Amtrak in Houston

[Reefmonkey]

11 minutes ago, Avossos said:

I do this to Alpine alot. I like that this is overnight, but I do not enjoy the 4+ hour pause in San Antonio...

I've thought about doing it myself at least once, as a leisurely train ride experience, not as an efficient way to get out to the Marfa-Alpine-Fort Davis area. I imagine the pause in San Antonio is done as much to let freight traffic by as anything else, but I guess it also gives you a few hours of daylight to view the scenery on the most picturesque part of the trip that you wouldn't otherwise get if they didn't pause and you were pulling into Alpine at 6 AM. What's the trip like, I mean experience in the train? Do you splurge for a sleeper compartment, or sleep sitting up? If sleeper, are the compartments clean and nice? Overall is the train clean and nice, or dingy and shopworn? Is there a dining car? If so, what kind of food do they have, and is it decent?

[cspwal]

The stop in San Antonio is to add cars from the Texas Eagle from Chicago to go to LA on the sunset limited. It’s a ridiculous waste of time and resources since the thru passengers have to get off the train 

Also there’s a 15 min scheduled stop for gas outside of San Antonio before the 5 hour layover 

[Reefmonkey]

Wow, that's nuts, cspwal, both of those. The stop in San Antonio is like midnight to 2:45 on the schedule I've seen, so really, they wake up all the sleeping through passengers and make them get off? And then the gas stop just before that - a typical locomotive can hold about 4,000 gallons of diesel and gets 480 miles to the gallon, typically uses about 3 gallons a week, and you're telling me they can't wait to fuel it when they're turning it around in Los Angeles or Louisiana? 

[TrainTrak]

480 ton-miles-per-gallon.  not the same as 480 mile per gallon.

at 150 tons, an Amtrak train should get about 3 miles per gallon.

[Reefmonkey]

15 minutes ago, TrainTrak said:

480 ton-miles-per-gallon.  not the same as 480 mile per gallon.

at 150 tons, an Amtrak train should get about 3 miles per gallon.

My mistake, I should have known, even with a diesel-electric being extremely efficient and all that mass and Newton's 1st law once it gets going, 480 did seem awfully high to me. But still 3 miles a gallon with a 4,000 gallon capacity is 12,000 miles between refueling, and New Orleans to Los Angeles is only about 2,000 miles, or am I getting those figures wrong too?

Edited May 25, 2022 by Reefmonkey

[Avossos]

Food is good not great. I would not travel in this way other than the sleeper. Too much time to be sitting in one position and the dining car is only available for sleeper passengers.

[cspwal]

Diner car is available to everyone, though you have to pay if you’re in coach. And I typically am moving between cars constantly unless I’m sleeping, though I wouldn’t want to be on there too long. 
 

I haven’t ridden it between Houston and NOLA, so if there’s no fuel stops between Houston and NOLA filling in San Antonio makes sense, just not a separate stop from the station 

[august948]

3 hours ago, Reefmonkey said:

My mistake, I should have known, even with a diesel-electric being extremely efficient and all that mass and Newton's 1st law once it gets going, 480 did seem awfully high to me. But still 3 miles a gallon with a 4,000 gallon capacity is 12,000 miles between refueling, and New Orleans to Los Angeles is only about 2,000 miles, or am I getting those figures wrong too?

The engine pictured above in the thread is a GE P42DC and has a 2,200 gallon tank.

[Avossos]

20 hours ago, cspwal said:

Diner car is available to everyone, though you have to pay if you’re in coach. And I typically am moving between cars constantly unless I’m sleeping, though I wouldn’t want to be on there too long. 
 

I haven’t ridden it between Houston and NOLA, so if there’s no fuel stops between Houston and NOLA filling in San Antonio makes sense, just not a separate stop from the station 

Well - we are both right…

diner cars were only available for sleeper train ticket holders during some parts of COVID. They may have changed it back now.

[Reefmonkey]

21 hours ago, cspwal said:

Diner car is available to everyone, though you have to pay if you’re in coach. And I typically am moving between cars constantly unless I’m sleeping, though I wouldn’t want to be on there too long. 
 

I haven’t ridden it between Houston and NOLA, so if there’s no fuel stops between Houston and NOLA filling in San Antonio makes sense, just not a separate stop from the station 

Amtrak's stations are in convenient places for travelers, like downtown Houston, or over near the Alamodome in San Antonio. These are not good places to have the large fuel depots with high capacity tanks for rapid fueling of locomotives with 2-4,000 gallon fuel capacities. Those kinds of facilities are found in large railyards in industrial areas on the outskirts of town. But like I said, given that the fuel range of a train is at least a couple times the distance between the two termini of the Sunset line (Los Angeles and New Orleans), they shouldn't really need to make a fuel stop en route, it would seem to me that it would make more sense to refuel the locomotives during turnaround at the termini. If somehow I'm really off on their range, the other option would be to switch to refueled locomotives while they are sitting in San Antonio. It doesn't take that long, and they have plenty of time from the sound of it.

[cspwal]

They do have fueling facilities at other stations.  The Texas Eagle gets fuel in St Louis and Fort Worth iirc, both at the station during a 30 minute stop.  I'm sure that it took some investment, but for 3 times a week train you really just need a pump and a tanker truck.  It's not like they're turning around 12 an hour or something

[editor]

On 5/25/2022 at 2:06 PM, Avossos said:

Food is good not great. I would not travel in this way other than the sleeper. Too much time to be sitting in one position and the dining car is only available for sleeper passengers.

I almost like the food on Amtrak.  The steak I had on the Sunset Limited last week was quite good.  And the hamburger was excellent.

If you're a frequent Amtrak rider, you've probably noticed that the quality has slipped since COVID.  A lot of that seems to be down to inexperienced staff.  Also, the real plates and napkins have been replaced with disposable.  Hopefully that's temporary.

Is it fine dining?  No.  But you're on a train.  It's about on par with Applebee's or most other chain restaurants.

On 5/26/2022 at 12:00 PM, Avossos said:

Well - we are both right…

diner cars were only available for sleeper train ticket holders during some parts of COVID. They may have changed it back now.

As of last week, it was still no coach passengers in the dining car. 

[editor]

Amtrak's biggest problem has always been, and continues to be, being a guest on freight tracks.  And it's become worse since the supply chain crisis started.  For three reasons:

1. Because of the increased demand, freight companies are running longer trains.  The longer freight trains often have to travel at slower speeds, depending on track conditions and the route.
2. While there are plenty of cars to add to the end of a freight train, there are only so many engines to go around.  So the trains run slower because of that, as well.
3. In an ideal world, the slow freight trains pull over to a siding to let the faster passenger trains pass.  But now the freight trains are often longer than the sidings, so they can't pull over.

The train I was on most recently had a selection of train-oriented magazines available for the passengers to read.  One that I picked up focused on the northeast, but had a section about Amtrak with information from across the nation.  It was very informative.

Riding Amtrak between Houston and New Orleans has three pain points:

1. The bridge over the Neches River is packed with traffic.
2. The Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi into New Orleans is packed with traffic.
3. There are a couple of places between Lafayette and New Orleans where the train actually has to stop so the conductor can get out and manually throw a switch.  I don't know what the story is with this.  It isn't always the same place, so it doesn't appear to be a problem with an individual switch.  Maybe the freight company that runs the track didn't put the switch back into the right position, or the system that's supposed to do that automatically isn't responding. 

[Ross]

On 5/25/2022 at 1:55 PM, Reefmonkey said:

My mistake, I should have known, even with a diesel-electric being extremely efficient and all that mass and Newton's 1st law once it gets going, 480 did seem awfully high to me. But still 3 miles a gallon with a 4,000 gallon capacity is 12,000 miles between refueling, and New Orleans to Los Angeles is only about 2,000 miles, or am I getting those figures wrong too?

I don't think trains get 3 miles per gallon. The numbers are hard to quantify, but it's probably less than one mile per gallon, and is dependent as well on how much power the train is using for heat, lights, etc.

[Houston19514]

1 hour ago, Ross said:

I don't think trains get 3 miles per gallon. The numbers are hard to quantify, but it's probably less than one mile per gallon, and is dependent as well on how much power the train is using for heat, lights, etc.

MPG for trains is a pretty useless number and not often used.  A locomotive running down the tracks by itself will obviously get a lot higher mpg than one pulling a fully-loaded train.  FWIW, I think a fully-loaded train will get something on the order of 0.1 mpg.  The useful number that is used by railroads is ton-miles per gallon.

[august948]

On 6/11/2022 at 7:26 AM, editor said:

Amtrak's biggest problem has always been, and continues to be, being a guest on freight tracks.  And it's become worse since the supply chain crisis started.  For three reasons:

1. Because of the increased demand, freight companies are running longer trains.  The longer freight trains often have to travel at slower speeds, depending on track conditions and the route.
2. While there are plenty of cars to add to the end of a freight train, there are only so many engines to go around.  So the trains run slower because of that, as well.
3. In an ideal world, the slow freight trains pull over to a siding to let the faster passenger trains pass.  But now the freight trains are often longer than the sidings, so they can't pull over.

The train I was on most recently had a selection of train-oriented magazines available for the passengers to read.  One that I picked up focused on the northeast, but had a section about Amtrak with information from across the nation.  It was very informative.

Riding Amtrak between Houston and New Orleans has three pain points:

1. The bridge over the Neches River is packed with traffic.
2. The Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi into New Orleans is packed with traffic.
3. There are a couple of places between Lafayette and New Orleans where the train actually has to stop so the conductor can get out and manually throw a switch.  I don't know what the story is with this.  It isn't always the same place, so it doesn't appear to be a problem with an individual switch.  Maybe the freight company that runs the track didn't put the switch back into the right position, or the system that's supposed to do that automatically isn't responding. 

In the days when rail companies ran their own passenger services, passenger trains we're routinely given highest priority and freight trains pulled into sidings to let them through.  These days with Amtrak I don't know if that is always the case.

As for the turnouts, the turnout switch is typically manual except in certain cases.  On a freight line, it's normal for the train to stop so a conductor can get off and set the switches for the activity at hand. 

[editor]

21 hours ago, august948 said:

In the days when rail companies ran their own passenger services, passenger trains we're routinely given highest priority and freight trains pulled into sidings to let them through.  These days with Amtrak I don't know if that is always the case.

It was the case until recently.  The freight railroads get fined if the passenger trains are late.  I forget exactly what the metric is, but 80% if a figure stuck in my mind.

The problem is that there's so much demand that the freight companies can make money by just paying the fine now.  There isn't a financial incentive to care.  Just like how FedEx and UPS work parking tickets for their trucks into their accounting as just another cost of doing business.

[editor]

On 6/11/2022 at 10:14 AM, Houston19514 said:

MPG for trains is a pretty useless number and not often used.  A locomotive running down the tracks by itself will obviously get a lot higher mpg than one pulling a fully-loaded train.  FWIW, I think a fully-loaded train will get something on the order of 0.1 mpg.  The useful number that is used by railroads is ton-miles per gallon.

Here's some numbers:

• Moving 1,770,545,245,000 ton-miles of freight
• Consuming 4,062,025,082 gallons of diesel fuel (including freight trains and trains in switching yards, but excluding passenger trains)

The average works out to be 435.88 ton-miles per gallon of fuel.

Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2008/07/fuel-efficient-freight-trains/

 

I've read that the only shipping method that uses less fuel than trains is ships.  But while both use far less fuel, they don't have the same environmental standards as trucks.  Ships are notoriously dirty.

[hindesky]

https://www.chron.com/news/local/article/texas-trains-to-San-Antonio-17500197.php

"Fans of rail transportation rejoice, or at least enjoy some reserved optimism. The Texas Department of Transportation made an official request last week to the Federal Railroad Administration for funding to expand service for travelers between the state's largest cities and beyond."

[cougarpad]

If Amtrack is serious about expanding in Texas then they are going to have to updgrade their tracks and find a way to increase speeds of their trains. As of now a car trip is around the same as the train trip to San Antonio or Dallas if Amtrack adds the route. They must find a way to make the trip by train fater then car or Texans will continue to choose car over train to San Antonio and Dallas.

[cspwal]

The big issue is the sheer amount of single track railroads combined with freight trains that don't fit on sidings.  If a freight train is coming the opposite way the the amtrak train has to stop and wait for it to pass - there's no other choice

[BeerNut]

On 10/16/2022 at 10:03 AM, cougarpad said:

If Amtrack is serious about expanding in Texas then they are going to have to updgrade their tracks and find a way to increase speeds of their trains. As of now a car trip is around the same as the train trip to San Antonio or Dallas if Amtrack adds the route. They must find a way to make the trip by train fater then car or Texans will continue to choose car over train to San Antonio and Dallas.

I can deal with it taking a little longer but the on time performance has to improve.

[cougarpad]

19 hours ago, BeerNut said:

I can deal with it taking a little longer but the on time performance has to improve.

Then Amtrack is going to have to install some passing tracks for passengers trains to pass the Freight trains. As of now it takes longer to get to San Antontio to Houston by Amtrak compared to car. They are going to have to install some bypass tracks to prevent right of way issues between freight and passenger rail. This will have to occur with the proposed Houston to Dallas line that is UP owned. People will choose car over train if it takes more than an hour more to get between cities using Amtrack.

 

https://www.tripsavvy.com/how-to-get-from-houston-to-san-antonio-4796768

Edited October 18, 2022 by cougarpad

[Ross]

37 minutes ago, cougarpad said:

Then Amtrack is going to have to install some passing tracks for passengers trains to pass the Freight trains. As of now it takes longer to get to San Antontio to Houston by Amtrak compared to car. They are going to have to install some bypass tracks to prevent right of way issues between freight and passenger rail. This will have to occur with the proposed Houston to Dallas line that is UP owned. People will choose car over train if it takes more than an hour more to get between cities using Amtrack.

 

https://www.tripsavvy.com/how-to-get-from-houston-to-san-antonio-4796768

Amtrak doesn't own any of the tracks it uses in Texas, and it's not going to spend any money building passing tracks. Amtrak is at the mercy of the freight line operators.

[ehbowen]

On 5/25/2022 at 3:14 PM, cspwal said:

Diner car is available to everyone, though you have to pay if you’re in coach. And I typically am moving between cars constantly unless I’m sleeping, though I wouldn’t want to be on there too long. 
 

I haven’t ridden it between Houston and NOLA, so if there’s no fuel stops between Houston and NOLA filling in San Antonio makes sense, just not a separate stop from the station 

The thing is UP has a major fuel rack (for their freights) just east of San Antonio, the Sunset  has to fill up somewhere between New Orleans and California, and it's a heckuva lot cheaper for Amtrak to purchase fuel from UP than it is to have a tank truck meet the train (or $$ build their own fuel facility $$) at the San Antonio station. Or the Houston station; by the way, sometimes during hurricanes or similar Amtrak will turn the Sunset in Houston and when that happens often they'll have a tank truck drive onto the platform and top up the locomotives as part of the turnaround.

[ehbowen]

On 3/26/2022 at 2:56 PM, editor said:

 

It doesn't.  The track to Chicago diverges in San Antonio.  From Houston, you can only go east or west on Amtrak, unless you take an Amtrak bus to Longview and join the Chicago-bound train there.

https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/Maps/Amtrak-System-Map-1018.pdf

I've done the Sunset Limited between Houston and Los Angeles once, the Cascades a bunch of times (Seattle ↔︎ Vancouver), the Coast Starlight several times (Seattle ↔︎ Portland), the Empire Builder more times than I can remember (Chicago ↔︎ Milwaukee, Saint Paul, Seattle), and the Chicago ↔︎ Saint Louis run more times than I can remember (I remember it being called the Cardinal back then, but now it's just called "Illinois Service," and Cardinal is used for something that goes to New York).

On The Other Hand, since capacity is constrained by the single-track railroads, there's a lot of traffic from Houston east, and as Amtrak has no scheduled station stops between Houston and Beaumont the UP dispatchers normally make Amtrak use 'directional running'. As a legacy of the megamergers Union Pacific has two parallel single-track routes between Houston and Beaumont: The ex-Southern Pacific line through Crosby and Liberty and the ex-Missouri Pacific line which runs north of it through Huffman and Hardin. Normally, these days, eastbound trains take the ex-MoPac line and westbounders take the traditional Sunset Route.

To get to the eastbound track from the downtown Amtrak station the train has to get on the former Missouri Pacific route which originally ran through Conroe and Trinity to Palestine (former route of the Houston section of the MoPac Texas Eagle). Problem is there is no direct flyover or crossover from point A to point B. So what the eastbound train has to do is to follow the Sunset Route until it's past Tower 26, then back up on the diverging track south past Lyons Avenue which puts it on the old MoPac line, and finally proceed northbound on the ex-MoPac main until it diverges east for Beaumont just past 610.

This dance takes a little time and, needless to say, throws a monkey wrench into freight movements through the area (and the feeling is mutual). But I suppose it's simpler and cheaper than double-tracking the Sunset Route or, heaven forbid, building a spur route or crossover intended primarily for passenger traffic....

Edited November 21, 2022 by ehbowen

[editor]

@ehbowen— Since you seem to know a lot about this sort of thing, can you explain this for me:

On a Sunset Limited trip to New Orleans recently, the train picked us up at the downtown Houston station, but instead of leaving by going through downtown past Dakota Lofts, it backed up for what felt like several miles into the Heights area, and went north, then east. 

Is this usual?

[ehbowen]

1 hour ago, editor said:

@ehbowen— Since you seem to know a lot about this sort of thing, can you explain this for me:

On a Sunset Limited trip to New Orleans recently, the train picked us up at the downtown Houston station, but instead of leaving by going through downtown past Dakota Lofts, it backed up for what felt like several miles into the Heights area, and went north, then east. 

Is this usual?

While unusual it's far from being unique. Reference this map (which is a few years out of date). What the dispatcher was doing was ordering your train to back up on the "passenger main" where the Amtrak station is to west of Chaney Junction, where the freight main line (which, incidentally, is the one with the graffiti-covered bridge over I-45 and I-10 north of downtown) diverges. Once on the freight main, it's a direct shot to Tower 26 and thence to Belt Junction which is where the ex-MoPac line to Beaumont and New Orleans (main line #4 on the map) leaves the terminal area.

Why do they do that? Can't say. It could be that there was heavy freight train traffic at and around Tower 26 blocking the spur lines, or perhaps track work was in progress. While the directional running I mentioned above is standard operating procedure now that can change at the drop of a hat; if major track work is underway on either main track to Beaumont all traffic in both directions will likely be diverted to the other one.

[hindesky]

[j_cuevas713]

Damn Houston needs a better train station. I remember a while back the city had concepts of a multimodal transit facility on Main near Buffalo Bayou.