Wolverine Fail

Speaking of bad customer service, this happened on the Woverine:

Passengers flee train during 19-hour ride from Michigan to Chicago
Updated: Oct. 09, 2022, 12:43 p.m.|Published: Oct. 08, 2022, 12:57 p.m.
By Rose White

Brief, fair use quote

Passengers stuck on an Amtrak train say there was no electricity, heat, bathrooms or food during a roughly 19-hour journey from Pontiac to Chicago.

Many of them fled the train before it even reached its destination.

Wolverine Train 351 first left Michigan around 6 a.m. Friday for the scheduled 5½ hour trek to Chicago. It didn’t arrive until after midnight Central Standard Time.

https://www.mlive.com/news/2022/10/pass ... icago.html

This horror story was reported on NBC Local News last night immediately after the "if it bleeds, it leads" stuff was out of the way.

Wonder why should I go to the Detroit Symphony later this month, as I would like to, Lady Lex's Bridgestones will be meeting I-94.

And now I have flash backs to all the news reporting that happened with Amtrak and MARC on June 20th, 2010.

To recap those who don't know, this is when a MARC train broke down on the NEC in over-90 degree Fahrenheit weather (yes it was an HHP-8). So instead of:

• Notifying passengers about the issue.
• Getting folks rescued off that train after a set amount of time.
• Getting the consist rescued.

...they spent 99% of the time trying to fix the train and letting passengers roast until they broke out the windows and evacuated. This got fixed with more frequent service and MARC engine 68 stationed in Odenton for rescues of any type (including freight which I have photos of).

And now Amtrak, which operates MARC on the NEC ("Penn Line"), does the same damn thing over 12 years later?!?

Where's the NTSB?!? It's time to drag them over the coals AGAIN.

And Mayor Pete thinks the airlines treat people bad... this would have been $25,000 per passenger if it had been an airplane stuck on the tarmac beyond 4 hours....

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

A long article ran in the Chicago Tribune as well. (By the way, the link above already seems to be broken. I couldn't pull up the MLive article.)

Is there some reason other than poor Amtrak decision-making that everyone couldn't have been dropped at a station to wait for the next train, while this one pulled into a siding for repair? There should have been a train running about 3 hours behind this one. And after Battle Creek, several others, no?

Mr. Ryan, for ready reference:

https://www.mlive.com/news/2022/10/pass ... icago.html

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Sun Oct 09, 2022 4:39 pm And now I have flash backs to all the news reporting that happened with Amtrak and MARC on June 20th, 2010.

To recap those who don't know, this is when a MARC train broke down on the NEC in over-90 degree Fahrenheit weather (yes it was an HHP-8). So instead of:

• Notifying passengers about the issue.
• Getting folks rescued off that train after a set amount of time.
• Getting the consist rescued.

...they spent 99% of the time trying to fix the train and letting passengers roast until they broke out the windows and evacuated. This got fixed with more frequent service and MARC engine 68 stationed in Odenton for rescues of any type (including freight which I have photos of).

And now Amtrak, which operates MARC on the NEC ("Penn Line"), does the same damn thing over 12 years later?!?

Where's the NTSB?!? It's time to drag them over the coals AGAIN.

IIRC , The locomotive was rebooted multiple times.
I was lucky, I was on the train before it. A friend of mine wasn't, and I was getting "live from somewhere near odenton" texts about it.
Or am I confusing it with the "Hell train" on the double track stretch, south of New Carrolton?
Either way, I kinda thought STB would have standard procedures for "So, your passenger locomotive has taken a sick day in the field" that non freight operations could use for these situations.
For that matter, I'd think that Class one's would have procedures, since it's their routes that are blocked?
Or was this Amtrak owned and dispatched?
I mean, I'm sure that R and N, grand canyon, or even Strasburg would have communicated with the passengers, and sent a rescue train, in and hour.

scratchyX1 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 10, 2022 1:37 pm Either way, I kinda thought STB would have standard procedures for "So, your passenger locomotive has taken a sick day in the field" that non freight operations could use for these situations.
For that matter, I'd think that Class one's would have procedures, since it's their routes that are blocked?
Or was this Amtrak owned and dispatched?
I mean, I'm sure that R and N, grand canyon, or even Strasburg would have communicated with the passengers, and sent a rescue train, in and hour.

MARC and Amtrak negotiated a procedure for this. I am surprised that it is only applicable for DC to Baltimore on the NEC. This should of been a template for the rest of the corridors.

The deal is simple: You got passengers? You got a dead train? If you can't get that train fixed before the next train comes, you get your passengers on that next train, and you get the rescue engine on that dead train.

What should of happened is that Wolverine 353 be routed to the opposite track and the passengers transferred. 351 would terminate right then and there, and 353 continuing on to Chicago with a double load. A rescue engine would be dispatched and the whole consist dragged off the line. Yank the consist off the broken engine and slap a new one in there while the broken engine is being repaired by technicians.

When 351 broke down on Friday the 7th, was there not a work train on duty that could have towed him to Battle Creek (passenger transfer to 365) or at least to Jackson where passengers could get off the train and with a second track 353 could couple onto the front?
Andy

The passengers want those answers as well:

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2 ... s-say.html

“What we want right now is an apology letter and after-action report basically saying what protocols happened, which did you abide by, which ones did you not do, which ones were disregarded,” (said Cierra Murphy, 22, of Southville)

twropr wrote: ↑Mon Oct 10, 2022 6:39 pmWhen 351 broke down on Friday the 7th, was there not a work train on duty that could have towed him to Battle Creek (passenger transfer to 365) or at least to Jackson where passengers could get off the train and with a second track 353 could couple onto the front? Andy

Other posts say that the following train 353 did couple to the disabled train 351, but then the rescue train's engine also broke down for a while. Next, the crew ran out of time, having been on duty for 12 hours, they could not run the train anymore, and everyone had to wait to be rescued by a fresh crew.
The crews are entitled to be paid for up to 12 hours, if they actually work that long, plus time waiting to be rescued, and maybe also while being transported away from the location. If the train was held at an earlier station for the new crew, there is a danger that the rescue transportation and crew might arrive too soon, causing the old crew to be paid for less time. It's also possible that Amtrak tried to have the rescue crew meet the train somewhere in the wilderness to save time, and that didn't actually happen due to many possible problems.

Seems there were a couple of opportunities to bus the passengers, too: from Jackson, from Ann Arbor, maybe even from the side of the highway near Gary.

Well, it only took them 12 years to make it company policy.

Amtrak making changes after no heat, power on Michigan-Chicago train fiasco

Amtrak is revising its policies after customers were stuck on a delayed train from Michigan to Chicago without heat, electricity or working toilets earlier this month.

Many ended up fleeing before getting to Union Station.

“The service fell far short of what we hold ourselves accountable for and that we promise to deliver to our customers and our partners at the State of Michigan,” Amtrak president Roger Harris said in an email sent to affected customers this week...

Amtrak will now prioritize getting customers off trains that don’t have heating, air conditioning, electricity and toilets. That means either moving the train to the nearest station or finding other transportation.