Amtrak dp/ar info: WAS-to-NYP for Sun 11 Apr 2004

Here's a one day sample of departure and arrival information for
Amtrak's trains between Washington DC and New York for this past Sunday.

Departure point: Washington Union Station (WAS)
Destination point: New York Penn Station (NYP)
Date: Sunday 11 April 2004
Source:
http://tickets.amtrak.com/Amtrak/trains ... lCall=true

Train ........................ Departed .... Arrived
190 Regional.............. OT.............. +6 mins
160 Regional.............. OT.............. +6 mins
98 Silver Meteor......... -24 mins...... -39 mins
162 Regional.............. OT.............. -6 mins
54 Vermonter............. OT.............. OT
152 Regional.............. OT............. +8 mins
2250 Acela................. OT.............. +5 mins
164 Regional.............. OT.............. +20 mins
208 Metroliner............ OT.............. OT
154 Regional.............. OT.............. -2 mins
210 Metroliner............ OT.............. OT
88 Regional................ OT.............. OT
92 Silver Star............. +28 mins..... -14 mins
140 Regional.............. OT.............. +1 min
2254 Acela................. OT.............. +12 mins
194 Regional.............. +13 mins.... +9 mins
156 Regional.............. OT.............. +1 min
2256 Acela................. OT.............. +6 mins
146 Regional.............. OT.............. +8 mins
90 Palmetto................ -6 mins....... -1 hour, 10 mins
220 Metroliner............ OT.............. +7 mins
178 Regional.............. OT.............. +19 mins
222 Metroliner............ OT.............. -2 mins
192 Regional.............. OT.............. +4 mins
80 Carolinian............. +19 mins..... +39 mins
224 Metroliner............ OT.............. +3 mins
158 Regional.............. OT.............. -8 mins
182 Regional.............. OT.............. -6 mins
198 Regional.............. +12 mins..... -2 mins
66 Federal.................. OT............... -7 mins

Key:
+time = late
-time = early
OT = On-time

I found it interesting to note that a significant number of trains did not arrive by their scheduled arrival time. Of course, for the most part, all trains arrived within just a few minutes of their scheduled time. My bet is that most of the delays on Sunday were due to the longer than normal station dwell times enroute due to heavy Easter passenger traffic.

Interesting to also note that each of the 3 Acela's that operated on Sunday were late - each by a few minutes.

And of course one must be careful not to attempt to draw too many conclusions from only one days worth of data!

Sorry about the formatting, but I haven't figured out how to get columns to line up properly on the new board yet.

Most interesting, Mr. BenH; from such I can safely conclude that on Easter Sunday, Amtrak provided reliable transportation within the NEC.

I second Mr. Norman's comment.

Though Friday's SB Metroliner 113 had a 10 minute dead-stop delay around Philly because, as I heard on the radio, of a bridge strike involving a car near the ROW.

There's always the issue of how accurate this ontime database is... it's maintained by hand.

AEM7902 - yes, I wondered this myself while I was looking up the times on the Amtrak web site. Do you know how the actual times are recorded? e.g. who (the position) records the arrival and departure times for WAS during a shift. Someone monitoring the radio, someone in the signal tower at WAS, or maybe its someone somewhere else?.

In an ideal world (and lots of funding) I suppose that Amtrak would place GPS equipment on every motor/engine so that the network operations center would know where every motor/engine is and how fast it is moving. This in turn could be used to automatically record and calulate anticipated arrival times.