Amtrak Michigan: Wolverine, Blue Water, Pere Marquette

justalurker66 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 11, 2024 11:36 am

Tadman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 10, 2024 12:30 pmRegarding crew facilities, you could rent a couple modest hotel rooms for the duration and pay the hotel a little extra to stock some coffee and such in the rooms.

It is a maximum five hour layover. So a hotel that rents rooms by the hour?

No, you pay $150/day for two rooms. $300 total. How much are we trying to save here? Assuming that $150/day is for something like 15 hours, that's $10/hour. So two rooms for five hours would be $100. You'd lose money getting three people in a room to argue about this for 20 minutes and save $200 out of pocket. Just pay the 300. Amtrak probably also has a negotiated discount (like most class 1's) with the major hotel chains for away layovers.

Tadman wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2024 9:56 pm No, you pay $150/day for two rooms. $300 total. How much are we trying to save here? Assuming that $150/day is for something like 15 hours, that's $10/hour. So two rooms for five hours would be $100. You'd lose money getting three people in a room to argue about this for 20 minutes and save $200 out of pocket. Just pay the 300. Amtrak probably also has a negotiated discount (like most class 1's) with the major hotel chains for away layovers.

That last sentence is *exactly* my point. Amtrak has likely already negotiated the pair of rooms at a cheap price because it is very long term.

I travel a lot for work and it's well known in our travel-guy circles that big organizations like US Govt, IBM, Boeing, Lockheed, GM, etc... have discounts at major hotel and rental car chains for 30-40pct off.

Even if you don't work for those companies, half the time you just mention the discount and you get it. I know a guy that has a TWIC card. That's a gov't issued security ID that most people can get for $125, but it looks very official. I've heard of people asking for the US gov't discount at hotels and flashing their TWIC card.

Tadman wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2024 9:56 pmNo, you pay $150/day for two rooms. $300 total.

My point is that for five hours it is not worth renting the rooms. The "hourly rate hotel" was a joke (although some of the hotels freight crews have to stay at overnight would fit that standard).

As noted, cancelling one train each direction for a single day while allowing the other two trains each direction to run works fine. No need to over-engineer a solution.

Under Hours of Service, Train and Engine (but not OBS) must be afforded a hotel room whether the proscribed rest be ten hours or a four hour "respite". There is no check in @3 or check out @12. The four hour "respite" simply is a "time out" from the clock ticking away its twelve hours duty time.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 2:14 pmUnder Hours of Service, Train and Engine (but not OBS) must be afforded a hotel room whether the proscribed rest be ten hours or a four hour "respite". There is no check in @3 or check out @12. The four hour "respite" simply is a "time out" from the clock ticking away its twelve hours duty time.

Taking another look, I matched the trains incorrectly. It appears 350 arrives in Detroit at 1:25 PM before continuing to Pontiac then returning as 355 arriving in Detroit at 6:11 PM. That is the pairing I was looking at when calculating a five hour layover in Detroit (instead of a three hour layover at the crew base in Pontiac). 355 was not cancelled (353 was) so it was not a simple fix of stopping the train in Detroit and returning to Chicago without visiting Pontiac.

Running only between Detroit and Chicago would have required getting an extra train set to Detroit before the track was closed (351 ran at 5:43-6:26 AM) and then holding 350 at Detroit until the track reopened.

Hours of service gets complicated since there is no four hour respite and the Detroit to Pontiac trip is more than six hours so you can't run a Chicago crew to Pontiac and have them return to Chicago without a full rest unless you change crews in the middle (such as Battle Creek) and send the Chicago crew back to Chicago. Three hours each way fits nicely into a 12 hour day.

Mr. Lurker, I believe Battle Creek is a base for Conductors and Engineers. This way, they can run Battle Creek to Pontiac, be held at Pontiac on continuous time for the 350-355 turn (a chair in the crew room is all any road need provide), and I think the 351-354 turn can also be continuous time at Chicago.

I could be more authoritative if I had the System Timetable by my Ekornes armchair, but...(we all know why), the point remains that establishing the Battle Creek T&E base minimizes the number of crews requiring rests.

I believe Battle Creek is the crew base and Pontiac and Port Huron have appropriate facilities to hold a train overnight as well as allow the crew to have an official 4 hr + break.
There is also a fair amount of flexibility for late trains without needing to call a new crew.

All told, it was a smart move by Amtrak to establish the Battle Creek base (Home Terminal in Unionese). Possibly the Michigan Central did likewise, but I have no knowledge of that.

Amtrak probably had to pay some NY Dock relo to get it up and running, but today, what hiring is done draws from the Central Michigan labor pool; presto, no NY Dock.

While possibly I have overstated this a bit (gimme a break; I've been away from the industry now forty-three years), those crews need be Qualified on the Books of CUSCO, PRR, Amtrak, "the Funk", and I'll bet someone else X-ing through Detroit.

I think CUSCO, Amtrak, and NS all use NORAC. The funk is another question entirely. But two rulebooks for a passenger train over multiple hosts isn't bad.

Crazy how we're spending a ton of money on studies when there are probably NYC track charts sitting at NS or CSAO offices somewhere. Or maybe some buff has them and is selling them on ebay!

These consultants have to pay for their kid's Ivy League college tuitions somehow

Blue Water still using an old cafe. And still giving away business class seats in a Venture car while putting business class in the cafe car. I paid $47 one way. BC was something like $120. That’s a steep increase to get a free ginger ale.

Consist looks to be the cafe and 4 venture cars. But as far as I could see the rear two cars were not being occupied.

Why doesn't CN require 7 car minimum train length on the Blue Water like all the other CN routes? Was the Grand Trunk set up differently?

Do the two locomotives count? I couldn't actually see the whole consist. Just now I walked the train, and there is an additional coach car of a kind I haven't seen before, with silver seats. (Probably like this: https://cnsmaryland.org/2017/11/14/amtr ... n-coaches/)

That car and one of the Venture cars has been kept empty.

The three coaches in use were maybe 75% full through Lansing (and now on the other side of Lansing, closer to 30%). I didn't see how full business class is.

I wonder whether they fill the other two cars on weekends when MSU kids are coming and going. If not, then the extra cars must be present for axle count, putting tight constraints on capacity of other trains, and it seems like the new crossing gate comms device, if approved, will free up a lot of seats to go where they're needed.