If there's one thing that became glaringly obvious this week, it's that Amtrak needs to work out some "backup contingencies" if certain parts of the system get blocked. I know that if certain routes/stations get blocked, things get messy, but as an easy example Amtrak could likely have run a "Cardinal Special" daily to WAS with the Cap's equipment, run a spare Empire train late at night, and covered every major connection east of CHI save PGH, CLE, and TOL (with the only overnights being PGH from PHL and past-ALB from NYP or ALB).
I really only realized this when I saw how packed the Cardinal was on the way home, but given that neither CSX nor NS crould deliver on the Cap or LSL, an agreement that "if train X is blocked we get to run train Y" (especially since the Cap and Card share identical turn patterns) would probably be a lifesaver.
I really only realized this when I saw how packed the Cardinal was on the way home, but given that neither CSX nor NS crould deliver on the Cap or LSL, an agreement that "if train X is blocked we get to run train Y" (especially since the Cap and Card share identical turn patterns) would probably be a lifesaver.