Posted on 07/22/2014 11:23:07 AM PDT by Paul46360
On 21July2014 Amtrak Wolverine was due to arrive in New Buffalo Michigan at 8:10pm from Chicago. But it was over 2 hours late.
When my wife FINALLY talked with a REAL person she was told that AMTRAK's own dispatch center could NOTcontact the train and to call back in 10 min for update!!!!!!!!
Why would they call the train for you? If a plane is late, you can’t call customer service and have them call the pilot.
Delays will happen in travel. I rode Amtrack from Glenwood Springs, Colorado to San Francisco and then from San Francisco to Seattle and had a great time.
Then you could really walk anywhere faster couldn’t you?
Amtrak is government run much like the Post Office so what do you expect? I was fortunate to experience train travel in the early 1960s when service was still top notch. I rode the California Zephier to California and back to Omaha on the UP.
In 2014, railroad engineers aren't allowed to carry cell phones - for same reason drivers shouldn't use them while driving. The California commuter train collision with a freight train was the direct result of the train's engineer texting instead of paying attention to the signals that told to stop ahead.
That could be easily solved by keeping a cell phone in a sealed box. If the seal is broken after your shift you either have good explanation or get fired.
There is no excuse to be without emergency communication today.
Yes, but the Airlines are not run by the government. If Dagny Taggart ran the railroads, they would run on time.
Why don’t we just use Amtrak trains to runs these illegals right on up into Canada, just like Mexico does to us.
You know, with NAFTA and all. Caring, sensitive, socialist Canada should welcome the poor dears.
Part of that contract specifies that if the passenger train doesn't make its time window, the freight is coming through. Passenger service just has to wait.
Love that graphic.
There was an industrial fire in Oregon that delayed the Cascades for over an hour.
It happens, I guess.
But one would think they could contact the train or at least know where it is. A few cities come to mind that run subways that always know where the trains are...seems odd.
If you take a train, expect it to be late. Not that long ago I was returning from a trip to NY City. We sat on the track for several hours because some doofus decided she was going to walk in front of the earlier train. We had to wait for all those passengers to be transferred to our train, and for them to clear the tracks so we could proceed. You wouldn't believe the things that end up on the tracks.
On another trip back from NY City, it was raining very badly. We stopped because the tracks were flooding, and it was causing problems with the signal lights. We had to wait until they could get someone out to the tracks to check things out.
If all I had to do was wait 2 hours for a train, I'd consider myself very lucky.
"We're not Amtrak but we're cheaper, and arrive on time!"
They’re never without communication capabilities. The person who wanted to ‘call the train and see what’s going on’ would get the same response from an airline if asked the same thing, which is basically ‘no, we are NOT going to call the airplane to satisfy your compulsive need to know every single thing, precisely when you want to know it.’
Way of the world on roadways everywhere. Snooze you lose.
Willie Green Memorial Ping
The family and I had a lovely train ride from just by Mission San Juan Capistrano down to San Diego to watch the Chargers squeak by the Chiefs last winter.
lol
Not permitted and, in parts of the west, can go for hours without cell reception.
Same here, but the immediate gratification generation can't stand for that or texts that don't get through instantaneously.
A trip from my hometown to DC costs roughly the same on Amtrak or by air. But the train takes as long as taking a bus! Why would anyone take the train?
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