SWC mileage change, Hutchinson to Dodge City

[wayman]

This may be the first of many questions along a similar theme...

In an attempt to calculate precisely total miles traveled on Amtrak and total unique track miles traveled on Amtrak, I've been going through the old timetables to get the timetable in effect for each train for each date I've taken that train. Every now and then, the mileages between consecutive stops changes.

Sometimes, with three consecutive stops A,B,C, A-to-B gets one mile longer and B-to-C gets one mile shorter. I'm chalking those up to some sort of rounding error and not considering them to be indicative of a route change.

But other times, there's a change of two or more miles between two cities which suggests a route change has occurred. Case in point, the Southwest Chief timetables for 2 Apr 2007 and 8 Nov 2010:

2 Apr 2007, Hutchinson KS to Dodge City KS is given as 111 miles

8 Nov 2010, Hutchinson KS to Dodge City KS is given as 120 miles

When I see this, I go to the 1948 Rand McNally Railroad Atlas to figure out what changed, if I can. Sometimes it's clear. Sometimes, like here, I'm puzzled. Here's a link to the Kansas railroad map.

The shortest line I can draw between Hutchinson and Dodge City is

Hutchinson-Partridge-Stafford-St John-Belpre-Kinsley-Dodge City

Some of the mileage numbers are hard or impossible to read, but I think it's clear this is the most direct, shortest route on this map. My first instinct is that the mileages here are 11+28+9+19+17+36 = 120. And BNSF's mileage calculator backs that up (I looked up Hutchinson-Stafford-Kinsley-Dodge City, and got 38+46+36).

So ... what was the 111 mile route between Hutchinson and Dodge City? And what led to the change?

 

[PRR 60]

I think the simple answer is that the 111 mile distance shown on the Amtrak timetables until a few years ago was wrong.

Amtrak did an audit of the route mileages shown in the public timetables and found a lot of issues. They went through and cleaned things up resulting in some changes in the length of routes with no change in the actual route. This appears to be one of those cases. A Santa Fe timetable from the 1960's shows Hutchinson to Dodge City as 120 miles. Plotting the rail route on my topo mapping program gets 120 miles. And there have been no route changes. So, simply put, the route is unchanged, the 111 mile distance was wrong, and the 120 mile distance is correct.

This is the sort of thing that drives people who keep records of Amtrak travel mileage nuts.

 

[railiner]

Some of the mileage changes over longer segments are easier to understand, such as when the Southwest Limited ran from Kansas City to Newton via Emporia instead of Topeka as the Southwest Chief now does. (The Lone Star served Topeka at that time). Then there was the reroute to the BN route from the ATSF route between Chicago and Galesburg. And San Bernardino to Los Angeles shifted from Pasadena route to Fullerton route.

This leads me to thnking of all the changes over the Amtrak years in routes. Perhaps that should be in another thread?

 

[caravanman]

Hi,

Could be continental drift?

Or maybe Amtrak calculates fares by the mile, so can generate extra income by stretching the milage?

Me? Surreal? could be...!

Ed

 

[ALC Rail Writer]

Continental drift wouldn't apply as there is no fault line between Hutchinson and Dodge

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

An October 1961 timetable shows two routes between Hutchinson and Dodge City (they become the same westbound at kinsley)

One route, which most trains took, was via St John. It was 120.2 miles.

The other route, less used, was via Great Bend and my calculations come up with 134.50 miles

route for st john was

partridge

abbyvile

pierna

sylvia

zenith

staford

st john

dillwy

macksville

belpre

lewis

kinsley

route via grand bend was

nickerson

sterling

alden

raymond

great bend

pawnee rock

larned

garfield

kinsley

 

[AlanB]

Up until very recently, Amtrak had a very high tech method for keeping track of the timings and the mileages for all the trains, except for those running on the NEC. That high tech method was to keep all the info in a series of Excel spreadsheets.

That made it very easy to accidentally make a mistake while updating something else and altering something that you never intended to alter.

Amtrak has been working hard over the last year or so to find the mistakes and get them out. They're also sending people out to check the actual timings for routes and correct any mistakes in actual running times that may exist, adjust things up or down as needed, and in some cases they're even removing some of the padding on certain routes.

So I expect that you'll continue to see changes in next spring's TT and perhaps even next fall's TT.

 

[El Capitan]

Some of the mileage changes over longer segments are easier to understand, such as when the Southwest Limited ran from Kansas City to Newton via Emporia instead of Topeka as the Southwest Chief now does. (The Lone Star served Topeka at that time). Then there was the reroute to the BN route from the ATSF route between Chicago and Galesburg. And San Bernardino to Los Angeles shifted from Pasadena route to Fullerton route.

This leads me to thnking of all the changes over the Amtrak years in routes. Perhaps that should be in another thread?

Just a minor point--I believe that the SWC would have to pass through Emporia regardless of whether it went through Topeka. According to the Museum of Railway Timetables, the Southwest Limited stopped at Emporia only between KC and Newton, taking the old Super Chief route. By the 1980's, both the Southwest Limited and the renamed SWC stopped at Lawrence, Topeka, and Emporia. My vague memory is that the stop at Emporia was eliminated in 1997, but it seems the route would still take it through Emporia. I can't verify that, since I'm always asleep between Topeka and Newton.

 

[railiner]

Some of the mileage changes over longer segments are easier to understand, such as when the Southwest Limited ran from Kansas City to Newton via Emporia instead of Topeka as the Southwest Chief now does. (The Lone Star served Topeka at that time). Then there was the reroute to the BN route from the ATSF route between Chicago and Galesburg. And San Bernardino to Los Angeles shifted from Pasadena route to Fullerton route.

This leads me to thnking of all the changes over the Amtrak years in routes. Perhaps that should be in another thread?

Just a minor point--I believe that the SWC would have to pass through Emporia regardless of whether it went through Topeka. According to the Museum of Railway Timetables, the Southwest Limited stopped at Emporia only between KC and Newton, taking the old Super Chief route. By the 1980's, both the Southwest Limited and the renamed SWC stopped at Lawrence, Topeka, and Emporia. My vague memory is that the stop at Emporia was eliminated in 1997, but it seems the route would still take it through Emporia. I can't verify that, since I'm always asleep between Topeka and Newton.

Good catch! I believe you are correct. What I should have said was that it went via Ottawa instead of Lawrence and Topeka....