Illinois Amtrak Service

Hi! Does anyone know whether the northbound Saluki usually gets into Chicago in time to connect to the westbound Empire Builder? The scheduled arrival is 1 pm and the scheduled departure is 3:05 pm. I have been searching and searching for OTP history, but I haven't found a way to see what the chances are that the Saluki will be more than 1.5 hours late and miss the connection. I thought one of you friends might have a sense of the situation.

(It's actually cheaper to get the northbound CONO , but that leaves my nearest station at around 4:30 in the morning, so I am basically deciding between Saluki-Builder and Illinoi-Congress Plaza Hotel-Builder.)

I found this link. Hope its helpful.

https://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archi ... search.php

Yes, it was. Thank you!
The Saluki has missed the connection with the Builder about five times in the past year, in case anyone is curious.

Observed 380 (25)

SC-44, AmCafe, two Ventures.

California has reportedly not placed any of their Venture Food Service cars in revenue service; Brightline serves nothing in either Class hot.

Why can't all the affected agencies just take a page from the Austrian OBB RailJets that serve "convectioned on board (maybe some preheat micing)" full service meals (at your seat in First).

https://www.oebb.at/en/reiseplanung-ser ... ordservice

I was surprised to see a train of superliners pull into Champaign-Urbana as the Illini on Friday evening. Four coaches packed full (with one more among the cars on for axle count, but which the conductor told me they weren't allowed to open; I didn't catch whether that was bc they'd need another AC or for some other reason).

As I noted over at a "parallel" topic:

https://www.railroad.net/post1637984.html#p1637984

Quite the consist on 380(11)

P-42 #69 phase 7 livery, 330XX Lounge. Three 34XXX Coach.

Isn't Amtrak supposed to be short of Superliners for LD's and have Ventures sitting around @ Lumber St?

I think that's part of the reason they are short of Superliners. I frequently watch the rail cam at Flossmoor Station and the Saluki almost always has 7 Superliners in it's consist. Often one of those is a Sightseer Lounge while the Chief or Cal Zepher goes without one occasionally. I'm sure they could find some other equipment to fill out the car count and put the Superliners into revenue service.

dgvrengineer wrote: ↑Sat May 11, 2024 6:41 pm I'm sure they could find some other equipment to fill out the car count and put the Superliners into revenue service.

Like the raft of Caltrains gallery cars being put into storage that are relatively modern. Of course they won't do it.

Why not just pull a couple empty old box cars to meet the car count?

Amtrak would be better off fixing its existing equipment to meet its needs than purchasing used equipment from other operators.

When Amtrak used box cars in express service, those cars had been modified to operate at passenger speeds (I think with additional dampening equipment). Amtrak has disposed of all that equipment, and I expect the cars would have had the non-standard equipment removed.

Now that I think about it, when the Illini is using the 7 car Superliner set is it using a (or the) protect set for the City of New Orleans?

Or get CN to update the crossing equipment.