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I see that No. 1 departed San Antonio this afternoon 11 hours and 55 minutes late (we can round it up to 12 hours late).

According to a post on another list, passengers on no. 421 going west of San Antonio were bused from 21 at San Marcos to San Antonio. I haven't heard if 1 waited for 21 to arrive with the equipment which was going on to LA.
 
It hit a vehicle between Cleburne and McGregor yesterday around 3:30-4pm. It took somewhere around 5 hours before it started moving again, and that looked like it was just to put it on a siding while it waited for a replacement locomotive. It didn't start moving again until some time after 3am
 
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From what I have read on other sites, it sounds like a real fiasco when the single locomotive on 21 had problems and failed and then a series of replacement crews ran out of time.
This is happening more frequently as the P-42s are worn out and Amtrak still insists on running only 1 on 21/22!🤬
Ah, I forgot about those. Wonder if they went out on another SL as protect.... I don't keep up with those trains, so I have no idea how they've been running lately.
Even if they make it to Texas on time, Mechanical problems and UP Freight Trains usually cause then you be Late to Very Late into/ out of San Antonio!
 
I see that No. 1 departed San Antonio this afternoon 11 hours and 55 minutes late (we can round it up to 12 hours late).

According to a post on another list, passengers on no. 421 going west of San Antonio were bused from 21 at San Marcos to San Antonio. I haven't heard if 1 waited for 21 to arrive with the equipment which was going on to LA.
That's really strange considering that San Marcos is the last stop before San Antonio and the Station is just a platform with a shed roof over it,!

Austin,Dallas or Ft Worth are the usual places bustitutions happen on this route.
 
That's really strange considering that San Marcos is the last stop before San Antonio and the Station is just a platform with a shed roof over it,!

Austin,Dallas or Ft Worth are the usual places bustitutions happen on this route.
Google Maps shows San Marcos Amtrak as this building, which appears to be primarily a bus terminal with a path to the Amtrak platform. So the infrastructure exists to move passengers to buses.
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Google Maps shows San Marcos Amtrak as this building, which appears to be primarily a bus terminal with a path to the Amtrak platform. So the infrastructure exists to move passengers to buses.
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Long time ex-San Marcos resident and frequent visitor here.

Thanks for the Pic, This building serves the Local Transit buses ( City) and is closed @ Night and has no services ( food, restrooms, information etc).

The building is not as fancy as it looks, vandals and homeless folks hang out around here and it's not in the best part of town( ie across the Tracks).

The platform is located about 100 yards to the North next to the Tracks ( Ex-MKT) across a Parking Lot)

I still wonder why San Marcos was picked as a Bustitution Station instead of Austin or Temple?
 
Google Maps shows San Marcos Amtrak as this building, which appears to be primarily a bus terminal with a path to the Amtrak platform. So the infrastructure exists to move passengers to buses.
That building is neither owned or operated by Amtrak and is often locked or otherwise unavailable to Amtrak passengers. The part that is available is a platform and an awning, and that's not much to work with. Jim is right, it's rare and impractical to use SMC for bustitutions. Or at least it is when adults are in charge.
 
The post on another list was made when the train had reached San Marcos and I read it as stating that the busing was done at San Marcos but corrections would certainly be welcome.
 
It hit a vehicle between Cleburne and McGregor yesterday around 3:30-4pm. It took somewhere around 5 hours before it started moving again, and that looked like it was just to put it on a siding while it waited for a replacement locomotive. It didn't start moving again until some time after 3am
It hit a semi, extensive damage to the engine, don;'t know what the truck looks like but we were told no fatalities and no injuries among the Amtrak passengers.

Numerous #1 passengers booked from SAS were bumped from their sleeper reservations to coach, I saw one lady take a refund and book herself on a flight. She was getting rid of everything the TSA disallows on flights before she left to go to the airport.

The #22 for Thursday was cancelled - "no alternate transportation provided" - they did offer reschedules and refunds. Of c0urse the reschedules were for Friday or beyond and the refunds did NOT apply to points purchases. But most of the #22 passengers needed to be where they were going Thursday so they waited to be picked up by friends and relatives, took hours for most of them. They suggested to me Greyhound (which I hate, and at my own expense) but the cancellation came too late to get a Thursday arrival in the TX panhandle. I needed to be there Thursday so my partner rented a vehicle and made the 500-mile plus drive to get me, arriving just before 7PM. I had been waiting outside since they kicked us out of the station when they closed it around 2PM. One lady was waiting for a ride from Cleburne and a young man trying to get home to Missouri who was rescheduled on Friday's #22 (he said they weren't going to do that until he told them he had no place to go, no money for a hotel) and told him that he could spend the night on a bench outside the station.

I guess I don't understand no alternate transportation provided.. Do they only provide buses when the train is disabled?

I've been a 30-year customer of Amtrak but if we can be abandoned that easily I need to rethink any future trips.
 
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Hopefully the passengers will receive some kind of reimbursement vouchers as compensation for the massive delay.
I was supposed to take the Texas Eagle from Fort Worth to Chicago Thursday but found that it had been cancelled shortly after arriving via the Heartland Flyer. I had to take a tortuous bus trip to Washington, D.C, before thankfully getting on the Vermonter and am due into Meriden, CT around 2:00 PM. Should have looked at my e-mail earlier, though it probably wouldn't have made a difference.
 
Weird, last night 22 was three locomotives and 8 cars long leaving Texas, but today in STL, over 4 hours late, it left with 5 cars and two locomotives.
 
So where did TE drop off a locomotive and four cars? STL?
5 cars + 1 locomotive is the usual consist N of St. Louis (3 coaches, 1 sleeper, 1 Cross-Country Cafe). Maybe they keep spares at STL? Although Chicago or San Antonio would also be logical locations for spare cars for the TE. (I have an excellent view of the southbound TE through my office window NE of Pontiac, IL; however, the northbound TE typically goes past my town during my lunch hour when I'm at home, so I don't see it then.)
 
5 cars + 1 locomotive is the usual consist N of St. Louis (3 coaches, 1 sleeper, 1 Cross-Country Cafe). Maybe they keep spares at STL? Although Chicago or San Antonio would also be logical locations for spare cars for the TE. (I have an excellent view of the southbound TE through my office window NE of Pontiac, IL; however, the northbound TE typically goes past my town during my lunch hour when I'm at home, so I don't see it then.)
Yes, but this train has two consists because of the cancelled 22 two days ago.
 
I've been a 30-year customer of Amtrak but if we can be abandoned that easily I need to rethink any future trips.
It is too bad when these things happen. The Northeast Corridor and the California corridors seem to be well run but when there is a disruption in the long distance service, things can go downhill fast and it becomes clear that Amtrak does not have your back. I have been involved in several disruptions including twice when 448 was so delayed that my wife and I had to spend the night on a bench in South Station (at least we each had our own bench). When these things happen there is often little or no communication and Amtrak acts as though each disruption is the first time anything like that has ever happened. The amount of compensation offered is paltry compared to the discomfort and inconvenience but perhaps that is because I have not been mean enough when I requested it. When Amtrak trains run well, they can run very well and very pleasant but when there is a disruption, they can be horrid. (I think I have heard something like that before.)
 
There's little in the way of food or lodging in walking distance from the Austin Amtrak station, due to the topography and location at the end of the street. You'll want a a taxi or Uber to get to the downtown area 8 blocks away.
It also seems that the excepted method of accessing the downtown area just north of the station is to cross the tracks and duck through a hole in the fence (!?). Recently in Austin, I was in one of those 16-hour waits that is perpetually presented as "we could get going in about 2 hours." Once the sun went down, there was no leaving by foot. Having such a chokepoint to foot traffic seems like a huge liability.
 
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I see on another list a post indicating that the Texas Eagle is currently not stopping at Texarkana and that ,according to the poster, you cannot buy a ticket to or from there.

I don't know if that is true or not and I didn't see anything in Amtrak's service alerts but those are hardly all-inclusive. Of course this concerns the Texas Eagle so no one cares.
 
It also seems that the excepted method of accessing the downtown area just north of the station is to cross the tracks and duck through a hole in the fence (!?). Recently in Austin, I was in one of those 16-hour waits that is perpetually presented as "we could get going in about 2 hours." Once the sun went down, there was no leaving by foot. Having such a chokepoint to foot traffic seems like a huge liability.
Based on Bob Dylan's response above the hole in the fence may have been repaired. I am tempted to drive over and check.
 
I awaited this train in Austin to continue on the Eagle to LA.

It hit a semi, extensive damage to the engine, don't know what the truck looks like but we were told no fatalities and no injuries among the Amtrak passengers.
This was variously reported by those on the train for the crash as (1) a semi like stated above or (2) a farming tractor being pulled behind a truck of some kind. I believe the latter as those with that story had more specifics, and I can understand the confusion in the ambiguity resulting from someone hearing that "a tractor" was hit. I cannot find a news report online.
Numerous #1 passengers booked from SAS were bumped from their sleeper reservations to coach, I saw one lady take a refund and book herself on a flight. She was getting rid of everything the TSA disallows on flights before she left to go to the airport.
This may be true, but there was no reduction in sleeper accommodations on the train out of San Antonio (12 hours late). The instance I encountered akin to this was a couple who booked the Sunset Limited from east Texas and booked themselves into a sleeper once the Eagle joined. They were not accommodated that early morning with the Sunset in San Antonio and awaiting the Eagle's arrival.

Now, the eventual solution was to not use the sleeper that left Chicago but to pull out a sleeper mothballed in San Antonio. I suppose one could have expected that decision to have been made earlier and that mothballed sleeper to have been attached to the Sunset consist and provided to those on the Sunset who had booked a switch to the Eagle for a sleeper. However, the Sunset arrived at 2:30am, that mothballed car was not standing with linens and water bottles and towels in rooms, etc. The attendant needed 2 hours to prep the car for occupation -- and the attendant assigned to that car was on the Eagle a few hours away, so he could not set it up or attend to anyone who would occupy the car.

____

I am not sure who the overseeing logician was in this situation, but they did a miserable job. Staff from Austin to LA expressed that communication from above was negligible and far from sufficient. First communication came from Amtrak at 5:05pm CT on Apr 10th through a text message. The train rolled from San Antonio at 2:40 pm on Apr 11th. During all but the last 20-30 minutes of that 21+ hours, there was very little information provided and extraordinarily little of the limited information about what would happen was accurate.

There were significant issues with, possibly among other things: 1) the apparent assessment of the situation, 2) development of a response plan to deliver passengers to their destinations as quickly as possible, and 3) conditions at the Austin station.

I think that I could write more about each of those than anyone wants to read. But I may get around to some.
 
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Based on Bob Dylan's response above the hole in the fence may have been repaired. I am tempted to drive over and check.
Based on my experience on Wednesday, the hole is present, real and the egress/ingress point chosen by anyone who left the station for food. No one I heard from thought the hole in the fence, or the other choices, were adequate for patron safety.
 
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Long time ex-San Marcos resident and frequent visitor here.

Thanks for the Pic, This building serves the Local Transit buses ( City) and is closed @ Night and has no services ( food, restrooms, information etc).

The building is not as fancy as it looks, vandals and homeless folks hang out around here and it's not in the best part of town( ie across the Tracks).

The platform is located about 100 yards to the North next to the Tracks ( Ex-MKT) across a Parking Lot)

I still wonder why San Marcos was picked as a Bustitution Station instead of Austin or Temple?
Passengers who were in San Marcos may also have been bused to San Antonio separately, but those in Austin boarded a bus in Austin and bypassed San Marcos for San Antonio.

The bus part of the saga was right out of Catch-22. The train rolled from Cleburne 12 hours after stopping and made usual time for two stops before slowing significantly for the last two. As it crept between Temple and Austin, Austin patrons were told that a bus would come and take us to San Antonio. But when the bus arrived we were told that we would have to wait for the train to reach Austin to board the bus . . . because the conductor on the train would have to check us onto the bus.
 
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I see on another list a post indicating that the Texas Eagle is currently not stopping at Texarkana and that ,according to the poster, you cannot buy a ticket to or from there.

I don't know if that is true or not and I didn't see anything in Amtrak's service alerts but those are hardly all-inclusive. Of course this concerns the Texas Eagle so no one cares.
I see an alert on the Amtrak app, if you know where to look for it. Platform closed due to storm damage.

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