Amtrak detours vs bus substitutions

Back in the 80s and 90s I lived in the southeast and Amtrak had a pretty good system of detour routes set up for its trains whenever derailments blocked normal routes. Several folks knew of the planned routes and would take action to ride a train whenever a derailment reared its ugly head trying to get rare mileage. One great reroute involved using the southern portion of CSX's Clinchfield RR in the Carolinas that the Crescent ran.

Today I most often hear of bus substitutions when derailments occur. Is this a current Amtrak policy change, freight RR mandate or lack of equipment?

I can't recall the last time I heard of a good reroute.

I ws on the Meteor a few years ago heading south....we were rerouted thur Jacksonville.....while we were stopped there, the freight we had been following since Rocky Mount,NC derailed in front of us.....we went thru several yards and "less than desirable" neighborhoods.

I think a good reason is due to many abandonments, so much duplicate track that used to be used as a detour is gone, necessitating the use of buses.

The answer may depend if there is a freight route remaining. A good example may be the UP mainline in Wyoming in place of the former D&RGW route. I don't know if a different signal system needs to be on lead units on other routes. A good example may be if Amtrak uses the ex-C&NW from Chicago to Iowa.

It may also be possible you are hearing about a bus solution for the passengers bound for the bypassed cities. A good example may be when the EB follows the traditional BNSF route from Chicago to St Paul when the Wisconsin tracks were under water.

Keep in mind too that if the routes haven't been removed, many of them could be in such horrible condition that it would not make sense to detour over them.

I remember one time they had to truncate the Vermonter in Springfield due to track work being done by NECR between Palmer and Amherst. There is no effective way to deteur the train. You can't go up the CT River, that track has a no passenger traffic rating, it would not make sense to go up the Hudson and try to negotiate with PAS to run from NY to East Deerfield then get back on the railroad towards VT.

Back before Amtrak had its own crews in, re-routing over a different subdivision of a given freight railroad was not as big a deal because the crews were qualified on more routes than just the ones Amtrak ran on. "What's that, dispatcher? We're diverging onto the Dead Cactus sub and bypassing the Dullsville stop? Okay, thank you."

Nowadays if in the event of track work or emergercy suspension, the common practice for LD trains will be that service will be cancelled for a period, with "no alternate transportation available". Detours or bus service is usually no longer the case.

You know the crew thing may play a major part. An Amtrak train would need freight crews, or least pilots to run on alternative routes.

But I keep thinking this is a decision made a higher levels.

DK

It def is affected by the higher ups, but it's also a function of the conditions.

The UP has the other mainline they can run the CZ on and while it misses a lot of stops, it's still a passenger speed mainline. (Of course a lot of the western railroads have to be kept to higher standards because of the distances involved). CSX, NS, PAR, they don't have secondary high speed lines in a lot of cases.

In the last 4 years, the SWC has been rerouted twice (the first time for many days) to stay on the transcon through Amarillo. The first time was due to snow in Colorado and the second was a fire on a bridge near Raton.

About 2 years ago I rode on a Sunset Ltd that detoured onto a usually-freight-only subdivision in southern California. The tracks were in horrible condition, the going was slow and even at low speed we were being thrown around on the train by the jerking and swaying of the train. It wasn't a good part of the trip.

In the case of last-minute issue like derailments, it's probably just easier hiring a bus company who wants the extra business than to work with a railroad that doesn't want to be bothered with issues outside their routine.

When you place the call, the bus company will tell you what they can do... the railroad will spend most of their time telling you what they can't do. Given a choice, were you the one who had to make the phone call to solve the problem, whom would you call first?

There are multiple reasons for "bustitution" rather than detouring of Amtrak trains. First, Amtrak supplies its own crews. The ranks are pretty thin, especially on long-distance routes with one train a day in each direction. If a detour causes a crew to "die on the law", Amtrak may simply not have a substitute crew. Second, as noted earlier, the freight railroads have abandoned much of their excess capacity. There simply are not detour routes in good condition. Third, on a detour Amtrak will need a pilot, and especially when traffic was heavy just a couple of years ago, railroads may not have had the qualified crew members Amtrak needed for pilots. I know some planned Starlight detours via Bieber were canceled due to crew shortages three or four years ago.

I've personally been on five Amtrak detours that I can quickly recall. The first was from Birmingham to Atlanta on #20, via CSX rather than Southern, due to signal work on SR. The CSX line has now been abandoned.

The second was a detour from Elkhart to Kalamazoo due to Amtrak track work between Porter, IN and K-zoo. This is still available today, I think.

The third was a 1988 detour of the Texas Eagle from Big Sandy, TX to Flatonia on the former Cotton Belt. That detour would still be possible today.

The fourth one was an eastbound Empire Builder detour over BNSF via LaCrosse and Aurora due to labor problems on CP (Soo Line). That detour is still available, and has been used in the recent past.

Finally, I rode one of the Starlight detours over Tehachapi in 2008.

So it all depends. In some cases, detour routes are still available and in good condition, but in many others alternate routes either no longer exist, or shortages of qualified crews make them infeasible. The railroad network has changed a great deal since 1971.

NellieBly wrote:The second was a detour from Elkhart to Kalamazoo due to Amtrak track work between Porter, IN and K-zoo. This is still available today, I think.

The rails are still there and used by freight. I'm not sure Amtrak would want to use them.

Amtrak used to detour the LSL and Capitol Limited down to the Three Rivers line (CSX) often. CSX double tracked their line and moved their traffic off of the northern route that went to NS in the Conrail split. If CSX would allow Amtrak could use that detour again. (And the Midwest HS Rail Initiative is pushing a third path across northern Indiana ... but that is a problem for another thread.)

I missed the detour of Amtrak over the South Shore Line between Kensington and Michigan City a couple of years ago. That would still be physically possible.

I travelled from Chicago to Pittsburgh by sleeper in the Fall of 2006. That day, a landslide had occurred west of Pittsburgh blocking access to the traditional routing. We diverted apparently onto the old main and then onto the south side of the river, being taken to McConnellsville and then bussed back to Pittsburgh.

All in all, a really neat experience to ride through Station Square and watch the sunrise over the Pittsburgh landscape from a Superliner.

NellieBly wrote:There are multiple reasons for "bustitution" rather than detouring of Amtrak trains. First, Amtrak supplies its own crews. The ranks are pretty thin, especially on long-distance routes with one train a day in each direction. If a detour causes a crew to "die on the law", Amtrak may simply not have a substitute crew. Second, as noted earlier, the freight railroads have abandoned much of their excess capacity. There simply are not detour routes in good condition. Third, on a detour Amtrak will need a pilot, and especially when traffic was heavy just a couple of years ago, railroads may not have had the qualified crew members Amtrak needed for pilots. I know some planned Starlight detours via Bieber were canceled due to crew shortages three or four years ago.

I've personally been on five Amtrak detours that I can quickly recall. The first was from Birmingham to Atlanta on #20, via CSX rather than Southern, due to signal work on SR. The CSX line has now been abandoned.

The second was a detour from Elkhart to Kalamazoo due to Amtrak track work between Porter, IN and K-zoo. This is still available today, I think.

The third was a 1988 detour of the Texas Eagle from Big Sandy, TX to Flatonia on the former Cotton Belt. That detour would still be possible today.

The fourth one was an eastbound Empire Builder detour over BNSF via LaCrosse and Aurora due to labor problems on CP (Soo Line). That detour is still available, and has been used in the recent past.

Finally, I rode one of the Starlight detours over Tehachapi in 2008.

So it all depends. In some cases, detour routes are still available and in good condition, but in many others alternate routes either no longer exist, or shortages of qualified crews make them infeasible. The railroad network has changed a great deal since 1971.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't detours done at the sufferance of the railroad hosting the detour? Can't the host railroad simply refuse to permit the detour? While there's more spare capacity available on freight railroads now than a couple of years ago, I would think it could be quite the burden to try to fit a passenger train onto a crowded freight route on short notice.

As to Amtrak detour routes that are still available, I seem to recall that a few years back the Cap Ltd operated on NS Alexandria-Manassas-Front Royal-Shenandoah Jct. on account of some blockage on CSX somewhere between Washington and Harpers Ferry.