Pittsfield Report 7/16

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This batch of pictures I cant since I dont have a scanner and I used a regular everyday camera, but my next session will be with a digital camera and I will send ya the pictures. Anything in particular you would like me to take pictures of when Im in Pittsfield next?
 
P40Power said:
This batch of pictures I cant since I dont have a scanner and I used a regular everyday camera, but my next session will be with a digital camera and I will send ya the pictures. Anything in particular you would like me to take pictures of when Im in Pittsfield next?
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Just the trains and the Station(s). Thanks a lot P40 power. :) B)
 
Ill take pictures of all THREE of them! The former Union Station, the Amshack, and the new one being built. I can even get ya some freight train pictures if your intrested, but Ill focus on the Amtraker when it comes in.
 
I think the Amfleet II Coaches may be used for a short while to attract customers, then later on they will downsize to Amfleet I's. At least that is the only reason I can guess as to why the Pennsylvanian has Amfleet II Coaches.

P-40 Power, depending on where you get your photos developed, some 1-hour places will take the negatives and burn them onto a CD so you can load them onto your computer. That service costs about $6 at CVS.
 
I was thinking of doing that, and I just might. Ive got a couple good shots of the train, especially the cafe car. The picture of the new station was ruined by my thumb partially blocking it. I dont know yet though, Ill probably just go down and get some better ones with the digital camera. I wish I had a camera Friday when the Lake Shore was stopped there for 20 minutes or so, There would have been some sweet photo opertunities then!
 
P40Power said:
But I am glad that there is no more smoking on the Lake Shore, though I wouldnt have minded either if they still had smoking on the train and had Amfleet II lounges with the smokers box assigned to the train instead of corridor cafes.
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Well the Lake Shore Limited that I was on today had smoking on it. Granted it was in one of the rebuilt Amfleet II's that had the glass enclosed room. :)
 
By the way, the lack of a baggage car on the train that you saw, must have been a fluke or a B/O car.

The west bound on the 16th did arrive into Albany with a bag and the east bound that I was on today had a bag headed to Boston.
 
Amfleet said:
Is the Lake Shore still running with one Lounge to Boston, or is there another food service car besides the diner that runs to New York?
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Sadly that is correct, the lounge goes to Boston and none is put on the New York section. This frankly IMHO is a big problem as it leaves the NY bound passengers without food for close to three hours.

One must plan ahead and buy from the lounge before the train reaches Schenectady. The lounge closes at Schenectady and remains closed until the Boston section leaves Albany.

The diner stops serving breakfast at 10:00 AM and does not serve any lunch for anyone, regardless of destination.

North/west bound the diner opens around 5:00 PM, around Hudson or so. Therefore NYP passengers have some food available to them prior to reaching Albany.

In an interesting side note, the typical free-for-all that used to occur in the diner, coming out of Chicago, has been eliminated. Before an announcement is made to the whole train about the diner, each sleeping car attendant picks about 10 to 15 passengers for a 7:30 PM seating. The rest are assigned an 8:30 to 8:45 seating. Once the first seating is seated, then the LSA announces that any coach passengers wanting to eat in the diner should come back and make a reservation.

If they have any seat available then those coach passengers who arrive first may actually get a seat, the rest will be paged by the LSA when a table is ready.

Personally I like this new arrangement, as in the past there were people in the sleepers who never got their included meal, as there was no table available to them thanks to coach passengers getting there first. Now this doesn't happen.

Coach passengers not wishing to wait, can either hit the lounge car or order take out from the diner.
 
Sadly that is correct, the lounge goes to Boston and none is put on the New York section. This frankly IMHO is a big problem as it leaves the NY bound passengers without food for close to three hours.
One must plan ahead and buy from the lounge before the train reaches Schenectady. The lounge closes at Schenectady and remains closed until the Boston section leaves Albany.
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Well Alan when you think about it every train has some sort of closure in the lounge prior to its arrival in the final destination. On Silver Service lounges close SB at West Palm (about 2:15 from Miami) and in Philly NB (about 2:00 from New York). That is a sizeable chunk of time for hungry people and smokers (if penalty box is available) alike. I don't know what closures are like on other trains, but the LSA's make their announcement, so there really shouldn't be a complaint about lack of service.
 
On the Regionals, the Cafe will open between 128 and Providence, close 15-20 minutes before Penn Station, open after Newark, close right after BWI, open after Alexandria. However, I think the 2 hours at the end of the trip is taken up by cleaning, counting, and making sure the money adds up to the amount of product sold. I think many of us don't know what effort it takes to prepare and close up food service cars.
 
battalion51 said:
Well Alan when you think about it every train has some sort of closure in the lounge prior to its arrival in the final destination. On Silver Service lounges close SB at West Palm (about 2:15 from Miami) and in Philly NB (about 2:00 from New York). That is a sizeable chunk of time for hungry people and smokers (if penalty box is available) alike. I don't know what closures are like on other trains, but the LSA's make their announcement, so there really shouldn't be a complaint about lack of service.
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That's true however you are overlooking several things. First, in all of the examples that you've mentioned the closures if the train is on time don’t fall during a mealtime. Where as in my case, especially because we were late my train was left with no food from 11:00 AM until 2:30 PM, the heart of lunch hour.

Secondly, in all cases you are only talking about two hours without food. In the case of the Lake Shore, again assuming that it's on schedule, we are talking about almost 4 hours of no food.

Third, Albany is not the terminus of the LSL. Therefore the attendant should not need one hour to take inventory for restocking at Albany. There is no need to count money at this point. Finally the LSL coming inbound to Chicago doesn't close the cafe until about an hour before arrival.

Now personally I think that they need to return to the procedure of putting a lounge car on the NY section that runs through to Chicago. Then the Boston section can pick up and drop off a lounge car in Albany.
 
I agree Alan, they have been doing that method of dropping off and reciving a food service car for the Boston section for years at Albany. Without the M&E now adays and how the Boston section is at the front again, it would be pretty easy to take off and put on the cafe in ALB. Wesbound, just leave it on out of the way on the Post Road Branch as it comes into the station and hook up to the westbound, eastboud, just wait until the NYP section is clear and back down and pick it up in the siding where they usually hold cars and locos that are awaiting assignment. If they did begin to do this, the NYP would most likely not have an Amfleet II, but an Amfleet I or possibly Horizion Dinette would be better then nothing, much better.
 
In stead of having the Boston section drop off it's Lounge, I think it should stay on the whole trip. This is especially the case in the Summer when there is often 6 Coaches and 3 Sleepers. To me that seems like a lot of passengers that can only be handled in one Lounge.
 
Amfleet said:
In stead of having the Boston section drop off it's Lounge, I think it should stay on the whole trip. This is especially the case in the Summer when there is often 6 Coaches and 3 Sleepers. To me that seems like a lot of passengers that can only be handled in one Lounge.
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Amfleet does have a point, it would relieve the lounge of some congestion, and allow the lounge to maintain a steady supply of food for a longer time, but at minimum both sections need a lounge.
 
Amfleet, an extra lounge would have came in very handy on the way back from Chicago on 48 in 97. That was the infamous train that was held up 2 hours for 9 connecting passengers off of the Empire Builder. They opened up the lounge and diner (thank god) while the train was in the station. Tempers were high in the line for the single lounge car which spread through 2 coach cars. There were 7 coaches in the consist that night, and most of them were running close to capactiy and I think there was around 400 people on board. The diner was open until midnight to serve all the passengers, they were a pretty dedicated crew on the way back, the chef kept saying that he would keep the diner open all night if he had to over the intercom. But on the Berkshire Foliage Flyer this past fall, the train was full and had two Amcafe cars, but the passengers seemed to be biased towards the lead Amcafe for some reason, maybe because the attendent was better or something. There was a constant stream of passengers to the front Amcafe, but the one towards the rear was empty both times I walked through it, a few people were sitting in the coach seats in the car and the attendent was sitting on top of the counter with his legs spread down the length of the counter reading a novel, looking pretty bored.
 
Boy, that chef would have deserved a bonus to keep the diner open all night. It's deicated employees like that who make taking Amtrak all worth while. Just to note, since July 1 Amtrak has put a no tolerence policy on delayed trains out of Chicago. No longer can trains going east wait minutes or hours for late trains from the west. There has been much improvement, especially to the Capitol Limited.
 
Im gonna have to give Amtrak a round of applase for that decision for no more holding trains for insane amount of time for connectors from the west. I have noticed though in the last two weeks or so the Lake Shore has been usually departing within a half hour of its scheduled 7 PM departure! I can imagine that the Cap was getting HAMMEREd with its very early departure time. Way to go Amtrak. On time performance is getting a little better with the Lake Shore recently, which is definatly a good thing. They cant hold the train at all, even a few minutes?
 
There seemed to be some problems in Chicago last nigh, as on Amtrak's website both the LSL and CL departing an hour late. The LSL is expected over 3 hours late into Boston and the CL arrived almost 3 hours late into Washington.
 
Amfleet said:
There seemed to be some problems in Chicago last nigh, as on Amtrak's website both the LSL and CL departing an hour late. The LSL is expected over 3 hours late into Boston and the CL arrived almost 3 hours late into Washington.
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Of course this is nothing rare for the LSL. Wonder what caused this delay, MHC's perhaps?
 
AMTRAK-P42 said:
Amfleet said:
There seemed to be some problems in Chicago last nigh, as on Amtrak's website both the LSL and CL departing an hour late. The LSL is expected over 3 hours late into Boston and the CL arrived almost 3 hours late into Washington.
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Of course this is nothing rare for the LSL. Wonder what caused this delay, MHC's perhaps?
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It's highly unlikely that MHC's and RR's caused a delay for two seperate trains. First off they now leave two hours apart, so one would not delay the other.

Secondly, in the case of the LSL, thanks to that two hour seperation, the MHC's and RR's are now put on the train while it's still in the station. No more pulling out into the yard and then attaching the freight.

They now use the run through track, so that the freight is on the north side of the station. This leaves the passenger section sitting on the south side, so passengers don't have a long walk. I suspect, although I'm not sure, that they are doing the same for the Cap. That also assumes that the Cap is even pulling any freight these days. Many Amtrak trains are no longer pulling any.

I'm wondering if there was some problem caused by thunderstorms. In fact three commuter lines were knocked out yesterday morning thanks to a storm.
 
It's safe to say that these days if there is mail or Express to be hauled by Amtrak they are hauled in Express Trak cars or RoadRailers.
 
Last time we had storms in the south that were this bad, the crescent had to run 600 miles on serious flood restrictions, FINALLY arriving into New York 16 hours late. It was the latest I have ever seen on this route. Although tonights #20 seems to be running very close to schedule.
 
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