Discussion: Efficacy of Long Distance Trains

mtuandrew wrote: ↑Tue Oct 06, 2020 7:30 pm If you’d only been there to say such in the late 1970s, rohr I would even have accepted a lease where the Feds paid property tax + $1 for said track.

LOL, Indeed you're right mtuandrew! Amtrak missed that chance. Nevertheless, between PSR and decline in coal traffic, perhaps now is another opportunity to make such a deal.

Arborwayfan wrote: ↑Tue Oct 06, 2020 8:51 pm The US could have European-level train service and train travel between all cities over 100,000 within 50 miles of another such city and still have no long distance trains and no trains in half the country. Europe's big train-travel market is in the few hour drive/short-hop flight market, not in anything on the scale of even the eastern LD train.

Or if the LD trains were to be split up into different corridors and leave those operations up to the states. ONe example which I mentioned sometime ago would be splitting the California Zephyr into three sections, Chicago-Denver, Denver-Salt Lake CIty and Salt Lake City-Emmeryville/Oakland, and run numerous trains between each corridor.

Pensyfan19 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 6:47 amOr if the LD trains were to be split up into different corridors and leave those operations up to the states. ONe example which I mentioned sometime ago would be splitting the California Zephyr into three sections, Chicago-Denver, Denver-Salt Lake CIty and Salt Lake City-Emmeryville/Oakland, and run numerous trains between each corridor.

I humbly request that if you split the California Zephyr, you include through sleepers that rest at Denver Union Station overnight. CHI-DEN is all one railroad and DEN-EMY another with different operating characteristics, so I suggest two trains: the Morning & Afternoon Colorado Zephyr from Chicago to Denver as a fast twice-daily corridor that paces cars*; and, the scenery-heavy, once-daily, overnight California Zephyr from Denver to Emeryville or Oakland.

*by cutting the train in two at Denver, I hope to be able to cut up to an hour of padding on the eastern half. Right now the California Zephyr is carded at 18h 15m CHI-DEN, which is very long for a day train; 17h 15m allows for a 6:15am Central CHI departure and 10:30pm Mountain DEN arrival. I’m not a fan of the eastbound schedule though - I guess you’d leave at 5:15am Mountain and arrive around 11:30pm Central! A car would make it between the two in 14h 30m, but that doesn’t include fuel or food stops which could very easily add three hours.

Messrs. Pennsy and Stephens; how could DEN-SLC ever be considered a Corridor?

Mr. Google's leadfoots card it at 7hr 20min, which translates to 9hr for me. Amtrak Zephyr time; 15hrs.

What it appears you both have proposed is is an excursion modeled after RMT up yonder the 49th. To what extent Econo or Luxo matters not.

Overnight parked Sleeper? Attendant @$50/hr to "babysit" 30 passengers seems a bit much. No wonder the NY-NO-LA Sleeper line didn't last too long into the Amtrak era.

It's hard to see either route between SLC and DEN as any kind of corridor. The overall length is too long, and in most cases the speeds too slow, to lure many people out of their cars absent awful winter weather, and there are so few people in between that major traffic to or between intermediate points is never going to be that high. Maaaybe a morning east-afternoon west coach train btwn Denver and Glenwood Springs could draw a lot of pax and justify a small subsidy; it's reeeeeally slow over the mountains but its pretty and exciting and connects tourist destinations and with the right menu and marketing one might be able to make a continuously-serving dining car pay for itself and more, dinner-train fashion. But on the whole the Front Range corridor idea seems much more sensible.

(And you've heard my speculation about an overnight express DEN-SLC, a very different kind of train, which might be nuts, or might not.)

Pensyfan19 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 6:47 am Or if the LD trains were to be split up into different corridors and leave those operations up to the states.

I'm not sure how it'd work for the west-east routes, but the Coast Starlight could easily be broken up in one of at least two ways:

1. Split the train into three distinct daytime trains: Seattle to Klamath Falls, K-Falls to either Sacramento or San Jose; San Jose to Los Angeles.

2. Acknowledge the existing corridors already on the route, and simply connect them using regional trains:

Seattle-Portland (or Eugene) is already covered by the Cascades
A new train would run Portland or Eugene to either Klamath Falls (connecting with another new train south), or to Sacramento
Sacramento-San Jose - Capitol Corridor
San Jose-Los Angeles - new Coast Daylight train

While it would eliminate the sleeping car, I think that Amtrak could easily partner with the local communities to encourage overnight travel and help local businesses (specifically local restaurants) that the Amtrak passengers would patronize until the next morning. That would not only help the local businesses, but Amtrak's onboard dining service would essentially be lunch only. So you still get the "experience" of onboard dining, but at the same time discovering communities one would otherwise just stop at for 10 minutes.

Nah, DEN-SLC obviously isn’t a corridor in the sense that you’d “commute” on it, unless you’re bound for a destination in the Colorado River Valley (from either end.) It has value as a tourist line, it has value as a public transportation option, and I suspect it has value as a traffic generator, but it isn’t fast and can never match the I-25/I-80 corridor for speed between its endpoints. (Also why BNSF doesn’t send all its freights over the ex-Rio Grande trackage rights.) I do want Amtrak to hold onto this line, even if it’s to operate under contract to a Xanterra or the like.

If you wanted an actual time-competitive “corridor” between DEN and SLC, you’d take Prof. Martland up on his suggested Overland Route via Cheyenne and Ogden.

Why do we have to submit to defeat like this? Most Americans have traveled by car for 50+ years at this point, so nothing is really that different in terms of LD trains’ viability now than at the start of Amtrak in 1971. Yet they survived, and at times were even expanded and improved. Someone is (or was, before the Anderson era) riding the LD trains. It would be ideal for Amtrak to do some research in that area to perhaps capture more of whatever that niche exactly is. Plus Amtrak now has largely bipartisan support in Congress, which is unheard of (especially nowadays) and this should be used to the fullest to help preserve and expand the network. We can have strong corridors AND long distance trains, just as Australia and Canada do.

Amtrak706 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 7:29 pm We can have strong corridors AND long distance trains, just as Australia and Canada do.

Mr. Amtrak 706, while I cannot refute a statement of advocacy because such represents an opinion at this forum, I can take issue with the captioned quote.

While Austraila has "experiential" trains, they are within the private sector. I guess so long as there are folk willing to pop AU$ 1500 a night for a ride, fine. More power to the private sector.

The State operated LD's between Brisbane, QLD, through Sydney, NSW and Melbourne, VIC. These "two a day", while offering Sleeper and Food/Bev service are simply transportation. I've never been "down under" even though I have a Niece residing near Sydney. But from what I've read, they are nothing to go out of anyone's way but a fan to ride.

Now in Canada, I think the presently "suspended" Canadian and Ocean are done for. They are within the publicly funded sector, with apparently strong lobbies from the tourism industry. But, in the case of The Canadian, it's scheduled has been lengthened from some 72hrs to now over 100hr - and it can't even keep that owing to heavy freight traffic. It got kicked off the scenic superior CP to the less so CN, and the equipment, however well maintained, belongs in a museum.

Further CD$8K can be spent for an end to end jaunt- and you could be 24hrs late. Not exactly here to there transportation.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:I think the presently "suspended" Canadian and Ocean are done for. They are within the publicly funded sector, with apparently strong lobbies from the tourism industry. But, in the case of The Canadian, it's scheduled has been lengthened from some 72hrs to now over 100hr - and it can't even keep that owing to heavy freight traffic. It got kicked off the scenic superior CP to the less so CN, and the equipment, however well maintained, belongs in a museum.

The Canadian moved to CN in January 1990, over 30 years ago. I think it is safe to say it has not resulted in the train being done for. As far as the schedule lengthening, that is a more recent issue resulting from PSR shenanigans. CN is building back some capacity that might help the passing siding bottleneck somewhat.

Why does the equipment belong in a museum? Stainless steel shells are extremely resilient, and can almost always be repaired. Budd fabricated their carbodies exactly the same way CAF does for their brand new Viewliners. New technology can be retrofitted into the cars if necessary. As far as aesthetics go, I don’t think the Budd streamliner design has aged one bit. Those cars look just as modern as the newest Viewliner IIs. Plus, they have the added benefit of attracting people for the experience of riding a classic streamliner, dome cars and all.

IF we are really wishing to save Amtrak’s long distance trains, and improve the service at the same time, we need to reconfigure where the trains run and not rely upon where they were still running 50 to 60 years ago.
How would I reconfigure the trains, well the first thing I would do is interconnect the five largest states population wise. That’s California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida. Luckily, Amtrak already runs long distance trains between them. Then I would select the largest cities, by MSA to be the designated hub city in each state. So that would be Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, and New York City, and run long distance trains between them. Southwest Chief, Texas Eagle, Lake Shore Limited, Silver Meteor would be the chosen few long distance trains. The rest can go. Then Amtrak should with state subsidies, build a regional network of trains around these five cities, if any. Surfliner, CHSR, Amtrak Midwest, NEC, Texas Central HSR, Brightline trains would feed these train hubs.
I realize that will not be politically possible, never-the-less that is what I would do. Even that may be too large a long distance network. Florida and Texas could probably be removed, just maintaining a coast to coast line with just the Lake Shore Limited and Southwest Chief.

And the Auto Train should remain since it is close to earning a profit and could substitute for the Silver Meteor if it was chosen to be eliminated. Which brings up another aspect of Florida long distance services, why have two trains just a few hours apart on a long distance route? Why not just one longer train? Instead of 3 sleepers on one train and 2 sleepers on another, why not 5 sleepers, or even 6 sleepers on the same train?

How about we just go back to the pre-Anderson era and build off of that? Everything was more or less fine, there was no real existential threat to the LD network after the 2002 “glide path to self sufficiency” debacle until 2018 with Anderson. This whole thing is completely unnecessary, it’s so sad that Amtrak decided to kill itself from the inside the second they got miraculous bipartisan support in Congress.

Amtrak706 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 11:16 pm How about we just go back to the pre-Anderson era and build off of that? Everything was more or less fine, there was no real existential threat to the LD network after the 2002 “glide path to self sufficiency” debacle until 2018 with Anderson. This whole thing is completely unnecessary, it’s so sad that Amtrak decided to kill itself from the inside the second they got miraculous bipartisan support in Congress.

That's exactly what I've been saying, build on what we have. To destroy it and hope that something else arises in it's place makes little sense. Some people here seem to think that getting several states together to fund regional trains to replace the long distance trains in part or in whole will somehow work. The fun will be getting several states to agree on where the train should run, when it should run and how much each state will pay for it. Even after you do all that everything could/will fall apart after the next election and change in statehouse control. Still other people here suggest replacing LD trains with a series of day trains. Passengers would then spend overnight in a hotel supporting the local economy (at least that was my take on it). Let's call this the "Rocky Mountaineer" plan. I have no problem adding a second day train to existing routes where it would work. Heck, I'd go as far as to add a second LD train running 10 to 12 hours later than the current train. This makes use of existing yards and facilities at the end points rather than build new facilities where there are currently none.

Oh well, back into lurk mode. Arguing with the anti Amtrak, VIA, NSW rail, Vicrail and QR rail (to name a few) gets old after a while. Like so many things (politics) these days we just end up talking past each other.

The Rocky Mountaineer plan only works as a tourist railroad in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
It is also privately ran where fares and only fares earns all of its' profits.

Amtrak would not be at the political mercy of Congress and whoever is in the Presidential office if it actually turned a profit based on fares. We do not absolutely need Amtrak running long distance trains all across the country, there are other modes of transportation even cheaper than what Amtrak charges for fares that provides that service. The US government could step in an provide a surface transportation solution to and from Hawaii, but it does not. The US government could step in and provide airline services to every city in the USA larger than 25,000, but it does not. Refresh my memory, why is the US government in the business of providing intercity passenger train services?

electricron wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:42 amRefresh my memory, why is the US government in the business of providing intercity passenger train services?

Good question.... Even though Americans had abandoned trains for their own cars or air travel by 1965, someone om Congress decided the Government needed to step in and keep trains running so we could still take pictures as they roll by....

From a business standpoint, it hasn't been justified for decades.