This is ridiculous!

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M

Matt

Guest
This is ridiculous! I am monitoring the train status for my upcoming trip in 2 weeks and I am about ready to just say to hell with it and purchase a plane ticket. The January 3rd train was supposed to depart at 4:15AM but it "Departed 22 hours and 27 minutes late." This is for the Zepyhr from LNK to CHI.

Now I'm sorry but if I purchase a ticket to leave January 3RD I expect to leave January 3rd, NOT January 4th. What the hell is someone supposed to do if this happens? 22 hours is LONGER THAN IT TAKES TO EVEN GET TO FREAKING CHICAGO.

I haven't even heard of any major snowstorms so it scares me to think what would happen if we actually GOT a snowstorm. I also love how there is train status, but no REASON. Would it kill them to give a reason why it's so late?

What can you do in something like this? Is it even possible to get your money back? I have a non-refundble ticket because I used the 10% off code although I am willing to GIVE THEM BACK their 10% and have them convert my ticket into a refundable one. Saving $10 or so was not worth not being able to cancel/get a refund. I am very worried and not really looking forward to this anymore because if fate has it's way I know I'm gonna be stuck on the late train.
 
In my opinion, if you wanna maintain the ability to have the "refund" option, then it is almost imparitive to purchase a full fare ticket. That usually is the costliest, but none-the-less if something happens, then you can usually get your money back should you decide not to "start" your travel. Notice the key word "start!" A lot of the other fares will allow you the ability to be credited for future travel in most cases, and in some cases refund options are available. However, almost all the time the ticket has to be fully unused! Reservations/ticketing department can provide better infomation than me, however. Any staffed station or the 800 number is your best bet, here.

As far as train status is concerned, you have several options in finding out "why" a train is late. If they know, they'll tell you if you ask. Folks inquire about that everyday. Simply call the 800 number and bypass "Julie" and go straight to an agent, and see what the call (reservations) center can provide. If that is not successful, simply call any staffed station (preferably the next station upline of where the train last was or the station the train is currently at if known at the time) which can access most of the same info the call center can. Most of the stations on a particular line stay in touch with each independently as well as with some select memebers of the operating crews (via their cell phones, etc). The internet website, however, is not going to provide such information.
 
You haven't heard of any snowstorms?? I guess you haven't been listening. CA has had massive snow storms in the sierras creating havoc in all forms of transportation. Several feet of snow fell on Truckee in just one night, for example, which the Zephyr must pass through. This weather pattern - wet and cold - has been going on for over a week now.....can continues. It could all be completely gone in two weeks.
 
If the train is late enough that you do not desire to take it (at least one hour late), you have the option of receiving a full refund regardless of any discounts you used to purchase the ticket. Amtrak will not hold you hostage and force you to travel on a significantly late train if you do not want to. Amtrak's official refund policy covering this can be found here.
 
Matt

What day do you leave LNK? Yes, the Zephyr has been suffering major snow storms the last few days. Ski resorts are reporting 9 to 16 feet in the Reno area. I-80 has been closed, and flights cancelled. Amtrak will refund your ticket if the train is way late. Simply read the small text. Just because it's late today doesn't mean it will be that bad later.

Chris
 
Over the weekend they were lucky to get anything through the Sierra on I-80, estimated travel times from Tahoe to the SF Bay Area by car were 10+ hours due to the huge amounts of snow in the Sierra and the flooding in the Sacramento valley.
 
LNK? Snow? No, they didn't just have a 30 hour ice storm followed by an expected 12-16 inches of snow. No, it never snows along THE ENTIRE CZ ROUTE... :ph34r:
 
What I was trying to say was that the train the previous day probably arrived in EMY (it's terminal) late, then had to be serviced and turned around for the following day to depatr (again probably late) and encounter the same weather conditions that it did coming in. Also with the flooding there were probably signal issues on UP in the area. Thus the weather conditions at the start of the route had a domino effect along the rest of the route.
 
Well in LNK we just got a snowstorm but I swear I went to weather.com yesterday and I am not kidding...THERE WAS NOT A SPECK ON THE ENTIRE map! Nothing, no green, pink, or white...and I hadn't heard of any storms, so I had no idea why it was so late. I am dead serious, NOTHING was on the radar, so I'm like what is going on. I guess the weather makes sense then but I'm just praying we don't get another storm MLK weekend or it will just be a disaster.

They should put a plow on the front of the train. Or have a de-icing train go right in front of the train, if they even have such a thing. I know that's what causes a lot of the delays at the airports, they have to "de-ice" the planes which takes forever.

Lincoln clearly has terrible snow removal. In Chicago they put so much salt down on the roads they turn white BEFORE IT STARTS SNOWING! LOL! It's great and usually it just hits and melts, unless it gets really bad.

I'm trying to figure out if the freaking university is going to close...they haven't made a decision yet!
 
The train you are talking about left Emeryville, CA (San Francisco) on 1/1 most likely. This train dealt with the ablve mentioned weather as I can assure you it was pouring all day Saturday and Sunday here in CA, and they got something like two feet of snow in the Sierra from the same storm. UP does have snow removal equipment and from reports it had to make multiple passes during the course of the storm.

I'm surprised to hear that Lincoln has such poor snow removal as I would have thought that they get a decent amount of snow in the winter. As for the Sac valley and Bay Area if they saw flurries the place would shut down for the day. B)
 
Thirty nine inches of snow fell at Truckee CA on 12/31, and that is not as much as likely fell on the pass. Once the snow is on the ground, the winds in the mountains will continue to cause drifting and track blockages. In short, the scenic mountain vistas that are the hallmark of the Zephyr are getting thier payback this winter.
 
Chatter163 said:
I think that someone as high-strung and emotional as the OP would probably be better off flying, anyway. ;)
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I'm not high strung it's just that I requested 4 days off work (4 days which I could be working) for this trip and if it is cancelled it's going to suck. I am a student so it's not like I can just take trips whenever I feel like it.

Lincoln snow removal isn't that bad, but then again I grew up in Northern Minnesota so EVERY cities snow removal is bad to me. LOL. We'd get a foot and still have school! When we first moved to Chicago we would laugh....6 inches was a "blizzard" to them and was the top story on the news for days.

So far it's looking good for that weekend. Weather.com 10 day forecast has snow showers in Chicago but partly cloudy in Lincoln, so I'm hoping it doesn't change.

I swear I haven't even heard a word about all this snow in mountains or the raining in California! I had no idea...
 
You can't compare Donner Pass to Minnesota or anywhere else. Donner Pass is approximately 7,239 feet above sea level, and it doesn't go immediately down to sea level within a couple of miles of the pass, either. It gets cold and stays cold. It's hard to breathe. Equipment that breathes air (interal combustion engines) don't generate as much power. The snow that falls, stays, all winter, basically, and through the summer, a good bit of it, as I recall from the years I lived in Calif.

Quoting a pdf file I found that talks about the weather there, "Modern records indicate that the average annual precipitation in the Donner Pass region is about 54 inches, which includes 34.12 feet of snow." Does over 34 FEET of annual snow in rapidly drifting and blowing sub-zero conditions sound like a lot of fun to work with or in? Can you imagine how deep it could drift in narrow clefts and passes? And how quickly it could come behind your road or rail-clearing equipment and re-drift in just as deep as it was before you went through it?

There was an article or two on it on the Trains magazine website. The host railroad that owns the tracks over Donner was having a horrible time of it, with the snow spreaders (moves snow to the sides) either breaking down or derailing, and then the locomotive pushing it derailed, and you can just imagine how much fun it must be to try to get a big enough crane, and all the workers, way up there to re-rail a locomotive in the middle of a blizzard. The highway over the pass was also closed, snowed in and impassible, and how do you get train crews to and from the locos when the roads are closed because of the snow? For air travel you can re-route around a storm, and all you have to do is remove the snow and ice from a two mile runway at each end, and de-ice that airplane before takeoff. Compare that with the job the railroad has to do to try to keep the rail route running. Every inch of that rail path has to be clear for that train to pass. All the running gear on all that equipment has to be kept operating in the face of extreme cold, ice, snow, etc. And that train carries many thousands of times more weight than an airplane does. Use a little common sense here. Consider the physics involved.
 
Actually, many times if an engine or car goes on the ground, remains up right, and relatively within the gague, they will rerail it using some special tools, but not a crane. A crane is typically only used when equipment goes a long way from the tracks. For example, there are derailments all the time in yards, but a crane is rarely needed since mechanical can do it without the big equipment.
 
Guess what this weekend, actually starting tomorrow we're in for rain to last into Sunday. Right now the forecast models are predicting between 3-5 inches of rain here and up to 5 feet of snow in the Sierra. Another fun weekend for us.
 
battalion51 said:
Actually, many times if an engine or car goes on the ground, remains up right, and relatively within the gague, they will rerail it using some special tools, but not a crane. A crane is typically only used when equipment goes a long way from the tracks. For example, there are derailments all the time in yards, but a crane is rarely needed since mechanical can do it without the big equipment.
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I rember seeing in a train movie i checked out from my local library, a south american conductor use a piece of metal and rocks to rerail a coach car, whose front truck had come out of allignment. It was pretty neat.
 
Boy this is ridiculous!

the City of San Francisco was snowed in on that pass for three days just fifty years ago and people died!

I was on train 5 (ironically LNK to SAC) on the 2nd and it was amazing after Truckee never seen so much snow. UP was slow clearing the tracks but I have to say I'm pretty glad Amtrak waited till it was clear..

The real ridiculous thing is you have to use the CZ to go LNK to CHI
 
rail sale said:
the City of San Francisco was snowed in on that pass for three days just fifty years ago and people died!
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There were no deaths or injuries to the 226 passengers and crew resulting from the January 13, 1952 stranding of the City of San Francisco on Donner Pass.
 
There was a book written about it entitled "Snowbound Streamliner". They did indeed rescue everybody. The rescue efforts were massive. Five of six of the huge rotary SP snow blowers based out of Sacramento were knocked out of action. The sixth and last one finally reached the site. Rescues from both the east and the west were mounted. The one from the west got there first. The pax were there for three days, and were without heat from mid-morning on the first day. One line that caught my eye in the reviews was:

The line over Donner was not returned to normal operations until Saturday the 26th.

The pax were rescued on the 16th. The train itself was freed up on the 19th.

That pass was closed for two weeks, basically. Less than a day late suddenly doesn't sound quite so bad, does it?
 
Referencing the "City of San Francisco" which several have, TRAINS Magazine published a neat article about that called "The Case of the Stranded Streamliner".

I never bought the book but the TRAINS article was quite lengthy and interesting.

I remember a trip of my own, around Christmas 1964, on the westbound CZ. It had been raining straight for 36 hours in the Feather River Canyon and we could not get through, some track had been washed away. They tried to put us on Southern Pacific tracks(Amtrak's present route) but they were closed.

Then, they put us on buses and we started out over one highway and found it closed. Then our buses went over another road,we finally arrived SF about nine hours late. This was my first trip to California and everything had been perfect until that.

I remember thinking the CZ was so immaculate a king could eat off the floor.

Fortunately the weather calmed down and I had a pleasant return back east on the Santa Fe's San Francisco Chief about a week later.
 
rail sale said:
The real ridiculous thing is you have to use the CZ to go LNK to CHI
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I see nothing ridiculous about using the CZ LNK to CHI, after all the whole point of Amtrak is to get people from one place to another. Yes he may be missing the best scenery on the route, but Amtrak is in the transportation business not the tourism business.
 
This discussion has peaked my interest about snow removal on rail lines. I assume that up to some snow depth, a train can just push its way through without really any problems, although possibly traveling at a slower than normal speed. After that, it sounds like specialized snow removal equipment is necessary to plow the tracks. Is there a guideline that Amtrak and the freight lines use to determine if they need to plow?

Out here on Long Island, it really takes a big storm for the LIRR to have snow issues (or at least it seems that way). But I assume that part of the reason for that is the high number of trains traveling over these tracks. I imagine that out west where tracks are not used as frequently, snow would be more likely to build up and cause problems.

Chad
 
AlanB said:
I see nothing ridiculous about using the CZ LNK to CHI, after all the whole point of Amtrak is to get people from one place to another.  Yes he may be missing the best scenery on the route, but Amtrak is in the transportation business not the tourism business.
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The problem is that using a train that originates in California and is subject to the delays inherent in traversing the Sierras, the Rockies, and UP territory is not a very effective way of providing transportation between eastern Nebraska and Chicago. For this market, the transportation function is not well served by Amtrak's single daily train that leaves at 4:15am, takes 11 hours for the trip, and is routinely hours late.

I think we all know that Amtrak has little choice in this. In some respects, Lincoln and Omaha are lucky to have any intercity train service at all. But, if you just want transportation, a short drive up to Omaha will permit a choice of 18 non-stop, 75 minute flights a day at a cost as low as $60 each way. There is even decent UA Express service out Lincoln with three flights a day at a similar cost.

Unless someone is determined to ride a train, the CZ is not a great way to get to Chicago from Lincoln.
 

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