THE ART OF DISPATCHING IS NOT LOST.

It sometimes seems as though the freight railroad dispatchers do everything they can to frustrate Amtrak.  Amtrak, and to some extent, the current federal Department of Transportation and Executive Branch want to change that.

The westbound Southwest Chief is 6 minutes late out of Albuquerque, N.M., as you roll toward the junction with BNSF Railway’s Southern Transcon at Dalies. From Roomette 14 you wonder: What will happen to the Chief’s timekeeping when we hit the Gallup Subdivision that carries 80 freights per day?

The question is bigger than it may seem. Host railroad handling of Amtrak trains has become a thorny issue. Regulations that went into effect last year set new on-time performance standards and created a process to enforce them beginning July 1. And the Surface Transportation Board is bracing for a raft of Amtrak complaints about freight train interference in January, the first month when host railroads can be hauled before regulators for delaying passengers.

On the main stem of the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe, currently the Southern Transcon of BNSF, the dispatchers are about their craft.

You ponder all this as the Sept. 9 version of train No. 3 leaves the quiet Glorieta Sub. The BNSF dispatcher in Fort Worth has lined your train for Track 2, and at 4:59 p.m., 11 minutes behind schedule, the Chief clunks through the interlocking at Milepost 27.3. Ahead lies 248.3 miles of the Gallup Sub, part of the former Santa Fe main line across the Southwest. It’s the busiest freight railroad in North America, and there’s no better place to judge whether freight and passenger can coexist.

Sure, the Gallup Sub is a splendid railroad built for heavy volume. Centralized traffic control, bidirectional signaling, and crossovers spaced 10 miles apart provide maximum flexibility. But the dispatching challenge is not merely volume. For this is a multispeed railroad, with the 90-mph Chief, 70-mph Z-symbol intermodal hotshots, a 55-mph limit on the heaviest trains, and grain trains that plod along at 40. Toss in grades – westbounds face a 96-mile 0.6% pull with short sections of 1% at the beginning and end of the climb – and it’s more difficult to keep freights out of the Chief’s way. And maintaining schedules by having the Chief and Z-trains overtake slower traffic chews up precious capacity in a hurry.

The time-sensitive intermodal trains take the place of the fleet of transcontinental passenger trains that used to converge on that subdivision, and the centralized traffic control with bidirectional signalling means the freight crews no longer have to duck into an outside siding so as to be in the clear at the time a scheduled superior train is due at the station immediately in the rear of the train.  That seems harsh, but in those days the train taking siding had to stop for a front-end man to throw the switch, proceed at restricted speed into the siding, and then have a hind-end man in the caboose line the switch for the main line, and then crews on both ends had to stand on the opposite side of the track from the switch stand to inspect the passing superior train.  If the fleet of passenger trains was due, that crew might have a long wait, a long way from any stations.  Getting out was no easy feat, either: the head-end man had to line the switch for the train to return to the main, then the train had to take it slow enough through the switch both for safety reasons and to give the hind-end man a chance to restore that switch to the main line and get on the train.  These days, the remote control comes in handy.

In the first 45 minutes out of Dalies, you see just a single freight train. A lull on the Southern Transcon means one thing: A parade is coming. Sure enough, the march begins at 5:49 at McCartys, where we swing over to Track 1 to overtake a pair of westbounds. Then at 6 p.m. it’s back into the flow of westward traffic on Track 2 at East Grants, where eastbound stacks on Track 1 had slowed to await the Chief.

That's the starter, the mains, in more than one sense of the word, are coming.

After this flurry there’s a welcome break in the action. A delicious dinner, fresh from the dining car’s galley, arrives in Roomette 14. The pan-roasted chicken breast with wild mushroom risotto, English peas, and Parisian carrots smothered in a morel mushroom sauce tastes every bit as good as it sounds. It’s a far cry from the microwaved meals Amtrak inflicted on you earlier in the pandemic.

Right after you join the Clean Plate Club – savoring the last bite of flourless chocolate torte – BNSF reminds you there’s a world of freight outside your window. Just east of Gallup, N.M., the first of two eastbounds fly by at 6:35 p.m. The Chief pulls into Gallup 8 minutes late as another eastbound roars past. A crush of coach passengers puts the Chief 15 minutes behind as we whistle west at 7:01 p.m.

Room service is more common these days, thanks to the corona mitigations, and on the Chief the dining car can be placed adjacent to all the sleeping cars, something that isn't always possible the way Amtrak switch trains. That the meals are again a cut above what Noodles would reject is also heartening.

Then it’s nonstop trains. Eastbound intermodal at 7:03, empty hoppers 16 minutes later, and at 7:33, the Chief swings over to Track 1 at East Houck, Ariz., where an eastbound domestic stack train holds on Track 2. The 2-mile-long train’s hind end sits just clear of the crossover at West Houck, where the Chief heads back to Track 2. Minutes later, two eastbound intermodals flash past.

Approaching Winslow, Ariz., and the Seligman Sub, the Chief is back on Track 1 to overtake a Z-train at Manila, then veers over to Track 2 at West Hibbard as more eastbounds roll by. The Chief eases into the station stop at Winslow 22 minutes late, a loss of 7 minutes from Gallup. In Roomette 14, it’s time to convert the seats into a bunk and get some shuteye after watching a masterful dispatching job that kept the Gallup Sub fluid while causing no unreasonable delays to the Chief.

The sharp dispatching, plus the recovery margin Amtrak provides in its schedules, gets the California passengers in without delay.

In the predawn darkness, you wake for your stop at San Bernardino, Calif., where the Chief’s 9 minutes early. No. 3 reaches its ultimate destination, Los Angeles Union Station, 46 minutes to the good. Yes, Amtrak and freight can coexist – so long as there’s a commitment to priority trains and first-rate dispatching that keeps traffic rolling. BNSF shows how to get the job done.

How much of that is the tradition the current dispatchers inherited from Santa Fe and how much of that reflects BNSF not drinking the precision scheduled railroading poison is left as an exercise.