by Station Aficionado
Patrick Boylan wrote:Station Aficionado, David Benton, you're repeating 2 of the 3 examples electricron already mentionedDid we mention the Empire Builder and the Lake .... . Oops, guess we need to read more carefully.electricron wrote: Lake Shore > Chicago to Albany 820 miles, Albany to New York City is 150 miles, Albany to Boston is 170 miles.in addition to repeating what he already said, your extra posts are also at the same time redundant
Empire Builder > Chicago to Spokane is 1780 miles, Spokane to Seattle is 280 miles, Spokane to Portland is 350 miles.
Sunset > Los Angeles to San Antonio is 1350 miles, San Antonio to Chicago is 1240 miles, San Antonio to New Orleans is 540 miles.
To followup on Ron's point, switching loco-hauled consists can be more involved than splitting/joining DMU/EMU consists, given the train power and trackage requirements. That said, as recently as the early '90's, Amtrak did a lot more enroute switching. In addition to EB, LSL and TE/Sunset, there were the following (and I may be missing some): both Silver trains had Miami and Tampa sections that were combined and split somewhere in Florida; the Carolinian and Palmetto combined/split at Rocky Mt.; the Crescent had cars that were dropped and added at Atlanta, as well as having a Mobile section (Gulf Breeze) that separated/joined at Birmingham; the TE had both San Antonio and Houston sections, that combined at Dallas; both the Desert Wind and Pioneer were joined to/separated from the CZ at Salt Lake City. But the prime switching location was New Haven. Before the Boston electricfication, Springfield/Inland Route sections split from/joined many (most?) NYP-BOS NEC trains.
So what's changed? I'm can't address any changes in operating practices, but (in addition to trainoffs) I do know that Amtrak wanted to reduce the expenses of maintaining switchers and switch crews at lots of locations (or paying for contract switching, which I know they did in Atlanta). And, as Ron noted, timekeeping on the LDs is an issue. Interestingly, the various PIPs for the LDs recommended a return, at least to a small degree, of enroute switching: Atlanta set-out cars for the Crescent, a Glewood Springs set-out for the CZ, and a single-level New York section of the CL, splitting off at Pittsburgh.