Took the Hiawatha yesterday down to Chicago and back. Met Mr. Hinton (member "meh") and spent some time exploring the CTA system.
Anyway, as it pertains to this list, I'll note that the Hiawatha had a pretty bad day yesterday. In fact, yesterday marked the first time that I had been on on a Hiawatha train that arrived at its destination "late" (using the DOT's allowance of up to 15 minutes). Tr. 332(30) arrived 16 minutes late, with 90225, 51002, 54555, 54501, 54518, 519. Car 54555 was painted in the new paint scheme, and 51002 was a long-distance coach (which has apparently been on the Hiawatha for quite some time now) with all seats facing towards Milwaukee (meaning I had to ride backwards to enjoy the additional legroom).
Train 329(30) arrived into Milwaukee 20-25 minutes late, had only a handful of people on board, and they started boarding almost immediately. We left 7 minutes late. One of the (two or three) passengers that came in on 329 lost his cell phone and was walking through our car looking for it (don't know if he found it). I don't know if that was the only reason for the delay.
Slowdowns occurred immediately out of Milwaukee, taking nearly 11 minutes to get to a crossing on the south side where I sometimes go to photograph Amtrak trains (normal travel time to that spot is 5-6 minutes). A bit slow also going past the new airport station construction. I don't know if that building is going to be ready in time for the 22 November opening.
Further slowdowns occurred in Metra territory as they were rebuilding some grade crossings and performing some other track work. Train arrived at 9:45 (vs. 9:29 schedule). As a side note, I later rode a Metra Milwaukee-North train that arrived 20 minutes behind schedule, so Amtrak wasn't the only service screwed up by the track work.
An Amtrak conductor told me that yesterday, train 334 was misrouted onto the UP freight line to Bensenville, and had to stop, back up (presumably with permission from the dispatcher), and resume its normal routing.
Anyway, at the end of the day, I got to Chicago Union Station at around 16:45, just as the Empire Builder was pulling in. One of the conductors on 8 happened to be a friend of mine, so we rode back to MKE together on 339(30). Train 338 (the inbound) was late getting to Chicago, arriving after 17:00 (scheduled arrival 16:29). I don't know all the reasons for the delay, but one problem that apparently occurred on that trip was the train lost HEP, and had to run dark all the way in from Sturtevant.
There was a delay in boarding while they fixed that problem, but they managed to fix the problem quickly, and get us on board. We left at 17:23, 15 minutes late, with 183, 54556, 54524, 54566, 54547, 90208. We continued to run slowly, and even sat at one point for 5-10 minutes to let a freight train through (there was a lot of freight traffic on the line last night). Got into MKE at 19:03, 18 minutes late. That would make me 0 for 3 on "big train" OTP yesterday. Overall, though, Amtrak is still 41/43 (95%) in on-time performance on Hiawatha trains that I've taken.