This website has been archived from TrainWeb.org/washarp to TrainWeb.US/washarp.

7,524 miles of pleasure:

I have just returned from the ninth Amtrak Customer Advisory Committee Meeting which was held in Baltimore on February 20-22. I traveled via:

• Cascades #750: Tacoma to Seattle
• Empire Builder #8: Seattle to Chicago
• Capitol Limited #30: Chicago to DC.
• Northeast Corridor: DC to Baltimore
• Metroliner: Baltimore to NYC
• Lake Shore Limited: NYC to Chicago
• California Zephyr: Chicago to Emeryville (1 week layover in Denver)
• Coast Starlight: Emeryville to Tacoma

The trip started dismally. I boarded a new Cascades Train at Tacoma. The conductor was nearing the end of his short tour and performed like it. "Up and to the left" were his words of greeting. Up and to the left revealed a full coach and the more than ten people who boarded for the short run had to go car to car to find seats. Also, the exterior of the train was very dirty. It did not appear to have been washed overnight in Eugene, and I know it was washed in Seattle as it remained in the depot to become the 13:45 train to Portland.

King Street Station was a major mess! I saw the Coast Starlight in the coach yard as #750 came in. The Coast Starlight was in three pieces at 12:42, three hours past departure time. From a disgruntled passenger (D.P.) in the station, I learned the northbound Coast Starlight of the day before had lost head-end power at Klamath Falls. With lights, heat, cooking, etc, they removed all passengers at Eugene and sent them by bus, while the train continued to Seattle under a special movement. After some work in Seattle, the train still would not power up when they got ready to go into the station the next day. The D.P. I spoke to with had come up north with his wife just to ride the much heralded Coast Starlight. They checked into a hotel overnight and were there to head back home to California on the next train. D.P. did not like the rain, the train or the pain! Amtrak finally isolated the problem in one sleeping car. That car was removed and replaced by one which had come on the Empire Builder. Fortunately, the Empire Builder had two sleepers, so we still had one left for our train.

During all the delay, King Street Station personnel made prefunctory announcements spaced much too far apart to salve seething souls. The Coast Starlight finally came into the station at 13:35, and departed about 14:15. My trip was never clost to anything so unpleasant.

Timeliness:

BNSF knows how to run passenger trains. The timetable shows twenty-nine time listed Seattle to St. Paul inclusive, and I have noted O.T. (on time) performance for 13 of them, and ahead of schedule for four arrivals. Time keeping from Chicago to Denver was equally impressive.

Union Pacific has come a long way in the last year. With the help of good dispatching and some padding, we were on time of all service stops, and twenty-five minutes early in Emeryville. The Coast Starlight was on time at service stops north, and into Tacoma on time.

CSX trains (Capitol Limited and Lake Shore) both were delayed due to freight breakdown eastbound, and poor Amtrak dispatching at Rensselaer westbound. #49 was held out at Rensselaer to wait fro a late train from Toronto to come in, work, then leave, and then for a Northeast corridor train which left New York City thirty minutes late behind us to come in and work the platform, before we were allowed in. In both cases, CSX was able to deliver us with no further delay, but also with no time made up. A lot of progress has been made in time-keeping the last two years.

Return to WashARP On Line || Personal Side || Table of Contents || Send E-Mail

Last Update: 03/15/99
Web Author: Warren Y. Yee