Empire Builders On-time?

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Ziv

Ziv

Conductor
Joined
Oct 25, 2011
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1,094
Location
Flathead Valley, Montana
I just checked on the status of the EB's because I am thinking about using it to get to Malta in May, and I was surprised to see that 2 are on time, one is 1 minute late, and 1 (#7) is 12 minutes late out of Minot. Have the severe delays been reduced frequently or is this a one off that I can't expect to see very often? Has the reduction in oil prices reduced production slightly, thereby reducing the traffic enough to be noticeable? Or is it seasonal and May will see us back to the horrendous delays we saw last summer?

My issue is that I would really like to get to Malta before supper time and the scheduled arrival is 1:25 pm. I could get the rental car and drive even if I arrived later, but I really don't want my family waiting up until late for my arrival in Billings/Rapelje. And knowing my Mom, she would be up and waiting for me with a snack if I rolled in at 3 am.

Thanks for any ideas/input!

http://dixielandsoftware.net/cgi-bin/getmap.pl?mapname=West
 
Overall good weather conditions and no major track projects right now is what I would surmise the cause(?)

The last few days have been good to almost very good for most of the LD trains both East and West, I work/live overnights and typically check the status of the LD Trains in the very late/early hours, just a habit type of thing.

I would consider anything within an hour or so OT (based on scheduling buffers and history of most trains OTP)
 
I hadn't even thought about how track work has been slowing the EB. And I imagine that the track work won't start back up again until April, March is still a bear on the Hi Line. It won't happen, but it would be great if BN would just double track everything from Red Wing to Havre. But then the traffic jams would be east of Red Wing and west of Havre...

illinoisandy said:
Overall good weather conditions and no major track projects right now is what I would surmise the cause(?)

The last few days have been good to almost very good for most of the LD trains both East and West, I work/live overnights and typically check the status of the LD Trains in the very late/early hours, just a habit type of thing.

I would consider anything within an hour or so OT (based on scheduling buffers and history of most trains OTP)
Click to expand...
 
This is the first week that the Empire Builders have been back on the old schedule too. I've been watching them closely all week, hoping they'll run close enough to time that I won't get the call later this week that they're canceling my connection to the Coast Starlight 11 coming up in February.

Apart from the 7 that left Chicago this past Monday, all the 7s and 8s I've seen have terminated in the green or yellow. ( That Monday 7 had some bad problem getting out of Illinois that set it back hours out of the gate and the delays snowballed from there. I doubt it's coincidence that that was the last day of the really bitter cold in Chicago. )
 
With NO BNSF construction, NO bad weather (and no major avalanches across the Rockies and Cascades) and the usual slowdown in agro shipments until about March, the EB's should do decently over the next couple of months if nothing else changes. BNSF is scheduled to begin the 2015 construction season in mid-April though, so things might get somewhat slower then. Also, a lot depends on how much snowfall the hi-Line gets over the winter. So far, not a huge amount of snow in eastern MT, ND and MN, which if the trend continued (and no guarantee it will), then Spring time flooding would not be a major factor either. BTW-the number of tanker car loadings hasn't changed that much in the past 30 days, so it apparently is not a major factor right now in slowing things down.
 
Between the 4 EB's, they are a total of 72 minutes late, so none of them is more than 30'some minutes late. But as Mike pointed out, this is January and May will be a different story. My trip is supposed to be a quick one, just get out there from here in Virginia, visit Mom, brand cattle and get home. If I turn a 5 hour pair of flights out there into a 3 day vacation trip, it really adds to the time away from work. I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and fly both ways, instead of using the CL/EB.
 
Falling price of crude may be significantly reducing need for oil trains from Montana and North Dakota.
 
chakk said:
Falling price of crude may be significantly reducing need for oil trains from Montana and North Dakota.
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Over time, yes. But the wells that have been drilled and are currently pumping out oil are still up and running. The key for maintaining North Dakota production is the number of active drilling rigs and wells being drilled and fracked. Once the drilling of new wells goes into serious decline, then oil production in ND will begin to decline some months or a year or so later.

If severe winter weather holds off, the EB may have a couple of reasonably good months for on-time performance.
 
My oil contacts say the current wells will produce at a high rate for 3-5 years, then begin to decline, BUT, there are ways to extend the life of a well by up to 20 years depending on a number of factors. I would actually expect the amount of oil moved out of ND/MT this year to increase slightly actually, with any modest declines not likely until 2016, IF the price of crude remains under $50/bbl. My local BNSF person said BNSF is still on track to take delivery of additional tanker cars in 2015 and 2016 and has not canceled any orders (at least not as of this week).

While we may not see $100/bbl prices for oil for a long time to come, so many factors come into play on the price of oil that anyone who says they can accurately predict the price 6 months or a year ahead is just whistling in the dark. I chuckled when I looked back and saw what the EIA forecasted prices to be just two years ago for 2015---not even in the same ball park!

Let's just enjoy the better EB timekeeping and hope flooding in ND is modest in several months and construction season in 2015 is not as impactful as it was for the past couple of years.

:)
 
Is it possible that these reduced winter consists on the LD trains are also improving on-time performance? Is a shorter train easier to dispatch and shuffle around the traffic? If nothing else, there's less that can go wrong with the train itself with fewer cars and passengers, right?

Also, on the oil traffic topic, it was reported on Minnesota Public Radio a couple of days ago that the price drop has indeed caused a decrease in oil traffic around here. Maybe they are still pumping out what they used to, but new exploration has slowed down, so not as many materials and equipment (like frack sand) need to go in?
 
illinoisandy said:
Overall good weather conditions and no major track projects right now is what I would surmise the cause(?)

The last few days have been good to almost very good for most of the LD trains both East and West, I work/live overnights and typically check the status of the LD Trains in the very late/early hours, just a habit type of thing.

I would consider anything within an hour or so OT (based on scheduling buffers and history of most trains OTP)
Click to expand...
The Builder is definitely better than it's been but still some delays (as usual?)

For past 90 days or so #7 has been arriving at SEA on average about 2.5 hours late:

20150123_7_AR_SEA.png


http://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archive/html/historychart.php?train_num=7&station=sea&date_start=10%2F24%2F2014&date_end=01%2F23%2F2015&sort=d_ar&chartsize=2&smooth=0

#8 has been arriving in CHI on average about 90 minutes late:

20150123_8_AR_CHI.png


http://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archive/html/historychart.php?train_num=8&station=chi&date_start=10%2F24%2F2014&date_end=01%2F23%2F2015&sort=d_ar&chartsize=2&smooth=0

Feel free to make your own chart for any train on the Status Maps Archive Database - http://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archive/html/historychart.php
 
Anyone know what happened to most of the EB's today (1-26)--three are in a "Service Disruption" status. I don't see anything on BNSF's Service Advisory board.

:-(
 
It's been like this all morning, too. And I think one of the Cascades trains was showing a service disruption at one point too, but I don't see that now. Nothing on the news services about weather, landslides, or derailments that I can see. Could it just be a computer glitch on the tracking systems and the actual trains are running fine?
 
Rock slide in northern Idaho, close to the Montana border
 
I've noticed the EB being surprisingly on time into Chicago lately and consistently. For those who've recently ridden the EB, what are you observations as to why EB seems more on time now? Track upgrades perhaps? I'd be interested in rider comments.
 
Interested as you may be in rider comments, the real driver of on time performance for this train is directly related to the price of oil. As the price of oil decreases, OTP for this train will approach optimum levels. Watch as the price of oil is going back up, once it hits about $60-$70/bbl and you'll see the same sub-par handling of this train by the host railroad, Buffet Northern Santa Fe.

You see, when the oil markets were saturated with supply by OPEC and Saudi Arabia, the relatively more intensive process of oil extraction from shale fracturing in North Dakota became a cost-prohibitive operation. Correspondingly, as ND shale oil production was slowed, oil transportation also decreased. As Warren Buffet is really nothing but a greedy billionaire driven by profits in spite of his attempts to appear a philanthropic champion of the middle class (a complete line of bs, and another discussion entirely), his transportation 'managers' on his railroad prioritize an oil train over the EB every time, no doubt being paid grand sums of cash by Big Oil. This is the case despite being contractually obligated to give passenger trains priority, as stipulated by the agreement made allowing discontinuation of the railroads own passenger service in 1971 without ICC scrutiny (a story we all know very well).

Back to the EB and OTP: Corporate greed and a push to burn up the world will delay this train every time. Just wait until the oil speculators on Wall Street successfully drive the price of oil back up (even in the face of the laws of economics): the EB and any other non-oil train on Buffett's BNSF will again take the siding.
 
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