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Re: Sacramento-bound Starlight at Elkhorn Slough-Great shot, and a "short lining the route"?
Author: BOB2
Date: 12-02-2021 - 09:30
Sacramento-bound Starlight at Elkhorn Slough
Author: Nick Wolters
Date: 12-02-2021 - 08:25
Two twenty-four year old General Electric P42DC’s charge through Elkhorn Slough at forty-seven miles per hour with Amtrak Train 14. With the station stop at Salinas well in the rear view mirror, AMTK 78 is in prime form seventy-four minutes before sunset.
In late June, the Lava Fire in Siskiyou County scorched a vital trestle at Hotlum, CA on Union Pacific's Black Butte Subdivision. All rail movements along UP's "I-5 Corridor" were suspended for a few weeks including Amtrak's Coast Starlight service. Because of this, Amtrak was unable to operate over its entire route between Los Angeles and Seattle. The passenger carrier therefore opted to run Train 14 between LA and Sacramento, covering just 40% of its customary route miles. That is the explanation for the shorter-than-usual consist in this photo.
-Nick
Another reason I like real rail posts. Great shot, and interesting observations...
It was an interesting experiment, running the "Daylight" to Sacramento, and turning it. I wonder what the on-time performance was for the period of that experiment, versus on-tine perfomance for the whole route operation, in a similar period? The ligher consists have been consistent with still lower "post" Covid and still "recovering" passenger counts.
I've often wondered if we shouldn't have kept the pre Amtrak Coast Daylight and Shasta Daylight, instead of creating the Starlate? The "collector" stations seem to perform poorly on the night sections of the Starlate, compared to the daylight stations on the Coastline, although that is on station number observed, and not based on any real analysis of comparable "per capita" market size, trip generation.
There are certainly quite a few long distance through trip users, as a function of availability of service. I've been a number of times from LA through to Seattle, but I've flown there a whole lot more. But, many (majority IIRC?) Starlate trips are on segments, between hubs and intermediate "collector stations" (SB, SLO, Paso, Salinas) the interediate or end point "sub" hubs (LA, SJ, SF/OA, SAC, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle), and the train "turns over" several times. So, should my enjoyment of an occasional "through trip" come at the expense of providing better service reliability, availability, and utility for the public that pays for this service?
Reliability is a big factor, and distance of run has a huge impact on reliability and on-time performance, and has become a big part of Amtrak's long distance problems, in providing a reliable service, and added delay costs. Which is why maybe shorter distance "hub to hub" links, with both more frequent and/or daylignt services might make more sense in some of these "long distance" corridors.
Author: Nick Wolters
Date: 12-02-2021 - 08:25
Two twenty-four year old General Electric P42DC’s charge through Elkhorn Slough at forty-seven miles per hour with Amtrak Train 14. With the station stop at Salinas well in the rear view mirror, AMTK 78 is in prime form seventy-four minutes before sunset.
In late June, the Lava Fire in Siskiyou County scorched a vital trestle at Hotlum, CA on Union Pacific's Black Butte Subdivision. All rail movements along UP's "I-5 Corridor" were suspended for a few weeks including Amtrak's Coast Starlight service. Because of this, Amtrak was unable to operate over its entire route between Los Angeles and Seattle. The passenger carrier therefore opted to run Train 14 between LA and Sacramento, covering just 40% of its customary route miles. That is the explanation for the shorter-than-usual consist in this photo.
-Nick
Another reason I like real rail posts. Great shot, and interesting observations...
It was an interesting experiment, running the "Daylight" to Sacramento, and turning it. I wonder what the on-time performance was for the period of that experiment, versus on-tine perfomance for the whole route operation, in a similar period? The ligher consists have been consistent with still lower "post" Covid and still "recovering" passenger counts.
I've often wondered if we shouldn't have kept the pre Amtrak Coast Daylight and Shasta Daylight, instead of creating the Starlate? The "collector" stations seem to perform poorly on the night sections of the Starlate, compared to the daylight stations on the Coastline, although that is on station number observed, and not based on any real analysis of comparable "per capita" market size, trip generation.
There are certainly quite a few long distance through trip users, as a function of availability of service. I've been a number of times from LA through to Seattle, but I've flown there a whole lot more. But, many (majority IIRC?) Starlate trips are on segments, between hubs and intermediate "collector stations" (SB, SLO, Paso, Salinas) the interediate or end point "sub" hubs (LA, SJ, SF/OA, SAC, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle), and the train "turns over" several times. So, should my enjoyment of an occasional "through trip" come at the expense of providing better service reliability, availability, and utility for the public that pays for this service?
Reliability is a big factor, and distance of run has a huge impact on reliability and on-time performance, and has become a big part of Amtrak's long distance problems, in providing a reliable service, and added delay costs. Which is why maybe shorter distance "hub to hub" links, with both more frequent and/or daylignt services might make more sense in some of these "long distance" corridors.
