New schedules

[Anthony]

Living out in the middle of the desert as I do, getting the new timetable to review any changes for MileTrak is difficult. Luckily Tristan was able to secure an extra copy for me, and I should get it in a few days. Any major route changes besides the Cardinal extended to NYP?

Doesn't have to be an in-depth answer, as I'll go over everything manually in the end, but if anyone knows about something off the top of their head, I'd appreciate it.

thanks

 

[AlanB]

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, as it were, and typing up a list of changes let me instead direct you to Superliner Diner's bi-annual summery. Kevin has for several years now typed up summeries of the changes each time a new timetable has been released.

So far he's done most everything but for the Long Distance trains and I suspect that he'll finish that either today or tomorrow. I think however that the Cardinal's extension to NYP and the time change on the Sunset are the big changes this time around.

The rest of the changes are already posted. You can find the report here on the OTOL site.

 

[Anthony]

Oh my, that summary is quite detailed! Hats off to Kevin for the time he put into it. However, since changes such as times don't affect mileage count at all, I'll wait for the long-distance segment to see if there are any structural changes such as addition of stops or cities. While I only took a quick glance at the northeast changes, it doesn't look like anything has been added or omitted that would prompt retooling of mileage counts for a route (which is great! )

thanks

 

[battalion51]

I got a looksy at the new timetable on Friday when I was coming back from Jacksonville on 97 (97 was so late the best meet from 98 to 97 was at JAX, I got back to FTL at 2:00 AM). The new timetable has great features such as host railroads for each train, fares for the northeast, consolidation of the Northeast and national timetables, and a much better overall design. The only thing that killed a railfan friend of mine, the Conductor and myslef was the front cover. The Amtrak art department went to work on it, and did a crappy job. It has three genesis engines on it (you can't tell which ones since there are no engine numbers), the poorly drawn Superliners in the new paint scheme, and (the killer) the air conditioning unit on the engine magically switched to the opposite side (in real life it's on the fire side, but in the picture its on the engine side). Kudos to the art department for another crappy job.

 

[Viewliner]

I got a looksy at the new timetable on Friday when I was coming back from Jacksonville on 97 (97 was so late the best meet from 98 to 97 was at JAX, I got back to FTL at 2:00 AM). The new timetable has great features such as host railroads for each train, fares for the northeast, consolidation of the Northeast and national timetables, and a much better overall design. The only thing that killed a railfan friend of mine, the Conductor and myslef was the front cover. The Amtrak art department went to work on it, and did a crappy job. It has three genesis engines on it (you can't tell which ones since there are no engine numbers), the poorly drawn Superliners in the new paint scheme, and (the killer) the air conditioning unit on the engine magically switched to the opposite side (in real life it's on the fire side, but in the picture its on the engine side). Kudos to the art department for another crappy job.

Here! Here! :lol:

Seen the cover and I agree with you. Now I really gotta get a couple of copies of it.

 

[jccollins]

The new timetable has great features such as host railroads for each train...

Do they include the phone number to call for each host RR so passengers can directly complain to them about late trains??? This is the only reason I can think of why Amtrak would include something like this. Most regular passengers don't care what railroad they are on. They just want to get from point A to point B ON TIME.

 

[battalion51]

Well I would think that host railroads could be imprtant to passengers so that those who complain about the on time performance can write to that host railroad as well as to Amtrak. I did notice a slip up though, the timetable lists that the Palmetto bug covers the inland route in the Carolinas, not the coastal route as it actually does. Oh well.