AMTRAK, THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

In the wintertime, in the summertime, ain't we got fun?

Travelers who count on Amtrak long-distance trains to reach far-flung destinations continue to be disappointed by reliability issues this summer, often because of factors not under the passenger operator’s control.

Of late, the issues have been particularly pronounced for the Empire Builder and California Zephyr.

Seven, four hours delay on 24 July account failures of assigned and replacement locomotives; storms on 27 July lead to three hours of delay before reaching Glenview;  unexpected delays stretching to over two hours reaching Brookfield on 28 July.

That continued a troubling pattern throughout July.

On five of six days between July 12 and 17, Builders scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 4:45 p.m. missed all eastbound connections, arriving at 1:26 a.m., 10:50 p.m., 12:09 a.m., 9:13 p.m., 9:44 p.m., and 12:48 a.m. Passengers arriving July 15 at 9:13 p.m. who were scheduled to transfer to the Lake Shore Limited at 9:30 p.m. made both trains because the Floridian departure was delayed until 2:19 a.m.

Also, chronically late westbounds have been terminated at Spokane, Wash., at least four times so far this month in a move to reduce delays for the subsequent eastbound trains. Buses carry passengers to and from Seattle and Portland. Still, the eastbound Builders en route from Spokane as of today departed between 90 minutes and two hours, 15 minutes late.

Meanwhile, passengers scheduled to travel between Chicago and Denver this week on the California Zephyr found their only option was to travel another day or on another route. The Zephyrs did not operate between those cities from Sunday, July 26, through today because of a BNSF bridge replacement project 13 miles west of Creston, Iowa.

Amtrak gave no advance notice on its website of those three days of cancellations in each direction, and at least one passenger originally ticketed on today’s westbound Zephyr from Galesburg, Ill., to Reno, Nev., says he was never notified by Amtrak.

“I was able to switch to the Southwest Chief after learning of the cancellation from you,” said an off-duty Union Pacific employee on vacation. He was able to switch his ticket through an Amtrak telephone agent, who knew about the Zephyr cancellation but not the reason. As the passenger boarded the Chief today at Galesburg, he was told by the Amtrak agent there that the cancellation appears to have taken place with little advance notice. Trains first asked Amtrak about the cancellation early Monday but had not received a response as of late today.

In similar instances of temporary line closures, Amtrak has historically made advance arrangements to reroute its long-distance trains if a convenient alternative exists, rather than jeopardize revenue by inconveniencing passengers. Though it involves extra expense paying for additional transportation and host railroad pilots, the company has used UP’s former Chicago & North Western Chicago-Omaha route as an alternative in the past. That didn’t happen this time.

Somewhere, somebody in Amtrak is channelling his inner Penn Central, or perhaps echoes of Burlington in the Louis Menk era, when somebody in management opted to terminate the Billings-Omaha mail run somewhere in northwestern Nebraska without checking the passenger manifest first.  Then Nebraska Congressman Glenn Cunningham and his son were returning from a fishing trip on that train.  Oops.

It's not as if bridge repairs are somehow arranged at short notice, unless you're managing the Iranian railways.  The summertime replacement of the Boston section of the Lake Shore by a bus bridge east of Albany is a notoriously regular thing, although from time to time that train goes the way of these high season Zephyrs and you get to Albany and you're on your own.

It's not helping any that the Superliner fleet, even with a few recent repairs completed, is so stretched that maintaining a spare pool of rolling stock in the Pacific Northwest to send the eastbound  workings on time rather than wait for the incoming westbound stock to be serviced and turned, let alone arrive.

It's all a missed opportunity for Amtrak, particularly with the airlines and the air traffic control agencies making a hash of the summer travel season.  Yes, those are all links to vintage posts.  My content is sometimes repetitive because this travel season's foolishness is repetitive.