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I am sure the question has been asked many times before, but what does Amtrak actually do for passengers if the train to your final destination, say E.B. to Chicago, arrives late at 1am instead of mid afternoon? I believe they do assist if you miss a guaranteed connection, but what about arrival in the middle of the night?

Ed :cool:
 
The EB sometimes arrives in CHI in the middle of the night. Our trip in June arrived at 3 AM. The only guaranteed connection was for those who were ticketed for the LSL which we were. Sad to say the other passengers were SOL and to make matters worse all of the hotels in downtown Chicago were sold out. I don't know what became of the coach passengers and those with connections to the CL (and other trains) that are not guaranteed. We were bussed to the suburbs and put up at a Doubletree Hotel . We got to sleep at 5 AM , rose at 9AM had breakfast (on Amtrak) and arrived back in CHI around 11 AM. Had some time to tour Chicago so we took the ferry to the Navy Pier and later were able to catch the CL to WAS and the regional back to PHL.

The problem with the EB arriving late is the missed connections. Say if you are booked in a bedroom coast to coast. You miss your connection and you find that all of the sleepers the following day are unavailable. Coach was offered to us on the LSL but we switched to the CL and thank God were able to get the very last available bedroom in RM C. The lateness is a pain caused by the oil train logjam on BNSF and CN tracks. It was stressful for a while, we were lucky, and everything worked out. Sad to say many sleeper passengers who had to take the LSL were unfortunately downgraded to coach accommodations. That is the real downside to the oil boom.
 
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I'm traveling the EB westbound to Portland this Friday. I'm planning a 4 hour late arrival, and have no connection for the next 2 days. But...what's the main cause of the delays, freight traffic? I know BNSF owns the right-of-way, but isn't there some kind of regulation about interfering with passenger traffic?

Oh, taking the CZ back home the following Friday. I'm planning another 4 hour late arrival.
 
George K said:
I know BNSF owns the right-of-way, but isn't there some kind of regulation about interfering with passenger traffic?
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Yes, but it's been very difficult to enforce it. The law makes it illegal to dispatch freight trains with higher priority than passenger trains, but makes it hard to prove the case and difficult to get penalties. As a result, the Class Is have been flagrantly breaking the law on and off for years and getting away with it.

In cases like BNSF's, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between breaking the priority law and simply being incompetent at managing a railroad -- the evidence points to the latter in the case of BNSF through North Dakota and Montana, where the freight trains are apparently running *weeks* late. BNSF should have put in extra capacity before accepting extra business, and didn't, which is incompetent.

Amtrak has filed one complaint with the Surface Transportation Board over an open-and-shut case of dispatching priority violations on CN rails:

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/amtrak/article/Amtrak-asks-STB-to-investigate-delays-on-CN-line--41712
 
What does Amtrak do for people who arrive at 3:00am, when their scheduled arrival time was 1:00pm

and they were not connecting with another Amtrak train? Do they provide for taxi service to their home

or another proper destination? I would not want to be dumped in Chicago (or another dangerous city)

in the middle of the night.
 
You are on your own if you are not connecting to another train sorry to say. This has happened to me several times in the past, once at about 1:30 AM, not even very many taxis around Union Station at that time of the day. I finally was able to hail a cab (after about 10 minutes of trying to flag one down) to get to my hotel, but it wasn't the most positive travel experience to be sure.
 
neroden said:
Yes, but it's been very difficult to enforce it. The law makes it illegal to dispatch freight trains with higher priority than passenger trains, but makes it hard to prove the case and difficult to get penalties. As a result, the Class Is have been flagrantly breaking the law on and off for years and getting away with it.
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Didn't a court strike that law down just a little while ago? Something to due with the way the law allows damages to be assessed?
 
If Chicago's your final destination or you don't have a connection and you arrive after the last trains have come and gone they tend to hustle you out. I came in on a Michigan Service train due in around 10 at Midnight, missed the last BNSF train to the suburbs by seconds. (They had taken the BNSF train off the departure board by the time I got over to those tracks and I saw the tail lights of the train pulling out.) Anyway, I called my Mom for a lift to the West Suburbs, and forget even waiting in the vestibule. The Amtrak Police Officer was very concerned about getting everyone out of the station because "we're supposed to be closed. We're waiting for your train." Also making sure, that what we did or where we went "wasn't his problem." Didn't matter that it was sub zero temperatures and pretty much there wasn't much of anything open near there. Oh, and that wasn't the only train station I was thrown out of on that trip. There was a problem with the headlight on the Engine or Cab Car of the train, and we were late getting started out of Pontiac, and they kicked us out of the station there, although that wasn't Amtrak, that was the Bus Company they shared the station with. They let the Bus Company staff it, and the Bus Company guy wanted to leave and threatened to call the cops and have them throw us out of the station. Thank goodness for some Amtrak track workers or maintenance folks who kindly let the passengers hang out and stand around their crew room behind the station until the train was ready to go.
 
Guest said:
neroden said:
Yes, but it's been very difficult to enforce it. The law makes it illegal to dispatch freight trains with higher priority than passenger trains, but makes it hard to prove the case and difficult to get penalties. As a result, the Class Is have been flagrantly breaking the law on and off for years and getting away with it.
Click to expand...
Didn't a court strike that law down just a little while ago? Something to due with the way the law allows damages to be assessed?
Click to expand...
The law that neorden is talking about was not the law that was struck down. The law that was about how performance metrics were to be defined and penalties determined.
 
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