Sunset East of New Orleans: Kiss of Death?

[TransAtlantic]

1st. Let's not blame Amtrak

OK. Then who, exactly, was it that decided not to reinstitute service east of NOL? Not CSX. They got the line back rebuilt in good shape in short order. I can't think of any responsible party, other than Amtrak, upon whom blame for the footdragging and stonewalling can be placed.

The rest of your post I can agree with. And bless you for whatever you manage to accomplish. But Amtrak DESERVES the blame in this case. And the complaints, and the congressional heat, and the ire of the civic and governmental groups along the route, and the ire of all the would-be passengers that have had to make other arrangements because of Amtrak's intransigence. "For whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap."

Given that CSX was sticking it to Amtrak with 12 to 24 hour delays Westbound - and often Eastbound, as well - BEFORE Katrina, and given that some track speeds have not been brought back up since, does it really seem logical that Amtrak would want to continue the Sunset to Florida with trains running so late they likely would have to be turned before Sanford?? You really can't blame Amtrak here - they're trying to establish a reliable service, not a land cruise for people with too much time on their hands!

 

[George Harris]

Given that CSX was sticking it to Amtrak with 12 to 24 hour delays Westbound - and often Eastbound, as well - BEFORE Katrina, and given that some track speeds have not been brought back up since, does it really seem logical that Amtrak would want to continue the Sunset to Florida with trains running so late they likely would have to be turned before Sanford?? You really can't blame Amtrak here - they're trying to establish a reliable service, not a land cruise for people with too much time on their hands!

Even if true, this does not relate to using Katrina as an excuse for failure to return the train to service. The Mississippi Gulf Coast trackage is back but the trian is not. That is the main point. Where are these areas where, "some track speeds have not been brought back up"?

The problem areas before were mostly east of Flomaton, to at least Tallahassee. This section of the line is unsignaled, and never has had signals, so is restricted to no more than 59 mph for passenger trains and 49 mph for freights. It also has or did have some very long gaps between long sidings. Twenty plus years ago, the traffic was fairly lights only one or two freights a day, so this was not a problem. The amount of freight jumped significantly after "Family Lines" combination and even more with the huge increases incontainer traffic. A few new long sidings have been built, but more are needed. But, this situation predated the start of the Sunset east, and it did manage to run reasonably on time at first, so it is really an operatioal issue that CSX can and should deal with, and apparently have in other areas now that they are getting their feet held to the fire.

Therefore, the Sunset could be reinstated on something about the same as its pre-Katrina schedule and be expected to operate reasonably on time. The schedule may not have been fast, but it did carry respectable loadings. What is needed is to do what it takes to improve on the previous run time. Some things are not easily changed, but some things could change. With some state assistance from Florida, particularly, to get signals on this line and more sidings between Flomaton and Tallahassee could easily take an hour or more out of the schedule. This work would probably be of sufficient benefit to CSX in their freight operation that in the end it could cost the state nothing.

George

 

[Trogdor]

CSX wasn't delaying Amtrak by 12 to 24 hours, UP was.

CSX was "only" delaying the Sunset Limited about 3 to 5 hours per segment.

 

[printman2000]

Given that CSX was sticking it to Amtrak with 12 to 24 hour delays Westbound - and often Eastbound, as well - BEFORE Katrina, and given that some track speeds have not been brought back up since, does it really seem logical that Amtrak would want to continue the Sunset to Florida with trains running so late they likely would have to be turned before Sanford?? You really can't blame Amtrak here - they're trying to establish a reliable service, not a land cruise for people with too much time on their hands!

If that is the reasoning behind not restoring it, fine. But Amtrak needs to make it known and post the 180 notices.

 

[Rafi]

Given that CSX was sticking it to Amtrak with 12 to 24 hour delays Westbound - and often Eastbound, as well - BEFORE Katrina, and given that some track speeds have not been brought back up since, does it really seem logical that Amtrak would want to continue the Sunset to Florida with trains running so late they likely would have to be turned before Sanford?? You really can't blame Amtrak here - they're trying to establish a reliable service, not a land cruise for people with too much time on their hands!

If that is the reasoning behind not restoring it, fine. But Amtrak needs to make it known and post the 180 notices.

I think it's painfully obvious at this point that Amtrak is trying to figure out a better alternative than to just reinstate the Sunset back on its former routing. Here's my theory based on what I know:

I suspect that they are in the midst of trying to identify a new routing for the Sunset to reach Florida as a through-train, which is why they haven't issued the 180 day notice yet. As I understand it, once the 180 day notice is released, Amtrak can't turn around and bring back that route (or the part of that route) without state support. So if there's a chance that they can identify and secure alternative routing, they're holding off on putting out any discontinuance notices.

As for why it's taken this long and we're still waiting for something to happen, my gut feeling is that David Hughes was "encouraged" to wait on starting anything until a new President was named, and Kummant is only now getting his feet wet.

Regardless, I think it's clear that Amtrak is not going to return the Sunset to the former routing in all likelihood, and given the lack of the 180 day notice, I think they're looking for alternatives in the hopes that they can still get the Sunset over to Florida as one train. What the criteria for those alternatives are, I don't know. If all else fails, I think we'll end up seeing an Atlanta-Jacksonville-Orlando (and maybe Miami) train, probably as an overnight branch or connection train to northbound Crescent. (We may also see a LAX-NOL-ATL train, too, so that passengers don't have to stay the night in NOL). An ATL-JAX routing is no stranger to the powers-that-be, and it's been kicked around for over a year now between NARP and Amtrak. If they want to do it right, they'd have two trains each way: one to connect with each Crescent, providing a day train and a night train for Atlanta-area residents.

I could be partially or completely off-base on this, but the above seems like a reasonable estimation of the current state of things regarding the Sunset right now.

-Rafi

 

[printman2000]

I think it's painfully obvious at this point that Amtrak is trying to figure out a better alternative than to just reinstate the Sunset back on its former routing.-Rafi

I am assuming this is just your "hunch" and not any information you have obtained. Is that correct?

 

[Rafi]

I think it's painfully obvious at this point that Amtrak is trying to figure out a better alternative than to just reinstate the Sunset back on its former routing.

-Rafi

I am assuming this is just your "hunch" and not any information you have obtained. Is that correct?

Correct—it's just my hunch. Or rather, just what I've deduced based on what's publicly known. No one's told me that they're looking for an alternate route for the Sunset.

-Rafi

 

[PRR 60]

Why doesn't Amtrak restart the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans? They do not want to. Why, then, don't they simply call it quits on the route? They do not want to. Let me pose my theory.

As long as Amtrak does not officially abandon the route, Amtrak retains absolute rights to the route. Case in point is the Desert Wind. Once Amtrak walked away from the DW, they lost the absolute rights to run on the UP to and through Las Vegas. When they went to restore service, the UP (entirely within their legal rights) required Amtrak to pay for capacity improvements. The rest is history for the Las Vegas service. But along the Gulf Coast, Amtrak still shows the service as suspended, not abandoned. They still have the right to run at least the former Sunset Limited service level without any issues with CSX or capacity enhancements.

OK, so why not just restart the service? Simple. They do not want to: at least not on the pre-Katrina terms. The Sunset Limited east of New Orleans was a loser. It was a 100% Amtrak-funded service using the most labor-intensive LD equipment and service, and the passenger counts east of NOL stunk. There is no way Amtrak wants to put that train back. But they do not want to simply drop the route either. What they would like is a state-supported or partially state-supported train using single-level equipment to run between Florida and New Orleans. This way they could restore rail service for the Gulf Coast and not drain the Amtrak budget in the process. And, with Amtrak still holding rights to the line, there would be no CSX hassles.

This plan, if it is the plan (and at least part of it is), makes a lot of sense. It places at least some of the burden of the service on the states that stand to benefit. Right now, today, the traffic counts do not justify an Amtrak funded train. This plan at least gives rail service a chance on the Gulf Coast. The next step is up to the states.

 

[AlanB]

OK, so why not just restart the service? Simple. They do not want to: at least not on the pre-Katrina terms. The Sunset Limited east of New Orleans was a loser. It was a 100% Amtrak-funded service using the most labor-intensive LD equipment and service, and the passenger counts east of NOL stunk. There is no way Amtrak wants to put that train back. But they do not want to simply drop the route either. What they would like is a state-supported or partially state-supported train using single-level equipment to run between Florida and New Orleans. This way they could restore rail service for the Gulf Coast and not drain the Amtrak budget in the process. And, with Amtrak still holding rights to the line, there would be no CSX hassles.

I suspect that you may well be right PRR that Amtrak is shopping for State support to restore some form of service east of NOL on the Sunset route.

That said however, and while I will admit that it is difficult to tell from the way that Amtrak reports the numbers, I don't think that running the Sunset east of NOL is all that much more of a losser than running the rest of the route. Consider that ridership in FY 2005 dropped a little more than 15,000 from 2004 for the Sunset route. That of course is understandable, since the train was terminating in Texas for entire last month of 2005. The difference however is much more marked in FY 2006 with a drop in ridership of almost 30,000. Since FY 2004, ridership on the Sunset route has now dropped by over 50%.

Now granted there is no way to know how much of that drop can be attributed to delays vs. the loss of the route east of NOL, but I for one have to believe that the current termination at NOL represents at least half if not more of that loss.

Revenues on Sunset have also taken a similar dive of course, dropping over $5.8 Million dollars during the same period FY '04 thru FY '06.

 

[AmtrakWPK]

Looking at the FY03 04 and 05 data for Florida stations that Sunset served, it looks to me like a pretty significant hit on passenger totals not just for Panhandle stations (Doh!) but also for Orlando. It always seemed like we had a fairly good group of pax on and off at WPK on Sunset. So I look with a jaundiced eye on a blanket statement like

passenger counts east of NOL stunk

. Some of the small stations, sure, very, very small pax counts. But a lot of those panhandle stops are just an artifact - they just happen to be on the way to Jax and Orlando. And of course the Panhandle route includes Pensacola (NOT a hole in the wall or sleepy little town) and Tallahassee (the State Capital). It always seemed to me that at Jax (and Orlando) there was a pretty decent passenger count on and off. I can know that even though we didn't go all the way to Orlando because when we got off at WPK, every single passenger left on the train was going to Orlando, and when we got on in WPK, every single passenger already on the train got on at Orlando.

 

[jphjaxfl]

I traveled on the Sunset from Jacksonville to Tallahassee and Jacksonville to New Orleans and vis versa quite a few times. When the train was running on a reliable schedule it had surprisingly good patronage even in the sleepers. When the train started running 12 hours or more late and when there were suspensions due to CSX track work, the patronage had declined. Even then Amtrak was sending a signal that they didn't want to operate the train. A daily train operated on a reliable schedule between Orlando, Jacksonville and New Orleans with convenient connections to the Sunset Limited and the City of New Orleans would do well. The State of Florida needs to provide some support which should include enough funds for a second Jacksonville-Tallahassee round trip that would be scheduled opposite the through train to New Orleans. The States of Alabama and Mississippi should support the through train as well as a Mobile to New Orleans round trip. With two reliable trains in either direction for most of the route, there would be ridership. The Mobile-New Orleans portion might even gain enough for a third train as the area makes comeback from Katrina.

 

[frj1983]

I have one question to add to the mix here:

What about equipment?

I fell rather far behind in reading my "Trains" magazines last year, but I do remember a fairly recent article which had a table with a breakdown of available passenger cars. I was surprised by the number unavailable and wonder if equipment is becoming a bugaboo for Amtrak? I know that the Sunset is just a straight run through from New Orleans, but could there be some problems here as well(equipment) which has lead to suspended service?

I will wait for the collective wisdom of the board.......................

 

[AmtrakWPK]

We have a situation now with a number of new variables complicating the situation. The State of Florida is trying to deal with astronomical increases in property insurance premiums for Florida homeowners. Those increases have literally multiplied insurance premiums to the point where even what would be considered fairly modest homes suddenly have annual premiums of as much as $10,000 or more (and that's for the folks whose insurance wasn't simply canceled as their insurance companies stopped insuring ANYONE in the State). Two days ago a Special Session of the State Legislature that was convened for the express purpose of dealing with this insurance crisis was concluded, and the legislature just put the State taxpayers on the hook for billions in potential liabilities as a financial backup to backstop catastrophic losses should we have another insane hurricane season. So the State is unlikely to feel it prudent to try to finance rail infrastructure (which would also likely suffer huge damage from the same hurricanes) at this point in time.

On the other hand, we have the potential of significant matching fund grants and bonding from the feds for State-supported rail initiatives if what has been proposed in the new Congress becomes law. Certainly if a significant upgrade was done of the CSX rail line running from JAX-Pensacola, with new trackage, more double-tracking, and signaling, it would be a whole new ballgame, and could potentially cut average transit time in that corridor by 6-12 hours. I don't know what the situation is between Pensacola and NOL, although the routing is certainly anything but direct, snaking it's way through Alabama and Mississippi on the way to NOL.

We would hope that Amtrak would use some of the proposed capital infusion to purchase, and repair, rolling stock. Certainly a number of routes ought to have more sleepers (any route that regularly sells out of sleepers obviously should have more assigned to it), and any route running less than daily needs to be running daily.

 

[Mike]

With no Sunset,east of New Orleans,how is the on time preformance of the LA to New Orleans Sunset? Would it be feasible to make the Sunset a daily train since Amtrak seems to just want to run it from New Orleans-Los Angeles? My last question is,if Katrina hadn't of happen,would Amtrak have killed the Sunset anyway?

 

[AlanB]

Mike,

The performance for the Sunset during fiscal 2006 which ended in September '06, during which the entire year saw no Sunset east of NOL, the OTP was 15%. And that includes the fact that the train can arrive up to a half hour late and still be considered on time. That also includes a huge amount of padding.

As for the daily scenario, I'm not sure that Amtrak has the equipment to do that, especially since it's OTP performance is so dismal.

Not sure about your last question, but I'm sure that it would have been much harder to kill it, if Katrina hadn't hit.

 

[AlanB]

The performance for the Sunset during fiscal 2006 which ended in September '06, during which the entire year saw no Sunset east of NOL, the OTP was 15%.

By the way, that is a slight improvement from Fiscal '05, during which most of that year the Sunset did run east of NOL. During fiscal '05, the OTP was a whopping 7.1%. Of course most of that was due to the horrible performance of UP that year, when the train was often a day or more late, and was not CSX's fault.

By the way, just as an interesting side note, only three other trains have a worse OTP for '06, two of which also run on UP. They were the Coast Starlight at 3.9% and the Zephyr at 6.9%.

 

[AmtrakWPK]

My crystal ball is in the shop for it's 10,000 prediction overhaul.

We know that overall the Amtrak passenger count systemwide has continued to rise. Sunset's passenger count probably would have depended on how awful UP's dispatching was. As has already been noted, CSX wasn't stellar by any means on Sunset, but it also wasn't anything like as putrid or abysmal as U.P. If the line had NOT been severed by the hurricane, AND if Amtrak had gotten the same kind of improvement in UP and CSX for Sunset that it seems to have gotten lately overall (with the occasional lapse), then I would have expected Sunset to be doing fairly well at this point. But none of that happened, we DID have the hurricane sever the tracks, and even though the trackage has been fully repaired, Amtrak has NOT restarted it.

 

[Mike]

Did anybody hear that Amtrak is supposed to decide next month what to do about the Sunset east of New Orleans?

 

[Daniel]

Tom, no I haven't. Where did you hear this? If an announcement is to come next month, Amtrak must have made a decision. Does anybody have any insight?

 

[Mike]

Tom, no I haven't. Where did you hear this? If an announcement is to come next month, Amtrak must have made a decision. Does anybody have any insight?

I heard this on Sunset Limited group that I am a member of on Yahoo

 

[AmtrakWPK]

Any clue where THEY heard it?

 

[Guest_Ben_*]

Out of curiosity, were there more people that traveled east of New Orleans from the west on the Sunset or from the north on the City of New Orleans? This could determine whether to run the Sunset through the city or make the CONOL run to Florida as a separate train.

 

[AlanB]

Out of curiosity, were there more people that traveled east of New Orleans from the west on the Sunset or from the north on the City of New Orleans? This could determine whether to run the Sunset through the city or make the CONOL run to Florida as a separate train.

I'm not sure if anyone outside of Amtrak has those numbers. I'm not even sure if Amtrak ever tracked those numbers.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Oh, what the heck! let me throw this info in, irrelevant and out of date as it is! (It won't be the first time!)

George Harris and I and maybe others have mentioned the Gulf Wind, and various other trains that once ran through this region.

But would any of you (other than George Harris and one or two more) realize that at one time L&N ran a commuter train of sorts? It did not have a name, just numbers 11 and 12.

It originated at variable small towns north of Mobile,Ala. I believe for most of its life it originated at Ocean Springs, MS. On in to New Orleans.

It had a morning arrival into NOL about 8:30 or so and went back that night around 5. In each case its schedule was similar to the Gulf Wind. Its run from Ocean Springs or wherever it originated lasted about four hours, I think.

It had long distance coaches, though probably of the poorest quality. They would have been air conditioned, (after the late 40's) but may have not had recliining seats. (But not razor back either). There was no diner or lounge or head end or checked baggge. I never saw the train , but have seen one or two pictures throught the years. Very little ever said about it. It was not exactly the 20th Century Limited!!

I have read that it had many regular passengers, they mostly knew wach other, etc. , maybe even had birthday parties for each other.

It probably ran much more on time than the longer distance trains. For example, the Gulf Wind, combined with the Piedmont Limited and the Pan American, was quite likely late more often the local.

It ran six days a week Monday thorugh Saturday.

I cannot recall much of anything else quite like that in the Southeast. It lasted until the mid-60's, I guess, not sure. .

 

[MrFSS]

Oh, what the heck! let me throw this info in, irrelevant and out of date as it is! (It won't be the first time!)
George Harris and I and maybe others have mentioned the Gulf Wind, and various other trains that once ran through this region.

But would any of you (other than George Harris and one or two more) realize that at one time L&N ran a commuter train of sorts? It did not have a name, just numbers 11 and 12.

It originated at variable small towns north of Mobile,Ala. I believe for most of its life it originated at Ocean Springs, MS. On in to New Orleans.

It had a morning arrival into NOL about 8:30 or so and went back that night around 5. In each case its schedule was similar to the Gulf Wind. Its run from Ocean Springs or wherever it originated lasted about four hours, I think.

It had long distance coaches, though probably of the poorest quality. They would have been air conditioned, (after the late 40's) but may have not had recliining seats. (But not razor back either). There was no diner or lounge or head end or checked baggge. I never saw the train , but have seen one or two pictures throught the years. Very little ever said about it. It was not exactly the 20th Century Limited!!

I have read that it had many regular passengers, they mostly knew wach other, etc. , maybe even had birthday parties for each other.

It probably ran much more on time than the longer distance trains. For example, the Gulf Wind, combined with the Piedmont Limited and the Pan American, was quite likely late more often the local.

It ran six days a week Monday thorugh Saturday.

I cannot recall much of anything else quite like that in the Southeast. It lasted until the mid-60's, I guess, not sure. .

Bill - The oldest L&N table I have is Summer - 1961. I don't find 11 or 12 in that table. Maybe because it wasn't a LD train.