Winter: Crescent Cancellation South of Atlanta

[x-press]

One complaint I have about Amtrak that is NOT a direct symptom of underfunding is the attitude about communicating delays and cancellations. I was planning a New Orleans trip much of the late summer and into the fall, and got as far as pricing the train and hotels for a few different itineraries. For various, non-railroad-related reasons, that trip isn't going to happen . . . but I just noticed in my NARP newsletter that I wouldn't have been going, anyway (at least not by train). All of my southbound possibilities have been canceled, account NS trackwork.

I went to the Amtrak website and saw nothing on the front page, other than the Pacific Northwest update. Eventually, when I tried booking the fare (just as a test), it gave me the trackwork notice. What, exactly, is to be gained by treating these things like military secrets? Why not have them on the front page, so people planning to use the service can at least have a shot at planning around it? They did the same thing with the Auto-Train cancellations some months ago, only posting the "service restored" notice on the front page. Are they afraid of putting out a bad impression on the website? I think the BAD P.R. experienced when Amtrak nonchalantly mentions to someone planning a trip for months that they're not going (often after most cheap flights are sold out) would more than balance this out.

To be fair, I'll give a big thumbs down to NS as well. I cannot quite recall when I stopped looking into the trip, but I think it was right around Thanksgiving. Amtrak would have let me book that trip right up until about that time . . . doesn't seem like much notice to me. I don't understand why a project of this magnitude, if it can't be accomplished with one Amtrak per day using the line, cannot be scheduled further in advance. Does anyone know when it was announced?

JPS

 

[AlanB]

Don't recall the exact date, and we did have a topic about it here several weeks ago too, but Amtrak did put up a notice at some point in December. They don't put them on the front page, true. But they do have a new section, maybe two months old now under News, where they post those notices.

 

[Crescent ATN & TCL]

One complaint I have about Amtrak that is NOT a direct symptom of underfunding is the attitude about communicating delays and cancellations. I was planning a New Orleans trip much of the late summer and into the fall, and got as far as pricing the train and hotels for a few different itineraries. For various, non-railroad-related reasons, that trip isn't going to happen . . . but I just noticed in my NARP newsletter that I wouldn't have been going, anyway (at least not by train). All of my southbound possibilities have been canceled, account NS trackwork.
I went to the Amtrak website and saw nothing on the front page, other than the Pacific Northwest update. Eventually, when I tried booking the fare (just as a test), it gave me the trackwork notice. What, exactly, is to be gained by treating these things like military secrets? Why not have them on the front page, so people planning to use the service can at least have a shot at planning around it? They did the same thing with the Auto-Train cancellations some months ago, only posting the "service restored" notice on the front page. Are they afraid of putting out a bad impression on the website? I think the BAD P.R. experienced when Amtrak nonchalantly mentions to someone planning a trip for months that they're not going (often after most cheap flights are sold out) would more than balance this out.

To be fair, I'll give a big thumbs down to NS as well. I cannot quite recall when I stopped looking into the trip, but I think it was right around Thanksgiving. Amtrak would have let me book that trip right up until about that time . . . doesn't seem like much notice to me. I don't understand why a project of this magnitude, if it can't be accomplished with one Amtrak per day using the line, cannot be scheduled further in advance. Does anyone know when it was announced?

JPS

The Cancellations starts the 26th of Jan and is only for Mon-Thurs, the trains will run as scheduled on Fri-Sat-Sun

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServe...d=1178294256228

What I can't understand is why they are so quick to cancel for what I call extremely minor track work, mainly addition of new ballast and minor tie replacements, The frieghts are running as normal so why not Amtrak? I can understand warning about delays, and letting NS off the hook for them, but a full cancellation for much of nothing?

 

[AlanB]

What I can't understand is why they are so quick to cancel for what I call extremely minor track work, mainly addition of new ballast and minor tie replacements, The frieghts are running as normal so why not Amtrak? I can understand warning about delays, and letting NS off the hook for them, but a full cancellation for much of nothing?

Amtrak cancelled the trains because NS is closing the tracks for the work during the hours that Amtrak would normally need to use the tracks. So the delays would have been huge, like 12 hours or more. Freights are running outside the work window AFAIK, not during.

 

[Crescent ATN & TCL]

What I can't understand is why they are so quick to cancel for what I call extremely minor track work, mainly addition of new ballast and minor tie replacements, The frieghts are running as normal so why not Amtrak? I can understand warning about delays, and letting NS off the hook for them, but a full cancellation for much of nothing?

Amtrak cancelled the trains because NS is closing the tracks for the work during the hours that Amtrak would normally need to use the tracks. So the delays would have been huge, like 12 hours or more. Freights are running outside the work window AFAIK, not during.

The other times this has been done, the freights ran as normal and just backed up in a line on each end of the work site, once about 4 or so were on either side work would stop, the dispatchers would let the 4 from one end pass the 4 from the other end and then those 4 would pass, and work would resume. Amtrak could be thrown in with the freights and just give everyone ample warning and explain the situation, the line from atl to nol has a good deal of traffic and its mostly single track so fully shutting it down during daylight for 4 days a week is unreasonable.

 

[saxman]

I got caught in this too for my trip in Feb. Pretty much they called and said the Crescent is only running full length on the weekends (Friday too) in Feb. So of course after making several reservations for my Amtrak Tour 2009, and had to move everything around.