Crew Changes on Late Trains

Idle curiosity issue here: When an LD train like the Builder is super-late (4+ hours) how are crews done the line handled? If a crew in MSP is supposed to take the Builder east to Chicago at 9a and the train doesn't arrive until 2p, do they sit at the station all day waiting or can they wait at home? Do they have to check in or stay by the phone? Are they paid for the delay time?

I have no position on this issue just one of those "gee I wonder" things that pops into my head.

Tadman wrote:Idle curiosity issue here: When an LD train like the Builder is super-late (4+ hours) how are crews done the line handled? If a crew in MSP is supposed to take the Builder east to Chicago at 9a and the train doesn't arrive until 2p, do they sit at the station all day waiting or can they wait at home? Do they have to check in or stay by the phone? Are they paid for the delay time?

I have no position on this issue just one of those "gee I wonder" things that pops into my head.

Interesting questions. An additional question, if the train is late enough, could the crew waiting be used to finish the earlier segment if that crew must stop working because their clock ran out?

Based on other posts here, and reading National Transportation Safety Board accident reports, the answer is "All of the above, and then some".
The outbound crew can be told to report at a later time to start their Hours of Service, or they might be transported in the opposite direction to relieve an outlawed inbound crew. The Extra Board may be used to help fill in the gaps. The train may sit somewhere waiting for a rested crew to be found, or for a found crew to accumulate enough rest to go back on duty. In the case of Florida (and other) trains, the following train may catch up to and couple with the train with crew time problems, so that 1 crew with time left can move both trains.

Jim, thanks for your reply. This is really interesting from an intellectual standpoint because there's a lot of moving parts here (as if I need more to think about...).

I would imagine Amtrak doesn't have a large extra board at outlying points, that's got to be a tough issue to handle.

Last year I was riding the SWC from CHI to FLG, when it ran into locomotive problems at La Junta. This made us run 4-5 hours late making the usual crew change at ABQ impossible. From what I heard they drive the relief crew to LMY and we had to sit at the station until they arrived.

Seems like the crews in the north east have it easy

Crews can be set back if notified before there sign up time, did this plenty of times with the LSL on our layover in Cleveland. Once on duty they could be given a release. Of course you are expected to be at your sign up location ready to work, so a cab or train ride to the train in question isn't out of the question. This would only work if you were qualified on the physical characteristics of the territory in question.

Check the builders facebook page.a conductor describes a recent swap.

The train get's pushed back on the board. In my experience with freight service, if you're first out on the board, you typically have an idea of when to expect your phone call. If that train is delayed by 4 hours, well you won't get called for 4 hours. I imagine it's a bit more reliable with Amtrak vs Freight because in freight service the nice Z train you were lined up for can vanish and you'll end up spending 12 hours on a dog sh*t train and dying on the hours.

Anyway, say for example we are apart of the crew who is first out for an Amtrak train leaving at 9pm. That train gets delayed 2 hours. So we won't expect to go on duty until 11pm. 11pm comes around and the train is still delayed? Well, you better take a nap. Depending on how far from your terminal the train is and when that crew operating the train is going to run out of hours you might catch a van at the terminal and go to your train where it died on hours. As far as Initial Terminal Delay and stuff like that, it all depends on whatever agreement you fall under whether you can make those claims or not. In some cases they may even call the extra board to relieve the dead crew, I haven't a clue if Amtrak does that.

In freight service crews with regular runs often have call windows that they can only be called within. If the train is later than the window it goes to an extra board crew unless the regular crew volunteers to take the train out of the window. I am curious if Amtrak has this provision?

It is my loose understanding that Amtrak has some extra boards that cover a larger geographic area. If you are the EB you might have to cover more than one terminal that is within a reasonable drive.

Biggest problem Amtrk faces is that their crews work a cycle and significantly late trains mean that they might not be rested for that crews regular return run.