Amtrak News Release: Article: Introducing a New Era of Rail in America

One thing that is known is that Amtrak does offer incentive payments to at least some of the roads for more favorable dispatching. They seem to have made peace with some of the roads the last couple years at least on some of the services. Things still remain tense with UP though where according to UP they have not yet been able to agree to a "certified" schedule for the trains running on its road which is a requirement before Amtrak can pursue relief via the STB. The unpopular schedule change to the Crescent (which some said was Gardner "sabotaging the train") was essentially this process - coming up with a certified schedule that NS would agree to honor.

rohr turbo wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 7:51 pm I'm not sure that NS has posted their trackage rates that are applicable to Amtrak movements. Please post a link if one exists.

I think a decade ago I was able to pull an ASCII list of rates from NS's website. Now I can't find it.

Question remains though on actual rates set by the railroads.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 7:10 am Mr. ExCon. at least back in my day, Amtrak definitely adhered to GMA rates for services such as crews, detours, emergency equipment, et al

Tthanks -- I kind of thought that.

In the 1980s, the Eastern Region General Managers' Agreement was mainly a cooperative reciprocal emergency help plan priced at about average cost with overhead, but no profit, included in the prices. Amtrak would pay the same price to borrow a freight road's locomotive or crane and crew as the other railroad would pay to borrow Amtrak's. The costs for emergency detours were also listed in the agreement.