Hurricane Irma and Amtrak

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All ready for Irma ...

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Here is the service alert that was issued after the CSX operating plan was released:

Service Suspensions in the Southeast
Severe weather continues to impact region

Sept. 8, 2017

11:15 a.m. ETAmtrak will suspend services in Florida due to severe weather impacting the southeast region.

The Silver Star Train 92 and Silver Meteor Train 98 (Miami - New York City) are cancelled for Sept. 9 - 11.The Silver Star Train 91 (New York City - Miami) and Silver Meteor Train 97 (New York City - Miami) are cancelled for Sept. 8 - 10.

The Auto Train 53 (Lorton, Va. - Sanford, Fla.) is cancelled for Friday, Sept.8, and Saturday, Sept. 9. The Auto Train 52 (Sanford, Fla. - Lorton, Va.) is cancelled on Sept. 9 - 11.The Palmetto Train 89 (New York City - Savannah, Ga.,) is cancelled from Sept. 9 - 12.

The Palmetto Train 90 (Savannah, Ga., - New York City) is cancelled from 10 -13.No alternate transportation will be provided.

Amtrak regrets any inconvenience. This information is correct as of the above time and date. Information is subject to change as conditions warrant.Anyone can subscribe to automated email or text message notifications if Amtrak trains are behind schedule at specific stations. Notifications can be given for up to six trains and stations by either text or email and delivered when you choose - on a single day, every day, or just certain days of the week. Create a subscription at Amtrak.com/delayalerts.

Passengers with travel plans also can confirm their train's status, change their plans or review refund information using a range of tools – including Amtrak.com, smartphone apps or by calling 800-USA-RAIL. Service Alerts, Passenger Notices and other announcements are posted at Amtrak.com/alerts.To be notified of service disruptions on the Northeast Corridor (including Acela Express, Northeast Regional and other corridor services), follow @AmtrakNEC on Twitter.
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Along those lines, CFRC also secures some of their gates in the upright positions. If the gates are long, they are removed. The last few train through the area had to flag the crossings.

To those of you remaining in Florida:

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Feeder bands coming through Orlando, together with tornadoes. I still have power, but many of my friends who live just west of me are without power.
 
I don't see a service alert, but 19/20 are cancelled for tomorrow and Tuesday's are showing "sold out" (I assume to stop sales in case they need to cancel Tuesday's too)
 
I was scheduled on the Silver Meteor on Sep 12 to Deerfield Beach, Fl from Wilmington Del and was advised that it was cancelled. I talked to an agent and was rescheduled for Friday, Sep 15 and advised that it was the first available train.

We'll see if the Silver Service trains start running to Miami before that.
 
It looks like the Silver service may resume to Florida on the 13th.

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AmtrakBlue said:
I don't see a service alert, but 19/20 are cancelled for tomorrow and Tuesday's are showing "sold out" (I assume to stop sales in case they need to cancel Tuesday's too)
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I'm wonder if 19 (10) will operate past Atlanta...by then the area should be experiencing tropical-storm force winds.
 
19(10) did transit thru Atlanta this morning, but is cancelled for tomorrow. 20(11) is also cancelled.

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I hope our Floridians have made it through Irma without injury!

My friend from St. Pete headed to family in Southern Illinois via back roads in Alabama due to gas shortages in Georgia (and after seven hours driving at 6 mph and hadn't gotten out of Florida), but I'm still waiting from word from relatives in Lake County who live in a concrete (including roof) house.
 
I hope our Floridians are OK as well. Given the power outages in the state, it may be awhile before they can post.

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Orlando is slowly getting our power restored (mine was restored shortly after 8pm tonight), however, there is major flooding in Jacksonville. I am hoping the flooding is far enough away from the station (which is northwest of downtown) so as to not affect train service for more than a couple of days.
 
Jacksonville looks pretty bad. Is the CSX dispatching center anywhere near the flooding? I'm watching now to see if any part of CSX shuts down because of difficulties in getting dispatchers to their posts.

jb
 
Melbourne is relatively unscathed in spite of bearing the brunt of the Tornado Warnings. There is some significant damage of course (somewhere between 10 and 20 mobile homes and old building standard houses destroyed in tornado strikes for example), and power is still out all over the place knocking out traffic lights at many critical intersections, which are being manually directed by the Police. Lack of power also had most businesses closed yesterday. They are slowly coming on line today. Interestingly very few of the areas with underground power supply lines lost power, and even those that did got their back the quickest. The good news is, I don't know of any new development around here that is putting their power distribution from pole tops. Question is what will it take to convert the existing ones. FPL says they will have all power restored by the end of the coming weekend, which I think is pretty remarkable.

Incidentally, FEC had removed the gate arms around here at most crossings, and at others had immobilized them and tied them down in the vertical position. So that should lay to rest the armchair philosopher's discussion about what is done with crossing gate arms during major hurricanes. In any case there was no power to operate them in most places anyway. Power outage was widespread, according to some as much as 75% of the customers did not have power at some points in time. But they have been making remarkable progress restoring things.

FEC said they will be back in operation on Wednesday after they have been able to remove junk from the track, restore power and inspect everything.

Most likely CSX and hence Amtrak is probably in the same boat, though they are nowhere as near the sea as the FEC, which was inundated by storm surge in many places.
 
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To further explain a minor detail to the folks at home, crossing gates normally have power applied in order to stay open. City power is supplemented by battery power. When city power and battery backup power fails, the gates are balanced to fall to the closed position.

jb
 
So the Crescent was only cancelled for one day (departures on the 11th). The Star/Meteor/Palmetto/Auto Train cancellations have been extended through the 13th; first chance of operation is the Thursday the 14th.

This will bite financially -- that's a lot of days without operation, and these trains are profitable before overhead. I hope there's no equipment damage.
 

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