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.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-09-07 11:11 pm (UTC)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.