Segmenting Overnight Trains Won’t Work

(Ed note—Now back to train talk!)

During his December 5 lecture at Rutgers University, Amtrak Chairman David Laney suggested that some long distance trains could be restructured into a series of connecting day train segments.  Apparently he thinks that Amtrak’s passengers would be willing to take days longer to travel, including inconvenient overnight hotel stops.

Let’s take the California Zephyr route as an example.  As now operated, the train uses 2 locomotives, baggage car, crew car, 2 sleepers, diner, lounge, and 3 coaches as a normal consist.  With 3 days westbound, an overnight service turn at Oakland, and 3 days eastbound this requires 6 train sets or a total of 12 locomotives and 54 cars.  Even if Amtrak undertakes its ill-conceived “right sizing” of the train by dropping the baggage car, crew car, and combining the diner and lounge into a single car, it would need 12 locomotives and 36 cars, not counting any spares.

Now, if the train were chopped into daytime segments, short coach trains would ply between Chicago-Omaha, Omaha-Denver, Denver-Salt Lake, Salt Lake-Reno, and Reno-Emeryville.  Given typical running times and the spacing of these major communities, no other daytime patterns seem possible.  A trip from Chicago to California would require 5 days and 4 nights instead of just 3 days and two nights.  Coach passengers would have the added expense of taxis and hotels, and the inconvenience of toting luggage back and forth at each layover.  Sleeper passengers would simply not put up with this nonsense.  Amtrak’s passenger base would shrivel, and some of the new day trains would quickly be abandoned, breaking the so-called “connectivity” between the segments.  In simple and understandable terms, the plan is a disaster from the passenger service standpoint because there would not be many passengers to serve.  Some daytime segments might pick up new local coach travel, but not enough to overcome the significant loss of higher value, long distance tickets.

What about the equipment side?  Five daytime segments, each with a train of 1 engine and 4 cars (3 coaches and a diner-lounge) would require 10 trainsets, 10 engines, and 40 cars.  Protect engines probably would be needed at some of the overnight terminals, and 2 engines might be required on the mountain segments.  So, there would be virtually no savings of equipment – until the reduced passenger loads result in abandoning some segments entirely.  Cars running on segments in the middle of the route would rarely get important shop time at service yards that are in Chicago and Oakland.

Logistically, Amtrak would need to support the daytime train concept with additional commissary/food supply sources, crew base facilities, and overnight storage and servicing facilities.  Since it might not be able to turn the equipment at every terminal, it might have to resort to push-pull operation (requiring Superliner cab cars that don’t exist) or even use of a second locomotive.  Savings from this bad idea evaporate when you take time to think it over.

Thinking “outside the box” is admirable, but this ill-conceived concept of “consecutive” day trains on national routes is merely a subterfuge to end these national services entirely.  Mr. Laney needs to put on his thinking cap and start over.  A good place to begin is a fresh examination of who rides the current train network—specifically, where they ride from and to.

Daytime trains with overnight hotel stops simply don’t cut the mustard.

—Robert Glover, NARP Treasurer