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John Bobinyec said:
Another one of life's little disappointments. The emailer program that sends out the Alerts is not working. The code hasn't been touched in years. And it looks normal. I suspect there's trouble with my ISP's SMTP server, but I have yet to pin it down.

jb
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Yep, the ISP implemented a security protocol. It took a while but we're back in business.

jb
 
Had a little bit of trouble this morning. Amtrak changed something with its website and it took me a little while to adapt things to it.

This will affect

Amtrak Status Maps - they're working and they are "catching up"

ASM Alerts - ditto

Station Status Boards

Amsnag - I have notified Paul.

jb
 
The system seems to be uncooperative this morning (1/2/2016). Unfortunately, I won't be able to deal with it until this evening.

It may be working, but it doesn't look like it. This affects:

Amtrak Status Maps

ASM Alerts

Station Status Boards

jb
 
ScottRu said:
Good luck, John. And thanks for all your efforts on our behalf.
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I associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Scott). I'm a big fan of the status maps, and have several ongoing alerts just to monitor the performance of my pet trains, even when I have no travel planned. Thanks, John, for this labor of love.
 
Trollopian said:
ScottRu said:
Good luck, John. And thanks for all your efforts on our behalf.
Click to expand...
I associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Scott). I'm a big fan of the status maps, and have several ongoing alerts just to monitor the performance of my pet trains, even when I have no travel planned. Thanks, John, for this labor of love.
Click to expand...
Ditto that
 
The system (several ancient machines) collectively decided to quit working yesterday morning, while I was not at home. I worked on them last night and had only very slight success. Late this morning I was finally able to get them calmed down enough to where they would cooperate with each other. We're back online - for now.

jb
 
John, I have a question that you may (or not) be able to answer. When I see a blank instead of a time for a stop, I know if I look in the Amtrak train status it's going to say "Status Unavailable." So are they recorded manually and skipped when they're too busy? It's just surprising to me when it happens for a major station on a route; in this case SAS for the SL westbound (1). No record of when it got to SAS and no record of when it left (01/03/16). I know this is a particularly busy station, what with the switchings of the 421 and 422 from/to the Eagle..
 
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Chey said:
John, I have a question that you may (or not) be able to answer. When I see a blank instead of a time for a stop, I know if I look in the Amtrak train status it's going to say "Status Unavailable." So are they recorded manually and skipped when they're too busy? It's just surprising to me when it happens for a major station on a route; in this case SAS for the SL westbound (1). No record of when it got to SAS and no record of when it left (01/03/16). I know this is a particularly busy station, what with the switchings of the 421 and 422 from/to the Eagle..
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Concerning the blanks shown in my system, blanks are shown until Amtrak presents a time for a train on their website. Yesterday into today, my system was a mess, so you can't go by that for that time period.

If you're talking about Amtrak itself recording a time at a station, they have (I'm guessing) at least four ways to enter it:

  • they detect the GPS coordinates of a train's lead engine - this is, I think, the predominant way of doing things, They don't always have things defined correctly, though, so sometimes times are omitted in their reservations system.
  • an Amtrak agent can enter the time into the system
  • an Amtrak dispatcher (on Amtrak owned/operated lines) can enter the time into the system
  • an Amtrak IT person can enter the time
Obviously, the most automatic way is the GPS system, but when it's down or there's a mistake in it, or perhaps even when an unusual move happens, the times can be wrong, or omitted.

Someone else with more direct knowledge is invited to chime in.

jb
 
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Thanks, I did mean the Amtrak system for tracking times. I didn't think of GPS but I thought there had to be a way to automate it somewhat. I was just wondering about the blank spaces, which are sometimes filled in later, sometimes not, wondering if someone manually records the times also. I don't know how else they could go in later and fill in the times, when they do show later.

I'm really grateful you provide this for us, it's a pain in the butt to look up one station, one train at a time on their train status page...
 
Unfortunately, the system is down right now ( 8 a.m. 1/14/2016) and I won't be able to do anything with it until this evening. This affects:

Amtrak Status Maps

Station Status Boards

ASM Alerts

Sorry for the inconvenience.

jb

Edit: System stayed down all day and decided to come back online just before I got home. By the time I got there, it was fine. I couldn't find out who the bad actor was.
 
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John Bobinyec said:
Today is a repeat of yesterday. The system is on the fritz (11 a.m. 1/15) and I won't be able to do anything about it until I get home.

jb
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It did it again. Just about the time I could get to the system and work on it, everything cleared up.

Personally, I think the trouble is with the ISP. The only other possibilities are the router and the modem, and I didn't touch either one of those - either time.

jb

jb
 
Amtrak.com is down for maintenance. They're running "Amtrak Lite" as of 2.20 p.m. EDT Monday, June 6, 2016. Amtrak Status Maps is not set up for that, so the maps, station status boards and Alerts are all down for the duration.

jb

Edit: Looks like regular Amtrak.com is back online at 2.45 p.m. 6/6/16.
 
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Amtrak.com is running extremely slowly as far as train status queries go. That effectively raises the devil with ASM. Friday, 6/10/2016 1.20 p.m. EDT.

jb

1.48 p.m. Amtrak Lite has now replaced Amtrak.com. That kills ASM.
 
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It's working fine for me. Can anyone explain why some numbers are red and others green? I understand that grey is "disrupted service" and black is "don't ask." BTW, I'm tracking Train 2. It is currently way south of its usual route because of work being done on the Brazos River Bridge near Sugarland. It's weird seeing #2 so far off of its usual line of travel. I'm taking Train 2 next week from Los Angeles to New Orleans and hoping that it continues to get there without too much meandering about the state of Texas.
 
My bad. ASM is Amtrak Status Maps. You must be using either Amtrak's Track-A-Train, or Better-Track-A-Train. Those two use Amtrak's GPS reporting of a train's progress. That seems to be working fine, evidently. On the other hand. ASM gets its information from Amtrak.com, which itself is in difficulty.

jb
 
Well, obviously Amtrak went down around noon on Monday, June 13, 2016. They did manage, after a while, to get Amtrak-Lite running. Here it is 9 hours later and Amtrak-Lite is still being used instead of Amtrak.com.

As I have mentioned, Amtrak Status Maps is incompatible with Amtrak-Lite. The good news is that I was able to figure out how to make them work together. It'll still take me a day or two to implement the code, though.

jb
 

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