7 ms·

I did Seattle-Chicago about ten years ago. 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late. As a European used to efficient train travel, it was

by pavlov 2y ago

I did Seattle-Chicago about ten years ago. 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late. As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic. It felt like a bit of Wild West time travel to spend days on a train in the amazing landscapes. The food in the dining car was surprisingly good, but got boring by the third day.

billfruit 2y ago
USA is a rather big country, coast to coast travel is going to take a good amount of time compared to travel times between major European cities
- pavlov 2y ago
  The Seattle-Chicago train operates at an average speed of 50 mph, so 80 km/h. Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-280 km/h range. The problem isn’t the big country, it’s the slow trains (that even get deprioritized after cargo, to add insult to the injury).
  - billfruit 2y ago
    Distance is also a factor. I see train timings listed for Madrid to Berlin to be more than 24 hours.
  - trinix912 2y ago
    > Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-300 km/h range. I don't know which country exactly you mean, I live in central Europe (Slovenia) and no train goes over 200 km/h, most go 60-80 km/h. Also, every time I'm at the train station in Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital), there's an announcement about the train from Budapest being ~40min late. And it's a way shittier looking train than the local commute ones going 60.
    - benterris 2y ago
      French high speed trains are fast, for instance the average speed of the train on the Paris-Strasbourg section (~400km in length) is 250km/h. This is the global average speed, so it is even faster on the high-speed section, going at around 320km/h. I often take this train, which is very convenient.
      - billfruit 2y ago
        Some information online indicates that the non high speed train takes about 20 mins more than the high speed train on that route. It does not seem a huge time difference
        filmor 2y ago
        The connection that takes 20min longer has two additional stops (the fast connection is a direct one) but it is still served by TGV or ICE trains, like the direct connection. The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.
        b112 2y ago
        This reminds me of Voyager buses in Ontario during the 80s/90s. They had two routes between Ottawa and Toronto. One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town. Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter... I recall this being named the "milk run".
      - vitus 2y ago
        To emphasize just how fast this is in comparison to regular rail: When I was visiting France some years back and took the TER train on the way from Paris to Strasbourg (300mi / 500km), and that crawled. On the way back, we took the TGV, which flew. If you look at booking tickets on SNCF's website, the difference is stark: about 5 hours via the TER, versus a little under 2 hours via the TGV. (From that perspective, it's a little funny to describe the TER as crawling, seeing as that's not meaningfully different from driving that distance.) There are some portions of Amtrak that have comparable max speeds (notably, the Acela) but even then, the average speeds on those routes are nowhere near 200km/h.
  - dagw 2y ago
    To be fair, Europe also kind of sucks at long distance trains. If you want to go the same distance as Seattle-Chicago in Europe by train (say Lisbon-Warszawa or Rome-Northern Sweden) you're often looking at 40-50 hours, mainly due to having to make 5-7 connections.
    - wslh 2y ago
      Which is obvious because they are different countries? And, also tourists select specific countries to visit so your "use case" is very rare. Edit Rare = majority of tourists in Europe go to specific cities and countries. There are trips between countries but it is rare to go around ALL Europe by train. Trains are significantly more expensive that flights.
      - albumen 2y ago
        If continental Europeans want to visit another distant European country, that's a rare use case? Or are you only referring to e.g. US tourists visiting Europe?
        wslh 2y ago
        Take a flight, much cheaper.
      - nutrie 2y ago
        Not at all rare. I used to make somewhat regular business trips by train from Prague to Berlin.
        wslh 2y ago
        You =/> major tourists [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-city-destinations/#:~:text=Overall%2C%20Paris%20and%20the%20%C3%8Ele,and%2017.4%20million%20arrivals%2C%20respectively https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-....
        pantalaimon 2y ago
  - aetherson 2y ago
    Wait until you find out how fast passenger jets are.
    - pavlov 2y ago
      Wait until you find out how quickly you can board and exit a train at a station that’s right in the center of the city, versus traveling to an airport, going through security, waiting to board, and then waiting some more for the plane to hopefully get its take-off slot from air control. You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
      - aetherson 2y ago
        Ah yes, the fake line of argument that for airplanes you have to drive an hour to get to the airport two hours before your flight, while in the case of trains, a powerful genie comes into your house, packs your suitcase and whisks you away in his powerful arms directly to your seat on the train 13.21 seconds prior to departure. It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours. Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
        em-bee 2y ago
        In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens only in countries where they neglected building train stations before the cities grew to todays sizes. but even then it's not true. US cities are less dense, so it should be easier to find space. train stations are also much much smaller than airports and trains don't make as much noise as airplanes. there are many more reasons not to build airports in the middle of a city, none of which apply to trains. the main problem for trains is finding a route for the track into the city. that can be and is solved with tunnels though. or the chinese approach where the high speed trainstations are sometimes built away from the center of the city and instead the center is connected by a dense network of subway lines. a process that started less than 20 years ago but now puts many chinese cities at the top of the list of the largest subway networks in the world.
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    Is it really a mystery that long routes with less expected users see less investment? Or do you expect that fast trains would unlock a lot of travel between Chicago and Seattle?
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    The "big country" contributes in that passenger-only high speed rail would be ruinously expensive to lay down and maintain. Long distance passenger rail exists at all in the US only because it can share track with freight rail.
  - rgmerk 2y ago
    New York to San Francisco is roughly 3000 miles (4800 km). At 250km/h, that’s a 19 hour trip. A 19 hour plane trip from New York gets you to Singapore. Fast trains are great for journeys up to about 600km. For crossing continents, planes win, whether rail enthusiasts like it or not, and a future of transport that involves “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change is an absolute nonstarter in most of the world.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Not a single serious person I'm aware of has proposed “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change. Any solution would require multiple strategies in tandem to increase efficiencies, reduce unnecessary energy expenditures, reduce GG emmissions, transition to non FF sources, and reduce existing GG in the atmosphere. It's a daunting task and one that may be impossible to achieve.
      - rgmerk 2y ago
        Depends on your definition of “serious”. You see a lot of “just take the train” in centrist and left-leaning British media (example provided below). Easy to imagine in the UK. Not so easy from, say, Perth, Western Australia. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-how-to-cut-your-carbon-emissions-when-flying https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h...
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  Yes, but we don't need a train to replace NY-to-LA. At least not right away. What we need are high speed trains between nearby city pairs. Short-haul flights both waste fuel, don't get up to speed, and have their travel times doubled by TSA security theater and airline boarding nonsense. A Shinkansen-spec high speed train (320kph/200mph) would beat the plane on 200-400 mile trips, both in terms of convenience, carbon emissions, and luxury. The 2,785 road miles between NY and LA would be 14 rail hours compared to the six a plane takes. Not competitive in the slightest, and not a serious mode of travel, but I'd consider it. The three days the train currently takes sounds like the worst of a road trip combined with the worst of a plane trip.
throw0101d 2y ago
> As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic. See recent video "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcuL2S2dgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcuL2S2dgk
Fricken 2y ago
I rode Canada's VIA rail from Vancouver to Edmonton. Some poor Europeans sitting in the seat in front were freaking out when it became apparent the train was going be 10 hours late on what was billed as a 24 hour trip. They had a connecting flight to catch in Edmonton and missed it by several hours.
neffy 2y ago
Mine was over 12 hours late, as a passenger had to be airlifted off because of cardiac issues. Said passenger had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues, and hadn´t thought through the "mile high" aspect of transiting through Denver. It is one of the most amazing train trips in the world, and tbh the article doesn´t really do it justice. The day the train spends slowly going up and down the rockies, are just incredible, the scenery is amazing, and you get to know other passengers and the conductors along the way. Had some great card games in the scenery car.
- lucb1e 2y ago
  > had to be airlifted [...] had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues I wonder how that worked out for them. Hopefully well!
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Sounds weird. I checked Denver altitude and it is hardly air sickness territory. You need to go significantly higher in the nearby mountains to actually feel the effects of elevation on your breathing, fatigue and brain.
  - neffy 2y ago
    That's what they said on the tannoy at least. They also reported he made it to hospital alive so hopefully all ended well. It's not actually unknown to get altitude sickness in Denver, it is one of the things the city warns about - going skiing at higher altitudes as well of course - but poor health, and just the speed which you change to that altitude, even on a train, are issues.
madduci 2y ago
> As a European used to efficient train travel As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough
- throw_pm23 2y ago
  Or in Germany where now about half of the rides are on time.
  - johannes1234321 2y ago
    It's sad how bad it became, but when comparing to U.S. Germany is still doing fine. Both due to number of trains and in delays.
    - seabass-labrax 2y ago
      Additionally, for many kinds of journey the delays are rather unimportant as long as the frequency of service is high, which I think generally is the case in Germany. I can't see anyone being too fussed if their specific S-Bahn connection is early or late when there are still trains running on the same route every ten minutes. I suspect that the most upset and vocal users of the Deutsche Bahn are the commuters who need to be at work at a specific time yet still travel ~100km or more on hourly RE/IC trains. In that situation it's frustrating to have to catch the train a whole hour earlier to be safe.
      - wink 2y ago
        Yes and no and it highly depends where you live. Here in Munich the S-Bahn trains typically go every 20 mins during the day and sometimes every 40 very early or late. So that's already a problem if you want to arrive for work and can't just start 30min earlier, the regional trains often go every hour as you mentioned. So yeah, if you live where there's a subway or a bus then the 10min thing works, but just a tiny bit on the outskirts with only the S-Bahn it often sucks. I was very glad when I moved from "need to take S-Bahn or bus to work, or to the subway" to "walk or bus to subway" neighborhood, even if it's roughly the same distance to the city center, and both decidedly IN the city, not the outskirts.
treyd 2y ago
> but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic. This is a huge issue. Cargo trains legally have to yield to passenger trains, but in recent decades cargo trains have been made longer and longer, so they no longer physically fit into the passing sidings (which usually are built for 75 cars). It's a mess.
- tdeck 2y ago
  And the DoJ hasn't been enforcing Amtrak's priority dispatch since the 1970s.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    There's been a very recent attempt to change this. This was the first thing I found: https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/08/justice-department-sues-freight-railroad-improve-amtrak-service/398573/ https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/08/justice-departmen...
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Cargo (freight) trains have to yield to on time passenger trains. There's a "hole" there in the freight traffic that the passenger train fits into. (It's not simple, because the passenger train is often faster than the freights, so it's a carefully planned, moving hole in the freight.) If the passenger train is late, all that careful orchestration is blown. The hole isn't there any more. The freight trains are not required to create a new hole - the late passenger train becomes just one more train.
  - wpm 2y ago
    Hmmm, but why are the passenger trains late in the first place?
    - ars 2y ago
      On the train trip I took, it was because of an unruly passenger. It turned a 9-hour trip into a 15-hour trip.
dmd 2y ago
I did Chicago-SF on the Zephyr about 20 years ago. It was a nightmare disaster of a trip. Nearly all our movement was at night due to cargo scheduling. We ended up arriving over 48 hours late. To Amtrak's credit - we complained and they refunded our entire journey.
labcomputer 2y ago
> 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late. […] (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), You are used to train journeys of more than 2800 km (more than the distance from Lisbon to Warsaw) with an average speed of over 170 km/h? Where can I find such an itinerary in Europe?
- pavlov 2y ago
  The Seattle-Chicago line is operated by a single company. Europe has dozens of national operators. So any direct comparison is of course difficult to make. To travel 3000 km on a high-speed train, Japan and China certainly offer the opportunity. Beijing-Guangzhou is 2230 km and operates at 350 km/h.
  - briffle 2y ago
    Good luck finding a sleeper from either Portland or Seattle. They are booked 6 months out. In any other business, that would mean adding another few sleeper cars. But Amtrak doesn’t seem to care…
    - seadan83 2y ago
      There are several room options for the SEA to CHI train leaving tomorrow, Monday Oct 28th, from $600 to $1100 depending on room size. Them. Being booked six months out might be a misperception or dated, it seemed easy to find.
    - wpm 2y ago
      Amtrak loses money on basically all of their long distance routes, and are pointlessly forced to live up to some profitability standard the highways don’t and the airlines privatize (only possible due to the government paying out of pocket for all the complicated expensive stuff). They have no incentive to add more sleepers, which would be a pain in the cock to procure, for a service that loses money. Amtrak should not be required to really care about that last part, but they are.
- lmm 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
seadan83 2y ago
Is a big problem for passenger trains in the US, freight has priority. Creates these long stops. Worse, if a passenger train is late, then suddenly it has to wait for a large unexpected and unplanned number of freight trains.
- mullen 2y ago
  > Is a big problem for passenger trains in the US, freight has priority. This simply not true. Federal Laws says that Passenger trains have priority but the law is never enforced. Freight traffic is suppose to take by-passes to let passenger traffic through and freight traffic is never suppose to block the line. However, again, the laws and rail rules are never enforced. Think about it, why would cargo have a higher priority than human traffic? Is cargo getting there an few hours later or earlier going to impact anything? With humans, it will totally impact their schedule and how often trains are used. If the Department of Transportation wanted people to start taking trains again, they would come down hard of rail companies that slow down passenger traffic.
  - xenadu02 2y ago
    Freight doesn't generally use bypasses or sidings anymore. It's part of the "Precision Scheduled Railroading" movement to optimize operating ratio above all other concerns - mostly because freight train executives and investors believe that railroads are in long-term terminal decline and thus capex spending or going after new customers is a waste of time. (This is a bit glib but not that far from the truth). Freight in the US optimizes for minimal crew hours. That means longer consists that no longer fit in sidings. Expanding sidings costs money and is thus verboten. Even if the freight takes 3x as long to get somewhere they can have each crew take a leg then leave the train unattended. The railroad doesn't need to pay for overnight stays or overtime and only one or two crews are "active" in a given segment ever. Or to put it another way the limit is "we are paying for one crew on this segment of the line". Freight lines up on either side as that limit of 1xCrew shuttles whatever they can back and forth within that segment. Then you make the consists longer and longer to "buffer" the bottleneck. I assume part of the "enforcement" issue is US DOT would need to order the railroad to back trains up or do other nonsensical things that would only create more chaos and delays because as I mentioned most consists can't fit on existing sidings anymore and AFAIK the law has no provision to order the railroads to extend the sidings nor order them to do the physically impossible.

by pavlov 2y ago

billfruit 2y ago

USA is a rather big country, coast to coast travel is going to take a good amount of time compared to travel times between major European cities

pavlov 2y ago
The Seattle-Chicago train operates at an average speed of 50 mph, so 80 km/h. Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-280 km/h range. The problem isn’t the big country, it’s the slow trains (that even get deprioritized after cargo, to add insult to the injury).
- billfruit 2y ago
  Distance is also a factor. I see train timings listed for Madrid to Berlin to be more than 24 hours.
- trinix912 2y ago
  > Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-300 km/h range. I don't know which country exactly you mean, I live in central Europe (Slovenia) and no train goes over 200 km/h, most go 60-80 km/h. Also, every time I'm at the train station in Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital), there's an announcement about the train from Budapest being ~40min late. And it's a way shittier looking train than the local commute ones going 60.
  - benterris 2y ago
    French high speed trains are fast, for instance the average speed of the train on the Paris-Strasbourg section (~400km in length) is 250km/h. This is the global average speed, so it is even faster on the high-speed section, going at around 320km/h. I often take this train, which is very convenient.
    - billfruit 2y ago
      Some information online indicates that the non high speed train takes about 20 mins more than the high speed train on that route. It does not seem a huge time difference
      - filmor 2y ago
        The connection that takes 20min longer has two additional stops (the fast connection is a direct one) but it is still served by TGV or ICE trains, like the direct connection. The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.
        b112 2y ago
        This reminds me of Voyager buses in Ontario during the 80s/90s. They had two routes between Ottawa and Toronto. One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town. Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter... I recall this being named the "milk run".
    - vitus 2y ago
      To emphasize just how fast this is in comparison to regular rail: When I was visiting France some years back and took the TER train on the way from Paris to Strasbourg (300mi / 500km), and that crawled. On the way back, we took the TGV, which flew. If you look at booking tickets on SNCF's website, the difference is stark: about 5 hours via the TER, versus a little under 2 hours via the TGV. (From that perspective, it's a little funny to describe the TER as crawling, seeing as that's not meaningfully different from driving that distance.) There are some portions of Amtrak that have comparable max speeds (notably, the Acela) but even then, the average speeds on those routes are nowhere near 200km/h.
- dagw 2y ago
  To be fair, Europe also kind of sucks at long distance trains. If you want to go the same distance as Seattle-Chicago in Europe by train (say Lisbon-Warszawa or Rome-Northern Sweden) you're often looking at 40-50 hours, mainly due to having to make 5-7 connections.
  - wslh 2y ago
    Which is obvious because they are different countries? And, also tourists select specific countries to visit so your "use case" is very rare. Edit Rare = majority of tourists in Europe go to specific cities and countries. There are trips between countries but it is rare to go around ALL Europe by train. Trains are significantly more expensive that flights.
    - albumen 2y ago
      If continental Europeans want to visit another distant European country, that's a rare use case? Or are you only referring to e.g. US tourists visiting Europe?
      - wslh 2y ago
        Take a flight, much cheaper.
    - nutrie 2y ago
      Not at all rare. I used to make somewhat regular business trips by train from Prague to Berlin.
      - wslh 2y ago
        You =/> major tourists [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-city-destinations/#:~:text=Overall%2C%20Paris%20and%20the%20%C3%8Ele,and%2017.4%20million%20arrivals%2C%20respectively https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-....
      - pantalaimon 2y ago
- aetherson 2y ago
  Wait until you find out how fast passenger jets are.
  - pavlov 2y ago
    Wait until you find out how quickly you can board and exit a train at a station that’s right in the center of the city, versus traveling to an airport, going through security, waiting to board, and then waiting some more for the plane to hopefully get its take-off slot from air control. You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
    - aetherson 2y ago
      Ah yes, the fake line of argument that for airplanes you have to drive an hour to get to the airport two hours before your flight, while in the case of trains, a powerful genie comes into your house, packs your suitcase and whisks you away in his powerful arms directly to your seat on the train 13.21 seconds prior to departure. It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours. Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
      - em-bee 2y ago
        In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens only in countries where they neglected building train stations before the cities grew to todays sizes. but even then it's not true. US cities are less dense, so it should be easier to find space. train stations are also much much smaller than airports and trains don't make as much noise as airplanes. there are many more reasons not to build airports in the middle of a city, none of which apply to trains. the main problem for trains is finding a route for the track into the city. that can be and is solved with tunnels though. or the chinese approach where the high speed trainstations are sometimes built away from the center of the city and instead the center is connected by a dense network of subway lines. a process that started less than 20 years ago but now puts many chinese cities at the top of the list of the largest subway networks in the world.
- maxerickson 2y ago
  Is it really a mystery that long routes with less expected users see less investment? Or do you expect that fast trains would unlock a lot of travel between Chicago and Seattle?
- pfdietz 2y ago
  The "big country" contributes in that passenger-only high speed rail would be ruinously expensive to lay down and maintain. Long distance passenger rail exists at all in the US only because it can share track with freight rail.
- rgmerk 2y ago
  New York to San Francisco is roughly 3000 miles (4800 km). At 250km/h, that’s a 19 hour trip. A 19 hour plane trip from New York gets you to Singapore. Fast trains are great for journeys up to about 600km. For crossing continents, planes win, whether rail enthusiasts like it or not, and a future of transport that involves “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change is an absolute nonstarter in most of the world.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Not a single serious person I'm aware of has proposed “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change. Any solution would require multiple strategies in tandem to increase efficiencies, reduce unnecessary energy expenditures, reduce GG emmissions, transition to non FF sources, and reduce existing GG in the atmosphere. It's a daunting task and one that may be impossible to achieve.
    - rgmerk 2y ago
      Depends on your definition of “serious”. You see a lot of “just take the train” in centrist and left-leaning British media (example provided below). Easy to imagine in the UK. Not so easy from, say, Perth, Western Australia. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-how-to-cut-your-carbon-emissions-when-flying https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h...
kmeisthax 2y ago
Yes, but we don't need a train to replace NY-to-LA. At least not right away. What we need are high speed trains between nearby city pairs. Short-haul flights both waste fuel, don't get up to speed, and have their travel times doubled by TSA security theater and airline boarding nonsense. A Shinkansen-spec high speed train (320kph/200mph) would beat the plane on 200-400 mile trips, both in terms of convenience, carbon emissions, and luxury. The 2,785 road miles between NY and LA would be 14 rail hours compared to the six a plane takes. Not competitive in the slightest, and not a serious mode of travel, but I'd consider it. The three days the train currently takes sounds like the worst of a road trip combined with the worst of a plane trip.

throw0101d 2y ago

> As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic. See recent video "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcuL2S2dgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcuL2S2dgk

Fricken 2y ago

I rode Canada's VIA rail from Vancouver to Edmonton. Some poor Europeans sitting in the seat in front were freaking out when it became apparent the train was going be 10 hours late on what was billed as a 24 hour trip. They had a connecting flight to catch in Edmonton and missed it by several hours.

neffy 2y ago

Mine was over 12 hours late, as a passenger had to be airlifted off because of cardiac issues. Said passenger had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues, and hadn´t thought through the "mile high" aspect of transiting through Denver. It is one of the most amazing train trips in the world, and tbh the article doesn´t really do it justice. The day the train spends slowly going up and down the rockies, are just incredible, the scenery is amazing, and you get to know other passengers and the conductors along the way. Had some great card games in the scenery car.

lucb1e 2y ago
> had to be airlifted [...] had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues I wonder how that worked out for them. Hopefully well!
prmoustache 2y ago
Sounds weird. I checked Denver altitude and it is hardly air sickness territory. You need to go significantly higher in the nearby mountains to actually feel the effects of elevation on your breathing, fatigue and brain.
- neffy 2y ago
  That's what they said on the tannoy at least. They also reported he made it to hospital alive so hopefully all ended well. It's not actually unknown to get altitude sickness in Denver, it is one of the things the city warns about - going skiing at higher altitudes as well of course - but poor health, and just the speed which you change to that altitude, even on a train, are issues.

madduci 2y ago

> As a European used to efficient train travel As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough

throw_pm23 2y ago
Or in Germany where now about half of the rides are on time.
- johannes1234321 2y ago
  It's sad how bad it became, but when comparing to U.S. Germany is still doing fine. Both due to number of trains and in delays.
  - seabass-labrax 2y ago
    Additionally, for many kinds of journey the delays are rather unimportant as long as the frequency of service is high, which I think generally is the case in Germany. I can't see anyone being too fussed if their specific S-Bahn connection is early or late when there are still trains running on the same route every ten minutes. I suspect that the most upset and vocal users of the Deutsche Bahn are the commuters who need to be at work at a specific time yet still travel ~100km or more on hourly RE/IC trains. In that situation it's frustrating to have to catch the train a whole hour earlier to be safe.
    - wink 2y ago
      Yes and no and it highly depends where you live. Here in Munich the S-Bahn trains typically go every 20 mins during the day and sometimes every 40 very early or late. So that's already a problem if you want to arrive for work and can't just start 30min earlier, the regional trains often go every hour as you mentioned. So yeah, if you live where there's a subway or a bus then the 10min thing works, but just a tiny bit on the outskirts with only the S-Bahn it often sucks. I was very glad when I moved from "need to take S-Bahn or bus to work, or to the subway" to "walk or bus to subway" neighborhood, even if it's roughly the same distance to the city center, and both decidedly IN the city, not the outskirts.

treyd 2y ago

> but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic. This is a huge issue. Cargo trains legally have to yield to passenger trains, but in recent decades cargo trains have been made longer and longer, so they no longer physically fit into the passing sidings (which usually are built for 75 cars). It's a mess.

tdeck 2y ago
And the DoJ hasn't been enforcing Amtrak's priority dispatch since the 1970s.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  There's been a very recent attempt to change this. This was the first thing I found: https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/08/justice-department-sues-freight-railroad-improve-amtrak-service/398573/ https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/08/justice-departmen...
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Cargo (freight) trains have to yield to on time passenger trains. There's a "hole" there in the freight traffic that the passenger train fits into. (It's not simple, because the passenger train is often faster than the freights, so it's a carefully planned, moving hole in the freight.) If the passenger train is late, all that careful orchestration is blown. The hole isn't there any more. The freight trains are not required to create a new hole - the late passenger train becomes just one more train.
- wpm 2y ago
  Hmmm, but why are the passenger trains late in the first place?
  - ars 2y ago
    On the train trip I took, it was because of an unruly passenger. It turned a 9-hour trip into a 15-hour trip.

dmd 2y ago

I did Chicago-SF on the Zephyr about 20 years ago. It was a nightmare disaster of a trip. Nearly all our movement was at night due to cargo scheduling. We ended up arriving over 48 hours late. To Amtrak's credit - we complained and they refunded our entire journey.

labcomputer 2y ago

> 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late. […] (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), You are used to train journeys of more than 2800 km (more than the distance from Lisbon to Warsaw) with an average speed of over 170 km/h? Where can I find such an itinerary in Europe?

pavlov 2y ago
The Seattle-Chicago line is operated by a single company. Europe has dozens of national operators. So any direct comparison is of course difficult to make. To travel 3000 km on a high-speed train, Japan and China certainly offer the opportunity. Beijing-Guangzhou is 2230 km and operates at 350 km/h.
- briffle 2y ago
  Good luck finding a sleeper from either Portland or Seattle. They are booked 6 months out. In any other business, that would mean adding another few sleeper cars. But Amtrak doesn’t seem to care…
  - seadan83 2y ago
    There are several room options for the SEA to CHI train leaving tomorrow, Monday Oct 28th, from $600 to $1100 depending on room size. Them. Being booked six months out might be a misperception or dated, it seemed easy to find.
  - wpm 2y ago
    Amtrak loses money on basically all of their long distance routes, and are pointlessly forced to live up to some profitability standard the highways don’t and the airlines privatize (only possible due to the government paying out of pocket for all the complicated expensive stuff). They have no incentive to add more sleepers, which would be a pain in the cock to procure, for a service that loses money. Amtrak should not be required to really care about that last part, but they are.
lmm 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

seadan83 2y ago

Is a big problem for passenger trains in the US, freight has priority. Creates these long stops. Worse, if a passenger train is late, then suddenly it has to wait for a large unexpected and unplanned number of freight trains.

mullen 2y ago
> Is a big problem for passenger trains in the US, freight has priority. This simply not true. Federal Laws says that Passenger trains have priority but the law is never enforced. Freight traffic is suppose to take by-passes to let passenger traffic through and freight traffic is never suppose to block the line. However, again, the laws and rail rules are never enforced. Think about it, why would cargo have a higher priority than human traffic? Is cargo getting there an few hours later or earlier going to impact anything? With humans, it will totally impact their schedule and how often trains are used. If the Department of Transportation wanted people to start taking trains again, they would come down hard of rail companies that slow down passenger traffic.
- xenadu02 2y ago
  Freight doesn't generally use bypasses or sidings anymore. It's part of the "Precision Scheduled Railroading" movement to optimize operating ratio above all other concerns - mostly because freight train executives and investors believe that railroads are in long-term terminal decline and thus capex spending or going after new customers is a waste of time. (This is a bit glib but not that far from the truth). Freight in the US optimizes for minimal crew hours. That means longer consists that no longer fit in sidings. Expanding sidings costs money and is thus verboten. Even if the freight takes 3x as long to get somewhere they can have each crew take a leg then leave the train unattended. The railroad doesn't need to pay for overnight stays or overtime and only one or two crews are "active" in a given segment ever. Or to put it another way the limit is "we are paying for one crew on this segment of the line". Freight lines up on either side as that limit of 1xCrew shuttles whatever they can back and forth within that segment. Then you make the consists longer and longer to "buffer" the bottleneck. I assume part of the "enforcement" issue is US DOT would need to order the railroad to back trains up or do other nonsensical things that would only create more chaos and delays because as I mentioned most consists can't fit on existing sidings anymore and AFAIK the law has no provision to order the railroads to extend the sidings nor order them to do the physically impossible.