FRIDAY WILL BE A SNOW DAY FOR CHICAGO OFFICE WORKERS.

No longer do railroads employ legions of extra men to shovel out switch points and service the heaters.  Thus when cold and snow are on offer, management prefers to avoid diverging moves where practicable.  "With severe cold forecast for the Chicago region, Metra has made the decision to operate reduced schedules on all its lines on Friday, Jan. 23."  The reduced schedules are for the most part the Saturday schedules, hourly or two-hourly for much of the day, with very few expresses and none of the Elmhurst or Congress Park turnback trains, and McHenry is out of luck.

Amtrak, which did not cover itself with glory a year ago, is cancelling trains even before the storm: how is it that weather forecasters can anticipate storm arrivals more precisely than Amtrak?

The eastbound and westbound Empire Builder departures slated for [January 21] through Saturday, Jan. 24, have been canceled. Beginning Thursday, Jan. 22, the City of New Orleans and Texas Eagle are canceled in both directions, also through Saturday. The Texas Eagle through service scheduled to depart Los Angeles on Jan. 21 and 23 will terminate in San Antonio, while the through service scheduled to leave Chicago on Jan. 23 will originate in San Antonio.

Canceled Jan. 22 and 23 are both directions of the Chicago-Twin Cities Borealis. No other regional service has been canceled as of this morning.

“Out of an abundance of caution, and in consultation with our contract meteorologists, host railroads, and local officials, Amtrak is notifying customers of service cancellations due to predicted dangerous weather conditions,” the railroad said in a statement. “Customers are being offered rebooking options and refunds without penalties.

“The safety of our customers and our team members remains our highest priority. We are taking these proactive steps to limit exposure to hazardous conditions for our customers and team members and to protect our rail equipment. We are also aligning with and supporting state and local authorities who are advising the public to avoid travel during this winter storm.”

The Columbus, Wisconsin station does look pretty in the snow, even if no passenger trains are calling at it.

This morning, Amtrak protected the Milwaukee-Chicago trip of 332 that turns as Borealis 1333 with one of the four-car rakes in the short turn service.

Yes, that's an older B32-8, the modified freight diesel that came out in the Pepsi Can livery, on the head pin.  Finding enough stock to cover the schedule is a problem even without immoderate weather.  "In unrelated moves, canceled today because of equipment issues are Lincoln Service train No. 302 between St. Louis and Chicago, and two Wolverine trains: No. 350 between Chicago and Pontiac, and No. 355 between Pontiac and Chicago."  Well, yes, if 350 doesn't run, there's no stock in Pontiac to return as 355.

It's not that the absence of a White Christmas in the Chicago area meant the Festive Season trains ran reliably.

Route blockages and below-zero temperatures did trigger extensive Empire Builder tardiness, but short scheduled West Coast turnarounds, mechanical setbacks, and crew availability exacerbated the situation.

Amtrak advisories to passengers reported a three-hour “communication outage” in the Grand Forks, N.D., area on Dec. 29 that affected both freight-delayed eastbound train No. 8 and westbound No. 7, which then had to wait almost 5 hours at Minot, N.D., for a rested crew. The following eastbound Builder also was sidelined 3 hours at Shelby, Mont., on the same day for the same reason.

Bigger problems awaited the eastbound train that departed Seattle on Jan. 2, when the Seattle section apparently hit an obstruction west of Spokane. Reports indicate several passenger cars were also damaged. The train was 7 hours late at Minot early today. But after losing another two hours at Grand Forks while the crew conducted “mechanical maintenance,” management decided to terminate the reduced-consist train at St. Paul and bus passengers overnight to Chicago. It arrived at St. Paul, Minn., at 5:52 p.m., some 9 hours, 19 minutes late. As of late today, Monday’s westbound Builder hadn’t been cancelled out of Chicago, so presumably the damaged trainset will be deadheaded to the Windy City.

Also on the day after New Year’s, the westbound Borealis was terminated at La Crosse, Wis., after an electrical problem developed in one of the coaches that apparently damaged the train’s head-end power capability. It was sent back to Chicago without passengers and buses were substituted for Saturday’s eastbound train.

As wintry conditions returned the first full week of January, the pre-emptive cancellations resumed.

Although the incoming cold snap is unpleasant, it will not feature the kind of chilly temperatures the weekend of January 19-21, 1963, when the North Shore Line ceased operations.

The railroad remained in operation through the Festive Season of 1962 into 1963, getting passengers home for Christmas, and it offered its full schedule right up to the end, including the final, mostly lightly used, Mundelein to Lake Bluff franchise trips, and a few Liberty Extras for trainees at Great Lakes also ran.  Because of legal uncertainties, the company continued to rotate rolling stock in for scheduled maintenance; some of those cars went to the scrapper in partially disassembled form.

Somehow the oldest steel interurbans, going on 50 years old at the time of abandonment, held together better than Amtrak's remaining initial coaching stock at a similar age.