HOW PATHETIC IS AMTRAK?

Weather impacts continue to disrupt Amtrak trains.

Washouts in California, plus heavy snows there and along BNSF Railway’s Hi Line across North Dakota and Montana, are among obstacles thrown at Amtrak’s national network the last several days, precipitating cancellations, significant delays, and route truncations.

A washout north of San Luis Obispo, Calif., caused the Coast Starlight to be cancelled in both directions between Los Angeles and Emeryville, Calif., on Sunday; the train is showing “sold out” on that segment for the next few days.

Another washout over the weekend near Bellingham, Wash., canceled all Canada-bound Cascades service at least through Sunday.

And that's before the latest nor'easter rolled into the ... northeast.

Citing “forecasted severe weather conditions,” Amtrak has announced these cancellations and schedule changes in the northeast beginning later today (Tuesday, March 14).

The Amtrak Downeaster website indicates that northbound train No. 689, scheduled to depart Boston at 10:30 p.m., and southbound train No. 688, scheduled to depart Brunswick, Maine, at 5:45 p.m., are cancelled. Cancelled on Wednesday are northbound No. 681, scheduled to depart Boston at 8:50 a.m., and southbound No. 680, scheduled to depart Brunswick at 4:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, according to an alert on the Amtrak website, trains 448 and 449, the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited, are cancelled today between Albany, N.Y., and Boston.

In other changes , the following northbound trains are now scheduled to terminate in New York today rather than continuing to Boston: Acela No. 2160, scheduled to leave Washington at 10 a.m.; Acela No. 2164, scheduled to depart Washington, D.C., at noon; Acela No. 2168, a 2 p.m. departure from Washington; Northeast Regional No. 86, a 5:35 a.m. departure from Richmond, Va.; and No. 174, a 5:39 a.m. departure from Newport News, Va.

The following southbound trains will now originate in New York rather than Boston: Acela No. 2165, scheduled to leave Boston at 12:10 p.m., now departing New York Penn at 4 p.m.; Acela No. 2167, slated to depart Boston at 1:05 p.m., now originating at Penn at 5 p.m.; and Acela No. 2169, scheduled to leave Boston at 2 p.m., now starting in New York at 6 p.m. Also affected are Northeast Regional No. 173, which usually departs Boston at 11:10 a.m. and now originates in New York at 3:35 p.m., and No. 137, which normally originates in Boston at 1:50 p.m. and now will start in New York at 6:25 p.m.

If a train is running, it's likely not available account all the available seats being sold, with a lot of the coaching stock out of service, or, if it's running late, there's not enough stock to assemble the return consist, and eventually a round trip will have to be annulled.

Freight congestion and heavy snows also played havoc with the Empire Builder. After leaving Chicago on time, both the March 10 and March 11 westbound Builders were routed through New Rockford, N.D., instead of over BNSF’s Devils Lake Subdivision between Fargo and Minot, N. D. Still, the March 10 westbound train was 6 hours late leaving Minot and 13 hours late out of Sandpoint, Idaho; Amtrak’s website shows the Portland section arriving at 1:01 a.m. today, 12 hours, 44 minutes late. As a result, Sunday’s eastbound Builder was cancelled out of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Without a spare trainset to fill the gap, the westbound train out of Chicago is now cancelled on Wednesday, March 15.

And Amtrak is supposed to be a going concern.

I think back sixty years, to that cold January weekend that the North Shore Line quit business.  Because of uncertainties over whether a court would enjoin the abandonment order, a car due for maintenance was rolled into the shop on the Friday before the end, and that gave some preservation group a car in pretty good shape later, while the railroad ran its full schedule and a few Navy extras right up to the end.

If the current crew running Amtrak had been in charge, any car coming due for maintenance after the final abandonment order came down in November of 1962 would have been laid up out of service, and the cold weather of that weekend would have given management cause to annul all the trains, and give the employees a permanent early quit.