Amtrak Crescent Discussion

And now with its airport it swiped NS hq away from Norfolk.

Ironic that a town that was once named "Terminus" due to it being a rail hub has only one passenger train (the Crescent) x2; NB and SB. GDOT sat on building a new station and several locations are now foreclosed. Amtrak did not do any better. Peachtree Station was a SRR commuter station; it was not meant to be a LD station. Little to no parking, poor station amenities. They could put a station in Buckhead near the JW Marriott, adjacent to a MARTA station, which could serve as a shuttle to midtown and downtown. Not optimal. The Perimeter, while a business center, is not optimal for downtown due to traffic. Seems to me two stations, Buckhead and something in the city center, are needed. Not sure how they'll swing it.

L&N had track rights on the NC&SL from Cartersville to ATL. L&N crews were from Etowah to ATL. So no separate coupon . If anyone buys a ticket from Cartersville south to and thru Atlanta that person can use ticket on either road for that portion.

The C of GA ran on A&WP tracks to East Point then on to Griffin and Macon on its tracks. For Columbus trains CofGa stayed on A&WP tracks to Newnan . It joined the CofGa tracks that were there that came from Chattanooga - Bremen - Newnan - Griffin ( joined the East point line ) - Macon. 4 miles SE of Newnan CofGa left Macon line at Raymond south to Columbus. Most of that line abandoned by NS and SOU except a few miles transferred to CSX after bridge a wash out on that CofGa line.

The station at Newnan was shared by A&WP and CofGa however CofGa had to use far East siding to access its track there. Passengers had to cross A&WP tracks to get to station. Never knew the ownership of that siding as it was used for freight interchange..

It's interesting that the CofG was the tenant to East Point. The successor roads have flipped that. CSX is the tenant on NS between East Point and Circle/Jones.

Trains reports a significant rescheduling of the Crescent (they added a BUNCH of padding)
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... sefulness/

Departure times are roughly the same. Arrivals at end points are now 9pm New Orleans and 6 pm NYC. Northbound departure from Atlanta is now 11:29pm (vs 8pm). From where I sit in Charlotte Southbound is not hugely changed. But the Northbound train is now scheduled for a 5:30am departure (previously 1:46am). While this kinda makes another day train between Charlotte and Greensboro, the Carolinian departs just 1:15 later so I suspect there will be some platform conflicts in Charlotte and some track conflicts between Charlotte and Greensboro. The Crescent is timetabled as nearly 30 minutes longer between Charlotte and Greensboro than the Carolinian and Piedmonts.

Greensboro is the big beneficiary of this change (IMO). Their Northbound departure is now at 7:29 am (vs 3:44am). This greatly improved departure time along with the faster NS route will give them the best connection to NYC from the Carolinas.

(Lynchburg also gets a more civilized departure at 9:41)

west point wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 3:59 pm Checked Baggage service cancelled in Atlanta only.

Unless something just changed, that's wrong - check my earlier posts in the thread. When I booked it said no checked baggage in ATL, Amtrak's phone number confirmed, and yet the train was doing checked baggage both from ATL and to ATL. Should be no problem.

twropr wrote: ↑Sun Jun 06, 2021 3:33 pm With the elongated schedule taking effect June 6-7, what kind of a consist has the CRESCENT been operating?
Thanks
Andy

Two P42s, three coaches, one cafe car, two sleeping cars, and one baggage dorm.

Quite short. I just saw a YouTube video this past week where it was down to 2 coaches. I wish they'd put the diner back. I remember it used to run with like 5 coaches not too long ago. Maybe rail travel will pick back up.

According to another site the baggage service is temporarily halted due to freight/passenger elevator out of service. What apparently happened is that the city of Atlanta's water main outside the station broke and flooded the elevator shaft putting elevator out of service. Baggage will return one elevator is fixed.
I suppose that the JULY 1 date is a probable date ? Wonder if the water flooded the NS tracks and caused any damage to them ?
Here is very short news that has the water main break showing picture very near the Atlanta station dated May 27.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ci ... &FORM=VIRE

So how are they handling handicapped passengers to the trains?

west point wrote: ↑Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:19 pm According to another site the baggage service is temporarily halted due to freight/passenger elevator out of service. What apparently happened is that the city of Atlanta's water main outside the station broke and flooded the elevator shaft putting elevator out of service. Baggage will return one elevator is fixed.
I suppose that the JULY 1 date is a probable date ? Wonder if the water flooded the NS tracks and caused any damage to them ?
Here is very short news that has the water main break showing picture very near the Atlanta station dated May 27.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ci ... &FORM=VIRE

That can't be the water main break that affected the station. That building is on Georgia Tech's campus here: https://goo.gl/maps/2TswWPmncagya1wj8 The Amtrak station is ~1.58 miles away here: https://goo.gl/maps/1EYwWTPg614dPZ9w5 If a single water main break affected both, then the entire city would be under water Noah's ark style.

Exactly what I thought as well.

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Ever since this "new schedule intended for reliability" I've been keeping an eye on both 19's and 20's delays through the usual trouble spots. Long story short, so far, the new schedule has such ridiculous recovery time that CLT-WAS seems to be mostly on time for both. ATL-CLT is slightly better, but ATL south is still garbage. This comes from eyeballing the Amtrak Status Maps Archive Display. I'm not a statistician so I can't run fancy regression analyses or anything like that covering the period prior to 6/7/21 vs that day and after.

Right now, both trains are running at 0 MPH and are in service disruption. An NS derailment, I think.

Some bad news today about the Crescent that I saw:

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlant ... tZ2d2rB8N4

mterrell wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:21 pm Some bad news today about the Crescent that I saw:

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlant ... tZ2d2rB8N4

It's currently back on route, but... geeesh, where's the bus subsitution in this case?