TL;DR Amtrak never has been, and never will be on time. There should be a different standard AP on time bonus'. This is hardly a serious suggestion, so it doesn't even belong in any of the serious discussion threads. For those of you in Europe, you live with the reasonable expectation that trains will run on time. Not so here in the USA. Amtrak in particular is just awful. Railways are not public here, they are owned by the freight companies, so Amtrak has the lowest priority. Anyway, here is the way it works in the real world. For every hour of scheduled time, you can reasonably add on an hour to the expected arrival time. Ex. If a trip is scheduled to take an hour, you can expect the train to be on hour late. For example, I took Amtrak from Ft. Worth, Texas to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The trip was supposed to be 36 hours long ( FYI, you can drive it in 24 hours with a lot of coffee), and we arrived 36 hours late. So yes, a day and a half turned in to three days. This is entirely common. In fact Amtrak regularly offloads passengers and puts them on buses. Some trips are even scheduled that way when you buy your ticket. Share your thoughts with me, and please feel free to go off on a tangent. This is the "Off Topic" thread after all. *edited for spelling
Out of curiosity as someone who's never been to the US... How do they manage stuff like catering, linen, & housekeeping ? Also, a train running that late causes it's own logistical challenges for the crew & the equipment. The crew needs to be relieved & the equipment is needed for the return leg so how do they handle that side of things ?
All of the housekeeping and catering are typically done at the major end terminals (New York Sunnyside, Chicago Car Yard, LA 8th Street, Florida's Sanford and Hialeah, etc.) There's usually enough supplies to last through the typical delays. Amtrak's had to play ball with the freight operators off the Corridor for a long time, so it's not exactly a surprise when the long-distance trains are held up. As far as the crew and equipment goes, crews are usually timed to be swapped out at planned station stops with plenty of padding, same for fuel stops. If a crew does time out in an unfortunate spot, they can always be trucked in, but I think they also keep an eye on time so they don't end up timed-out in the middle of nowhere. As far as the return trip goes, the long-distance trains usually don't need to turn-and-burn like the airlines. Most of these trains are once daily, if that.
Good grief. And my wife was moaning earlier when our GWR Cucumber from Swindon to Bath Spa was 15' late!
