Who Says Amtrak Is Always Late?

[kevin_standlee]

When I announced my plans to travel to and from Worldcon by rail, multiple people told me, "Oh, you'll be days late!" repeatedly telling me that Amtrak is never on time and we'd be stuck on trains forever. I wish those people had been with me on board the Sunset Limited (whose rear two cars were a coach and my through sleeper from San Antonio off the Texas Eagle), which arrived a couple of hours early in Los Angeles this morning. This train already arrives at an unsociably early hour (presumably so it will connect with the Coast Starlight's 10 AM departure), but being awakened before 4 AM to be told we were nearly the end of our trip and would we please start packing to leave (although our attendant did break the news as gently as she could) was Not Fun. Indeed, this was one trip where neither Lisa nor I would have been worried a bit if we had been five or six hours late, as we would have been able to sleep in on our third night in our bedroom on the train.

Actually, both the Eagle and Sunset were early at nearly every major time point, which led to us having to "wait on time" for up to an hour at some points. This is because of massive amounts of padding ("recovery time") that Amtrak has inserted into the trains' schedules in order to deal with delays that the host railroads inflict upon them. While that helps on-time performance, it also leads to being turfed out of bed before dawn, as the car attendants want to go home so you can't stay aboard until, say, 8 AM.

Lisa and I groggily made our way to the subway and up to our hotel near MacArthur Park. My Priority Club Platinum status was worth platinum today, as they found us a room and let us check in at 7 AM instead of having to wait until 3 PM. We were in no shape to do anything and would have been miserable much of the day. Instead, we checked into our room, dropped our bags, had breakfast (admittedly, we've managed an extra breakfast out of this), then went back to the room and did very little. Lisa slept for a while, and while I would have liked to have done so, I had huge amounts of e-mail to process.

We have no firm plans for our two days here in LA. We mainly planned this hotel stay because we figured we'd not be worth a whole lot if we'd transferred straight to the Coast Starlight this morning. But if we just lay around and sleep, or do some minor walking around or something like that, it will be enough for us.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I have no experience to claim they're "always" late. I was scared off our particular reservations by their sending me multiple emails saying they were very frequently late just now, by 2-5 hours (on an 8-hour trip), and verifying that by checking recent arrival times on my particular route (which were all either 2.5 or 9 hours late; on an 8-hour trip).

People actually taking the train I was booked on said it arrived quite promptly that particular day -- I forget details, but less than an hour late I believe. I slightly regret backing out, but given the facts I had it seemed necessary.

However, my plan B was also less than half the cost, which was good for my current situation.

[howeird]

I am thrilled (seriously!) to hear that your trip was on time/early all the way through. Lately my experiences have been the same, and I think we owe a lot of this to Congress putting pressure on the freight companies who own the rails to give Amtrak a break.

In the past my experience has been quite different. When I took Coast Starlight to Conflikt in January 2009, we were delayed three or four hours on the way up, and on the return we were so late the trip ended at PDX. Passengers were put up for the night at a hotel, and bussed the rest of the way in the morning. I beat them there by renting a car in the morning.

One of my trips on the Zephyr, returning from Reno was stuck for 6 hours on the east side of that longest tunnel, in which a freight train had stalled. It would have been 4 hours, but regulations said the tunnel needed 2 hours to vent.

I don't think I had been on an on-time Coast Starlight (I used to go from EMY or SJC to SEA two or three times a year, since 1982) until 2010.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I remember my first rip on the old Baltic Express Tallinn to Warsaw. A nice large bosomed Russian speaking lady arrived at my cabin at 05.00 bearing tea in a glass and somehow made me understand that I had to be ready to get off by 06.00. Baltic (and Finnish) tracks are a different gauge so we had to physically change trains at the border We then had to wait on the platform until after 07.00 for the Polish train to arrive.

The EU is talking about funding for new tracks that would conform to the European sizes. The Russians are protesting vigorously. Glad your train was on time.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

I noticed the same thing going home from Chicago to Port Huron we hit most stations early and arrived in Port Huron early too.