All Things Sunset Limited (West)

I hadn’t heard of outright cancellation of one Amtrak round-trip before, not on an American road at the freight line’s insistence. Not a good sign I think, this and the Southwest Chief shows that 1 Mass isn’t advocating effectively for LD service.

mtuandrew wrote:I hadn’t heard of outright cancellation of one Amtrak round-trip before, not on an American road at the freight line’s insistence. Not a good sign I think, this and the Southwest Chief shows that 1 Mass isn’t advocating effectively for LD service.

Well, there's the yearly annulment of the Crescent south of Atlanta too. I suspect Amtrak's contracts allow the host RR's to do this.

electricron wrote:Two cars, the ones connected with the Texas Eagle, are consider by Amtrak as Trains 421 and 422. Usually, only those passengers riding both 21, 22 and 1, 2 beyond San Antonio - in either direction - can book it.

That isn’t true. Either was bookable to St. Louis on my last trip there.

A nascent push for resumption of daily service: BeaumontEnterprise.com

Expanded passenger train service sought

...
The Jefferson County Commissioners Court is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to support the expansion of service.
The proposed resolution notes a 22 percent increase in population in the five states the route serves between 2000 and 2016 as one reason to increase routes.
“The Jefferson County Commissioners Court considers having daily Amtrak service to be vital for providing safe, affordable, reliable transportation to our citizens and students of Lamar University,” the proposed resolution reads. It requests the expansion happen as soon as “practicable.”
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the company tried to expand to daily service on the route in the past, but money sought by Union Pacific to use the tracks “was high enough to end the conversation.”
According to a rail plan update from the Texas Department of Transportation, Union Pacific told Amtrak that daily operation of the route would require $750 million in track upgrades and other capital improvements.
But that was in 2010. Magliari said Amtrak is always open to exploring expansion, as trains are most accessible when they operate daily.
...

Since 2010, UP has upgraded much of the route themselves, so there is no reason the costs for daily service would be anywhere as high as they were in back then. In other words, UP tried to exploit Amtrak for the costs of upgrading the Sunset Route because Amtrak was asking for daily service at the time UP was planning for a needed capacity increase project. Amtrak said no to the exploitation while sacrificing daily service until at least 2015, and UP was forced to pay for the project themselves. Now that the route's capacity upgrade project has been completed, daily service should be much cheaper to implement than it was in 2010.

UP will use that snub against Amtrak for the Daily service request,Heck UP killed the Phoenix sub as a thru route in an effort to kill the Sunset Ltd.

daily SAS-NOL, thrice weekly LAX.

Technically the PHX sub -is- still intact. There's a 75 mile stretch which hasn't seen a train in over 20 years, but it's not abandoned.

It's still in service Wellston to Roll, and from the Redhawk / Mesquite power plants to downtown Phoenix.

The only way that section ever gets reactivated is if someone is looking to launch LAX-PSP-YUM-PHX as a corridor, and at 400 miles, that's a really sparsely populated corridor once you get past Indio...

There were sections of rail pulled up east of Roll,so the phoenix sub is severed! From Buckeye westward is returning to natural desert.
The ABS signals along that stretch were retired in place and gutted. Wellington to Roll was renamed to the "Roll industrial Track"

Within the last few years, there has been car storage between Roll and Kofa, which is 25 miles east of Roll. There has also been car storage as far as Gillespie, about 7 miles west of Mesquite Power and 25 miles west of Buckeye.

I don’t doubt that there may indeed be some rail missing in the 50 miles between Kofa and Gillespie, but most of the rail is still intact and apparently usable.

Suburban Station wrote:daily SAS-NOL, thrice weekly LAX.

I don’t like the chances of that service either state-supported or Amtrak National, but I’d have more optimism about a Texas-funded daily or 6x/weekly SAS-HOU. It’d be like the Hoosier State, running on opposite days from the Sunset Limited, and they seem to have gotten past their reticence to fund trains on the state level.

Ideally I’d like to see daily service SAS-ELP too. Lots of nothing between, but two big destinations in one state.

SAT-ELP? It's a 15 hour trip by train today because of the routing via Del Rio, versus a 10 hour drive...

Getting a bit off topic for this thread, but if there's a state supported rail corridor that can be expanded right now, it's between HOU and SAT, and SAT-AUS-FTW-DFW.

mtuandrew wrote:

Suburban Station wrote:daily SAS-NOL, thrice weekly LAX.

I don’t like the chances of that service either state-supported or Amtrak National, but I’d have more optimism about a Texas-funded daily or 6x/weekly SAS-HOU. It’d be like the Hoosier State, running on opposite days from the Sunset Limited, and they seem to have gotten past their reticence to fund trains on the state level.

Ideally I’d like to see daily service SAS-ELP too. Lots of nothing between, but two big destinations in one state.

Hoosier state is not a successful model. I'd go with a daily schedule, maybe Houston sas/Austin round trip with one set or dallas-sas-houston with two sets. Sunset schedule isnt the best and of course it isnt reliable.

eolesen wrote:SAT-ELP? It's a 15 hour trip by train today because of the routing via Del Rio, versus a 10 hour drive...

Getting a bit off topic for this thread, but if there's a state supported rail corridor that can be expanded right now, it's between HOU and SAT, and SAT-AUS-FTW-DFW.

The UP railroad has nixed SAT-AUS, so we can kiss that segment goodbye, for the time being at least. And I had a friend who recently told me he drove ELP-SAT in 8 hours. Most of I-10 on that segment is 80-85 MPH.

Sorry for staying off topic.

Rockingham Racer wrote: The UP railroad has nixed SAT-AUS, so we can kiss that segment goodbye, for the time being at least. And I had a friend who recently told me he drove ELP-SAT in 8 hours. Most of I-10 on that segment is 80-85 MPH.
0Sorry for staying off topic.

It's bad when automobiles and semi-tractor trucks can legally go faster than Amtrak's trains maxed out at 79 mph.