sure unexpected things happen, but this is no way to treat their paying customers . While making last-minute plans to fly might work for those of us who have the resources and tech tools at hand, but we certainly are not typical of all Amtrak customers. There's been some talk in the past about adding rights for rail passengers to those now in effect for airline passengers, definitely time for action on this.

Maybe these links have already been posted, but as a newbie on this forum these were news to me:

http://www.unitedrail.org/2011/04/07/the-business-and-politics-of-passenger-rail-2011-04-07/

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2008/12/passenger_rights_group_conside.html

This will be a very hectic week, but I will be writing to Amtrak ( and copying to my Congress folks) and will let you know of any response.

 

[TransitGeek]

I am going to be traveling on the Empire Builder on June 21. My question is will the passenger train be running? I and 3 others have a reservation from La Crosse, WI to Seattle, WA.

Elise, I think the train should be running for sure by then (unless more rain comes!).. It's suppose to be up and going mid week this week.

IIRC, it was also supposed to be up and going mid week last week.

 

[anir dendroica]

Locusts and frogs...

06/12/2011

Preliminary Report: Mudslide near Leonia, Idaho

BNSF has received a report of a mud slide blocking the main track near Leonia, Idaho at 12:40 p.m. on Sunday, June 12, 2011. This location is approximately 100 miles east of Hauser, Idaho.

BNSF personnel are on the scene to determine the impact. The main track is estimated to return to service at 8:00 p.m. on June 12, 2011. Customers may experience delays of 12 to 24 hours on shipments moving through this corridor.

If the EB were running, this would be a problem. As it stands, the 48-hour mudslide moratorium should expire at 8 pm on June 14, so it shouldn't interfere with resuming service.

Mark

 

[anir dendroica]

Better news:

June 13, 2011 - BNSF's Command Center is managing our responses to flood impacts.
The Choteau subdivision is out of service west of Power, Montana.

The Big Sandy subdivision is out of service south of Pacific Jct., Montana.

The Devils Lake subdivision is back in service between Churchs Ferry and Devils Lake, North Dakota.

The Omaha subdivision is out of service from milepost 13 in Omaha south to milepost 7 as a result of flood levees erected over the track to protect the City of Omaha. The subdivision is still open from Lincoln to Omaha via Ashland, Nebraska.

The Lewistown subdivision is out of service east of Sipple, Montana due to a washout.

The Rolla subdivision is out of service north of Cando, North Dakota.

The Grenora subdivision is out of service north of Stanley, North Dakota.

The Niobe subdivision is back in service to milepost 10 but the rest of the line is still out of service.

http://www.bnsf.com/customers/weather-interruptions/

 

[dan72]

I also see that Amtrak has taken down their service alert for time being on the Empire Builder and the California Zephyr. For now, I'll take it as a good sign (with fingers crossed, of course)! h34r:

 

[dan72]

I also see that Amtrak has taken down their service alert for time being on the Empire Builder and the California Zephyr. For now, I'll take it as a good sign (with fingers crossed, of course)! h34r:

I spoke too soon...back up, but no change on the date when service is to resume (still June 14th).

 

[anir dendroica]

BNSF is still cleaning up a 30 ft. deep rockslide that closed their mainline in Idaho yesterday afternoon. Track estimated to reopen at 10 pm tonight. That means BNSF has almost 36 hours worth of freight backlog to move. I wouldn't be surprised if the EB is canceled tomorrow for reasons unrelated to flooding.

http://www.theolympian.com/2011/06/13/1685559/rockslide-blocks-rail-tracks-near.html

Mark

 

[PRR 60]

I also see that Amtrak has taken down their service alert for time being on the Empire Builder and the California Zephyr. For now, I'll take it as a good sign (with fingers crossed, of course)! h34r:

I spoke too soon...back up, but no change on the date when service is to resume (still June 14th).

The suspension is now through June 14. The earliest resumption of service is June 15.

 

[SBee]

BNSF is still cleaning up a 30 ft. deep rockslide that closed their mainline in Idaho yesterday afternoon. Track estimated to reopen at 10 pm tonight. That means BNSF has almost 36 hours worth of freight backlog to move. I wouldn't be surprised if the EB is canceled tomorrow for reasons unrelated to flooding.

http://www.theolympi...racks-near.html

Mark

If the EB runs on 15th will it be radically delayed due to the BSNF backlog? Would Amtrak run if they know they're going to be delayed like this?

 

[JayPea]

BNSF is still cleaning up a 30 ft. deep rockslide that closed their mainline in Idaho yesterday afternoon. Track estimated to reopen at 10 pm tonight. That means BNSF has almost 36 hours worth of freight backlog to move. I wouldn't be surprised if the EB is canceled tomorrow for reasons unrelated to flooding.

http://www.theolympi...racks-near.html

Mark

If the EB runs on 15th will it be radically delayed due to the BSNF backlog? Would Amtrak run if they know they're going to be delayed like this?

I'm pretty sure they'd much rather run late, maybe very late, than not at all.

 

[SBee]

BNSF is still cleaning up a 30 ft. deep rockslide that closed their mainline in Idaho yesterday afternoon. Track estimated to reopen at 10 pm tonight. That means BNSF has almost 36 hours worth of freight backlog to move. I wouldn't be surprised if the EB is canceled tomorrow for reasons unrelated to flooding.

http://www.theolympi...racks-near.html

Mark

If the EB runs on 15th will it be radically delayed due to the BSNF backlog? Would Amtrak run if they know they're going to be delayed like this?

I'm pretty sure they'd much rather run late, maybe very late, than not at all.

I'm scheduled on the EB on the 15th and would rather be canceled than arrive in Chicago too late to make my connection to NY.

 

[The Crazy Vacationer]

Spoke with Amtrak Customer Service about 30 minutes ago.

Empire Builder is now scheduled to resume on Friday, June 17. I'm supposed to be on the train on Saturday, June 18.

The closer I get to my trip,

the further delayed the train becomes,

the higher the probability that I won't get to travel by train.

 

[TransitGeek]

I'm scheduled on the EB on the 15th and would rather be canceled than arrive in Chicago too late to make my connection to NY.

Spoke with Amtrak Customer Service about 30 minutes ago.

Empire Builder is now scheduled to resume on Friday, June 17. I'm supposed to be on the train on Saturday, June 18.

Looks like you got your wish. What's that they say about being careful what you wish for?

 

[tnrkitect]

Looks like the EB starts running again tomorrow after all!

Per Amtrak's Facebook Page as of 3:22 pm CDT

Amtrak services on two of three disrupted routes in the Western U.S. will be restored, starting this Wednesday, June 15. Passengers with questions about travel plans on these routes should call Amtrak at 800-USA-RAIL for additional information.

Empire Builder (Trains 7/27 & 8/28)

Amtrak service for the complete route will resume following BNSF Railway Co. track restorations between Devils Lake and Rugby, N.D., and between Sandpoint, Idaho, and Libby, Mont. This resumption is effective on Wednesday, June 15, with the originations of Train 8 from Seattle, Train 28 from Portland and Train 7/27 from Chicago.

California Zephyr (Trains 5 & 6)

Amtrak service for the complete route (except Omaha) will resume effective with the originations of Train 6 from the San Francisco Bay (Emeryville, Calif.) on Wednesday, June 15, and Train 5 from Chicago on Thursday, June 16.

Because of temporary levees built over BNSF Railway Co. track to help protect the cities of Omaha and Bellevue, Neb., these trains will not directly serve Omaha, but alternate transportation will be provided between Lincoln and Omaha (eastbound, Train 6) and between Creston, Iowa, and Omaha (westbound, Train 5).

Southwest Chief (Trains 3 & 4)

Amtrak service remains temporarily suspended between Newton, Kan., and Albuquerque due to wildfires near BNSF Railway Co. tracks in New Mexico. Daily Southwest Chief service between Chicago and Los Angeles is maintained using a detour route through Texas and Oklahoma. Missed stops in western Kansas, southeastern Colorado and northeastern New Mexico will be served by chartered motorcoaches or local commuter trains, as available (except Trinidad, Colo., and Raton & Las Vegas, N.M.).

Also temporarily suspended are Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach Routes 8603 & 8604 between Raton and Denver, along with the Lamy (N.M.) Shuttle.

 

[anir dendroica]

From BNSF:

To: All Impacted Customers

06/14/2011

Final Report: Mudslide near Leonia, Idaho

As stated in the Service Advisory issued on June 12, 2011, BNSF reported that a mudslide blocked the main track near Leonia, Idaho. The main track returned to service 1:00 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, June 14, 2011.

Customers may experience delays of 24 to 48 hours on shipments moving through this corridor.

With the slide cleared and the Devils Lake tracks returned to service, there are no more blockages on the EB route. There is probably a 48-hour passenger train moratorium from the slide in effect until the morning of June 16, and BNSF will be clearing out a logjam of freight trains (ever wonder if that might be part of the reason for the 48-hour rule?). After that we *should* be good to go, unless there are more slides, floods, plagues, terrorist attacks, meteor impacts, etc...

Mark

 

[SBee]

I'm scheduled on the EB on the 15th and would rather be canceled than arrive in Chicago too late to make my connection to NY.

Spoke with Amtrak Customer Service about 30 minutes ago.

Empire Builder is now scheduled to resume on Friday, June 17. I'm supposed to be on the train on Saturday, June 18.

Looks like you got your wish. What's that they say about being careful what you wish for?

I'll take the trip another time, it'll be less stressful than having to worry about being stuck somewhere in the Midwest. Hope it's up an running SOON for everyone else!

 

[Ispolkom]

Amtrak posted to Facebook that both the California Zephyr and the Empire Builder will run tomorrow. Thanks to Leemell for finding this and posting it to another thread.

Do locomotives still have sand distributors, to give traction when they encounter clouds of locusts? Just wondering.

Edit: both trains 8 and 28 show no inventory for tomorrow. Train 7/27 shows 1 roomette available. Take that as you will.

 

[Tumbleweed]

Wait until this Winter around Devils Lake....they'll need the sanders to get through all the ice splashed up on the track on cold, windy Winter days.....