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43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

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Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#221

Post by ryukafalz »

tomcam wrote: post #187
hm-nah wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha!! Yep! I rode the Coast Starlight north through the Sierra Nevadas(?) 15-20 years ago. It was a 24hour trip, and I was delayed 24hours. We hit a pedestrian then an avalanche had us back up 2-3 hours until a Greyhound picked us up and took us the rest of the way. Adventure: Check I didn’t mind one bit. Great people.

> We hit a pedestrian Uh what?

My understanding is this is sadly not as rare as you would hope around level crossings. Likewise with trains hitting cars on the tracks.

Some crossings have gates which make this much less likely, others do not and rely on flashing lights and the train horn to warn people of an approaching train.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#222

Post by mark-ruwt »

CraigRo wrote: post #112

Tons of foamers in the HN community. I'm sure that it is a lovely experience, and seeing America is incredibly powerful. But the truth is that you are in an extremely heavy, expensive, and slow vehicle that requires over 1000 man-hours to carry fewer than 300 seats the whole length of the ride. That doesn't account for the capital costs of the vehicle or maintenance on the route, or overhead for the stations. Looseni…

"Fewer than 300 seats" feels somewhat disingenuous--Seat Miles is the stat that matters. People riding from end-to-end is the exception not the rule.

The majority of Amtrak's usage outside of the Northeast Corridor is providing transport to small, underserved communities, not vacation trips like in this post.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#223

Post by jrochkind1 »

secabeen wrote: post #92
noahtallen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something called "Precision Scheduled Railroading" (PSR) which ultimately means that freight trains are longer than they used to be. ( https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105420 ) The result is that these long trains (even 3 miles long) can't fit on sidings, which means that they can't practically give way to, say, Amtrak, when there's only a single track. (Which is a lot of routes!) In other words, freight…

This is a good summary. The other element is that Amtrak only gets priority if they stay to their schedule. They have a slot where they are expected, and have full priority. However, if they get delayed, and miss their slot, then another train will get in front of them, and then they're further delayed, etc., etc. The dispatchers can give them priority when there are two trains waiting to enter a segment, but that do…

When the cause of the initial delay could be getting bumped by a freight train in the first place... that is particularly frustrating chain of events.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#224

Post by ryukafalz »

mlindner wrote: post #214
munificent wrote: post #35

This past summer, I took the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Monterey with my wife and kids. I loved it. It's hard to convey how different it is from flying. Whenever I fly somewhere, especially these days when flying is such a miserable cramped experience, I always feel like my vacation starts after I endure the entire airport + plane experience. The whole travel part is in the same "chore" bucket as packing, findin…

> The staff and the whole process is very laid back without all of the security theatre nonsense of the TSA. It's about as formal as going to a play. Note that TSA is working to change this. They've wanted to add airport-style security at all train stations for a while now. If we ever have a shooting on an Amtrak train it'll happen right away.

Pretty sure this would instantly kill off what remains of rail travel. Its big advantage in the Northeast is that you don't have to account for the unpredictable time to make it through security like you do for air travel, so the times often even out anyway. Remove that advantage and you've just driven a stake into Amtrak.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#225

Post by a4isms »

I’m from Toronto. Twenty years ago, I had some business in SF, and I scheduled it for the same time as MacWorld SF.

My partner and I flew to Chicago, where we caught the California Zephyr to Oakland. We had a small cabin, but it was great. Waking up at 6am in Denver was astounding, as was that entire day. SLC at 1am was surreal. And crossing the Sierra Nevadas was unforgettable.

We hung out in SF for a few days, went to MacWorld, and I had a few meetings. Then back to Oakland for the Coast Starlight to Portland. Now we had a bigger cabin with its own bathroom and shower. Bliss!

From Portland, we took the Empire Builder across the top of the US back to Chicago, from whence we flew back to “HogTown.”

—-

Random memories:

1. Massively more comfortable than flying. You don’t have to go to a lot of trouble to get aisle seats and what-not just to avoid feeling like you’re an Amazon package being shipped somewhere.

2. You actually SEE the country. It’s amazing to fly over mountains and cities, but rolling past that scenery is so much better, especially when you can view it from the gondola instead of leaning past the passenger with the window seat to peer through a porthole.

3. Way more social. Kids were meeting each other and playing video games in the theatre car. We played cards with a couple we met. The stewards facilitate this by seating you at meals with other couples. If you’re a single, they make up different tables of four singles each meal to help you meet fellow travellers.

4. Unplanned interruptions are different on a train. There was an avalanche/rockfall ahead of us in the Cascades, the train pulled onto a siding and we watched the “Snowball,” a work train, go by with its flatbed, crane, and hefty workfolks waving to us. A few hours later, back it came and we could proceed.

5. Way less stressful in every dimension I can think of, compared to modern aviation. It’s part of the vacation, not a way to get to the vacation.

Summary: Train travel, if you spring for a cabin, is land cruising without the buffets and casinos.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#226

Post by prepend »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #156
hm-nah wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the allure! “We’ll get ya there…sometime.” It’s not their fault. Passenger trains in the US run almost exclusively on freight lines. They are high risk, low revenue…burdens(?) from that perspective.

Amtrak has also been starved of cash by politicians who want to kill it, so they don't have the funds to properly maintain their rolling stock. Engine breakdowns are frequent.

> starved of cash by politicians who want to kill it

I don’t think this is completely unreasonable. In FY20, Amtrak made $2.4B in revenue from riders and had $5B in costs.

I like trains and this post made me want to take a long ride. But the California Zephyr only serves 250k riders a year.

How much should politicians subsidize these trains? Is the money better spent subsidizing Disneyland?

I’m not sure what the right amount is, but I don’t think it’s really possible to spend the money that is needed given the costs and the utility. The only real hope is that one day population density will increase between Chicago and California so it becomes less costly to operate.

[0] page 4 https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#227

Post by sizzzzlerz »

kibwen wrote: post #41

You'll adore the California Zephyr. The passage through the high, snowy ravines in the Rockies and beyond into the painted deserts of Utah and Nevada is a glorious sight to behold. However, if you have a choice, get on in Denver rather than Chicago, unless you're keen to spend 20 hours marveling at the endless ocean of corn blanketing Iowa and Nebraska.

My train got stuck behind a very slow moving freight train while crossing Nevada. With a GPS app, I tracked our speed at 2 MPH for nearly 30 minutes. I don't believe we ever exceeded 30 MPH at any time between SLC and Reno. I'd look out a window and see cars and trucks speeding along at 80 MPH on nearby I-80 while we were creeping along 20. And, of course, we were already 2-3 hours behind schedule. We ended up arriving in Emeryville 3.5 hours after the expected arrival time.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#228

Post by chronotis »

ryukafalz wrote: post #221
tomcam wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We hit a pedestrian Uh what?

My understanding is this is sadly not as rare as you would hope around level crossings. Likewise with trains hitting cars on the tracks. Some crossings have gates which make this much less likely, others do not and rely on flashing lights and the train horn to warn people of an approaching train.

A friend of mine works at a law firm that exclusively handles train injury cases. It happens a LOT more than you'd expect, primarily at crossings. Hearing-handicapped or people blasting their speakers who don't hear the horn; faulty crossing gates; distracted drivers; and so on.

The cases almost always include a fatality.

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#229

Post by yafbum »

nunez wrote: post #209
yafbum wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this once (different trip, but similar distance) and freaking hated it. The beautiful buildings in downtown are full of vagrants and the restaurants there suck. The train kept being stopped to let freight go first on single track sections. On the return trip our train was 90 minutes late and there was absolutely nothing to do in the station while waiting. Americans don't know how to do trains right.

Well you can thank white flight for that! Those Greyhound and Union Stations used to be magnificent back in the day. As the city declined in favor of the suburb, so too did these stations.

And the automobile, and the interstate, etc

Re: 43 Hours on the Amtrak Southwest Chief

#230

Post by robin_reala »

bobthepanda wrote: post #79
iisan7 wrote: post #76

Nice read. I wish we had train configurations like those I took years ago in Europe: cabins with with 6 seats that converted to bunk beds in the evening-- even in coach class. I would guess maybe in American culture, people would not be willing to sleep in a room with strangers, too bad, because it seems that the USA in the past had developed exactly this type of sleeper car: http://streamlinermemories.info/?p=5983 I…

I wonder if anyone has tried a Japanese style capsule hotel configuration in a train.

The new Nightjet (cross-Europe night trains from Austria’s national train company) “mini cabins” are pretty much like that: https://www.nightjet.com/en/komfortkategorien/nightjet-neue-...

Some renders with highlights can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e54969RNVs

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