46 replies to this topic

[KevinKorell]

The on board chief should have had the power to do what he could to make the trip enjoyable, and he should have had a form to send in to get a refund on the fare.

Didn't they do away with the position of On Board Chief several years ago?

[ICGsteve]

Kevin, I have not been aboard for awhile. Ok, if Amtrak did away with that position then they need to bring it back. I know that Amtrak had complained that the chief had no power because union work rules solidly defined jobs, and I would add that AMtrak never was willing to move any of the managment power the the crew chief, so he end up being mostly a public rep person. How about it Ron? If there had been a AMtrak Crew chief handing out information, free stuff, telling your wife that Amtrak had messed-up therefor your trip probably was free, checking up on the sleeper attendent, would it had made a difference in how your wife feels about AMtrak? In my mind this crew chief has an credit card and can arrange to have Dominos meet the train so that he can throw a pizza party in the lounge if he thinks it will save the trip for the passengers. In other words, A front line manager.

Edited by ICGsteve, 09 March 2004 - 03:11 PM.

[AlanB]

Alan, your point about no crew being able to take motive power 80 miles down line is a good one, but one that was partly caused by AMtrak bringing the crews into their employ. When the crews were still employed by the railroad it would have been a simple task to pull a crew off of the next frieght scheduled to depart Chi, calling a new crew for the frieght (4 hours time needed).

While I’ll admit that I was still a kid when Amtrak was formed, I’m under the impression that the freight RR’s wanted to get rid of that payroll item. After all they forced Congress to force Amtrak to start paying pension money for workers who had never worked a day in their lives for Amtrak and never would. I don’t think that Amtrak had a choice, but even if they did, it would still be good management to have direct control over the people responsible for operating your trains.

However, lets assume that the crews did still belong to the freight RR’s. Even then it still would have taken longer to reach the stranded train from Chicago than from the BNSF yard and you would still be sending the two engines down a very busy main line.

I am not sure that in better days it would have been done in a case such as this. I suspect that Amtrak would have gotten the train to Kansas City as best they could and then done a fix there, most likely replacing one unit. I am sure that the SF always, and Amtrak almost always has banked some extra power there for emergencies. I believe that Amtrak also once would have been able to have a tech waiting in Galesburg to see about that fuel pump.

I was just in Kansas City a week and a half ago, twice, and I saw no extra Amtrak power lying around. Not being a mechanic, I can’t speak to the pros & cons of trying to swap out a fuel pump enroute.

If AMtrak is going to run a national system on the cheap where they leave no capacity to manage problems, then they must be prepared to comp tickets, give out free meals, and have information at the ready.

Amtrak doesn’t want to run a national system on the cheap; Congress is demanding that of Amtrak. They’ve been demanding that of Amtrak for it’s entire 30 + years in existence and it hasn’t mattered who was sitting in the Presidents chair at Amtrak.

The on board chief should have had the power to do what he could to make the trip enjoyable, and he should have had a form to send in to get a refund on the fare.

So wait, you want every LSA (Lead Service Attendant, there is no OBC anymore) to carry around 225 (more during peak times) blank refund forms on the off chance that his train might be hours late? The LSA’s already packing a ton of paper to account for the food & cash paid in the diner, plus his own luggage and now he/she’s gotta pack an extra ream of paper?

I also haven’t noticed any flight attendant’s packing such forms either. If your flight is cancelled then it’s up to you to visit the ticket counter or call up the airline and get a refund. I also haven’t seen any cruise lines handing out things on-board when they have a problem. It’s always after the fact that you get something in the mail. I’m not sure why you feel that Amtrak should be held to a higher standard than it’s counterparts.

It’s simply not cost effective, nor IMHO is it smart from a theft perspective, to deal with something like this on-board the train. This is something that should be dealt with after the fact.

I’m not saying that Rron and his fellow passengers shouldn’t be entitled to some reasonable compensation. That compensation could be in the form of credit for a future trip or a partial refund, but it should be handled after the fact and by people trained to deal with it. It should not be handled on-board the train unduly burdening the LSA with the need to process as many as 432 credits without the aid of a computer. (The number 432 comes from the total capacity of a peak train running with 3 sleepers and 4 coaches.)

Here we have the mechanical crews srewwing-up (sorry Alan, loosing 2/3 of the power 80 miles out of Chicago means somone did not do their job), a few hours later management gives-up on the train, then seemingly the crew gives up on the passengers for the rest of the trip. This disaster was a collective failure, and lack of money does not explain it all.

I readily admit that I’m not a mechanic, although I do have a fair understanding of how and why an engine works. However you could probably drop a fuel pump on my foot and I wouldn’t know it for what it is. Therefore I can’t even begin to speculate about what an overheated support bearing is, nor why it is a problem.

I can tell you that I work with manufactured things day in and out. Despite our best intentions and efforts things do break. Things don’t always perform as expected. Just because a manufacturer states that a fuel pump for a diesel engine should last for let’s say 5,000 hours of operation does not mean that on rare occasions that one pump still can’t fail ahead of schedule.

I posted the steps that Amtrak takes as engines come into the yard. Even with those tests it is still possible that the fuel pump could have passed, only to fail hours later. We humans are not perfect and therefore the things that we make are not perfect.

I consider myself to be a reasonable and intelligent individual, therefore since there are not enough facts in evidence, I allowed for the possibility that it could well have been a failure on Amtrak’s part to test that engine or to check critical things. That of course would also reflect on the management of Amtrak to ensure that the employees did their jobs.

You however seem inclined to not accept the fact that this could indeed have been simple mechanical failure. You seem to have already concluded based upon meager evidence, that this has to be a management problem. That I’m sorry to say is simply not fair.

Yes I will grant that with 2 engine failures, that the odds are against Amtrak. The odds do indeed favor that someone indeed did not do what he/she was supposed to. But if you are a reasonable man, then you must concede that it is indeed possible that Amtrak did do everything right and the fates simply conspired against them and poor Rron and his wife, when two separate engines bit the dust.

[ICGsteve]

As I recall Amtrak mostly wanted to bring the crews under Amtrak because it saved money and because they would have more say over who was operating the trains. Amtrak was in effect paying the frieght railroads to administer the crews, and Amtrak could do it much cheaper. The railroads were fine with this because crewing Amtrak was a hassle that they did not want. I am not saying that this was a bad move, or one that could be avoided, just that it does hamper Amtrak's ability to raise crews with no notice.

On the paperwork, I was talking about a form to send in for a refund. Passengers like offical paperwork with an address and the name of the person they will be dealing with for satisfaction. The on board official would not hand out money, or approve refunds.

Re A power bank in KC: what I am saying is that for what I believe is the first time ever, as of last year a passenger hauler no longer has the ability to replace a locomotive in KC. LAst month I documented the private varnish people saying that Amtrak, in an effort to save money, has pulled almost all extra power from reserve placement. I am not so sure that this is money well saved, and this managment decision doomed Ron's trip.

Chicago has always been Amtrak primary non-electric locomotive shop. They have tried to bring as many of the units as they can into chicago for the major inspections, and they have the ability to do major work in the shop. I actually have been in the shop before it was upgraded during the 80's. I have no information that this has changed so chicago is the one terminal in the system most able to notice and fix any locomotive problem. The only way two of three units die 80 miles out of chicago is that they where not processed correctly in chicago. The least distrubing failure would be that the crews who brought the units into Chicago did not notify the repair shop of problems that they had noticed in route. There are more alarming and more likely possibilities: MAybe these units where inline for inspections or work and some fool released them for service, because he had nothing more fit for service to put on the train. Is it normal to have three units on this train? Maybe two questionable units were pressed into service in the hopes that one would work. Amtrak's motive power is relatively new, in most cases they go months and tens of thousands of miles with nothing but fluids,lube and the computer checks as outlined in an earlier post. I can say with 99% certaintly that the failure that took place in this account can not happen unless repair crews and/or management failed to perform their duties.

Am I sounding harsh on AMtrak mangement Alan? I have already documented deep labor-managment problems in the shops. We know for a fact that on top of that Gunn got it into his head to completely restructure managment last year. Look at his managment team and you see a lot of wet between the ears rookies. Top it of with many accounts such as the following from last summer:

In addition, there are currently job postings for almost every Mechanical Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent job at Amtrak. This is because instead of the Mechanical department reporting to a Terminal Superintendent or a General Manager, it will now be an independent group, reporting to the CMO, Jonathan Klein. There are many changes in that area, too, includng Klein's intent to restaff all of the management in Mechanical to suit his wants, and hence the job postings.--Source withheld

here While I grant you that this post is only one step above rumor, do you see a pattern developing here? I do, it is called indications of bad managment of the repair shops.

Edited by ICGsteve, 10 March 2004 - 03:18 AM.

[AlanB]

On the paperwork, I was talking about a form to send in for a refund. Passengers like offical paperwork with an address and the name of the person they will be dealing with for satisfaction. The on board official would not hand out money, or approve refunds.

I'm glad, as I shudder to think about trying to hand out credits and such on-board the train. It would be an overwhelming task, not to mention one fraught with dangerous pitfalls.

However while I understand that having a form to hand out might be nice, again your still asking the LSA to potentially need to carry a heck of a lot of paper. Even if we took my earlier number of 432 and cut it in half, assuming that many people travel in pairs and could therefore use just one form, that's still 216 forms for a full Superliner train. There may even be a few trains where the passenger count goes higher at peak season.

Again 216 forms is almost a ream of paper. That's a lot of weight to be carrying around on the off chance that you're working on the one or two trains a month that are horribly late and it was indeed Amtrak's fault.

Finally, you couldn’t give them the name of the person that they would be dealing with. First off there are multiple people that would be handling the situation. Shear demand requires more than one person. Secondly people come and go all the time for various reasons, so you’d either have to keep reprinting the form with a new name or that poor LSA would once again have to right that name on each form.

While I agree that people would feel better having something in hand, I’m just not sure that a refund form is practical. Perhaps if Amtrak were to set up a special 800 number for handling incidents and then simply leave a box of business cards imprinted with that number on the train that would help. Those cards, along with a few carefully worded announcements from the LSA telling people what to do should be sufficient. He can also make himself available to the passengers who might have further questions, but he should also make it quite clear that he has nothing to do with the process.

Just as an FYI, since you mentioned that you didn’t know that the OBC was gone, the LSA is basically the dinning car steward position souped up a bit to place him in charge of the café car and the attendants in coach & the sleepers.

Re A power bank in KC: what I am saying is that for what I believe is the first time ever, as of last year a passenger hauler no longer has the ability to replace a locomotive in KC. LAst month I documented the private varnish people saying that Amtrak, in an effort to save money, has pulled almost all extra power from reserve placement. I am not so sure that this is money well saved, and this managment decision  doomed Ron's trip.

Granted. I too would agree that not having spare power available in certain key cities is probably a bad decision. However faced with the expense of keeping standby power operational for those rare occasions vs. taking that money to fix the desperately needed wreck damaged cars for example is a tough decision for any manager. You’re really between a rock and a hard place. You need both, yet the funding only allows for one.

However as I pointed out before, running at 70 mph vs. 79 mph, really didn’t doom Rron’s trip. The time difference is minimal between those operating speeds. What doomed Rron’s trip were the crew replacement issues and an apparently lackluster OBS crew. Regardless of an on time train or a late running train, he shouldn’t have to send out a search party to find the sleeping car attendant.

Chicago has always been Amtrak primary non-electric locomotive shop. They have tried to bring as many of the units as they can into chicago for the major inspections, and they have the ability to do major work in the shop. I actually have been in the shop before it was upgraded during the 80's. I have no information that this has changed so chicago is the one  terminal in the system most able to notice and fix any locomotive problem.

Chicago remains one of the major bases, especially for major overhaul work. Sanford Florida and New Orleans can also still do heavy work, although I had heard one report that NO was being cut back. I’m not sure if it actually happened or not though. Sanford does all the work for the Auto Train and its P40’s.

Otherwise the other Amtrak facilities are largely for lighter work, places like Spokane, Miami, Albany NY, Boston, LA, and probably a few others that I’ve missed.

The only way two of three units die 80 miles out of chicago is that they where not processed correctly in chicago. The least distrubing  failure would be  that the crews who brought the units into Chicago did not notify the repair shop of problems that they had noticed in route. There are more alarming and more likely possibilities: MAybe these units where inline for inspections or work and some fool released them for service, because he had nothing more fit for service to put on the train. Is it normal to have three units on this train? Maybe two questionable units were pressed into service in the hopes that one would work.  Amtrak's motive power is relatively new, in most cases they go months and tens of thousands of miles with nothing but fluids,lube and the computer checks as outlined in an earlier post. I can say with 99% certaintly that the failure that took place in this account can not happen unless repair crews and/or management failed to perform their duties.

Failure to report road problems to the pit crews has long been a problem for Amtrak. It existed long before David took over the throttle at Amtrak. My friend the electrical tech often complained of that issue.

It is normal for the Chief to run with three engines and in fact it used to run with four, until Amtrak started phasing out the Express Trak and lightening the load on the power.

Am I  sounding harsh on AMtrak mangement Alan? I have already documented deep labor-managment problems in the shops. We know for a fact that on top of that Gunn got it into his head to completely restructure managment last year.  Look at his managment team and you see a lot of wet between the ears rookies. Top it of with many accounts such as the following from last summer:

In addition, there are currently job postings for almost every Mechanical Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent job at Amtrak. This is because instead of the Mechanical department reporting to a Terminal Superintendent or a General Manager, it will now be an independent group, reporting to the CMO, Jonathan Klein. There are many changes in that area, too, includng Klein's intent to restaff all of the management in Mechanical to suit his wants, and hence the job postings.--Source withheld

here While I grant you that this post is only one step above rumor, do you see a pattern developing here? I do, it is called indications of bad managment of the repair shops.

Yes, you are sounding harsh. A worker shouldn’t need a good manager to write down on his paperwork that the heat sensor in that engine was going off during that engines last assignment. A worker shouldn’t need a good manager to make one last walk through on a train to ensure that he/she did vacuum each and every car. A worker shouldn’t need a good manager to make sure that he’s available to put up the beds in the sleeping car when a passenger wakes up. Heck a worker shouldn’t even need a manager at all to do those things.

These are not management issues. An employee shouldn’t require that a manager is always staring over his or her shoulders to do their job. They should have enough pride and concern to ensure that they’ve done their job to the best of their ability. Thankfully there are many Amtrak workers who don’t need constant supervision, but there are still plenty that do. Hopefully Amtrak can continue to weed those bad apples out.

Not withstanding Rron’s obviously bad crew, I personally have seen improvement within the company in the last two years. As you may recall my answer to your post enquiring about my recent trip, I noted that the Lake Shore a train notorious for its horrible diner crews, presented me with two decent crews. I’m not suggesting that they were all dancing in the isles for my entertainment, although one came close and I joked with him on a few occasions. However all were pleasant, all appeared to be doing their jobs, all were working to provide their patrons with speedy service.

Now yes, I don’t disagree that Amtrak has also had management issues for years. Cronyism under past Amtrak presidents has really hurt Amtrak. Prior to Gunn’s arrival we had 70 vice-presidents just for the Northeast Corridor. You mention the wet behind the ears issue.

Well Stan Bagly is probably the best example of why Gunn’s new team is wet behind the years. When ordered to cut the fat on the NEC Stan refused to blow his friends out of the water. So Gunn blew him out of the water. I’m sure that the same scenario has played itself out at the many levels of management. So they’ve cleaned house in effect and it will take a while to rebuild the house properly.

My buddy the tech from Florida provides me with a great example of the old management problem. I want to say that he served in the Air Force, could have been the Navy, for several years. He also went to school for electrical engineering. Under the old management system, pre Gunn, he found himself reporting to a manager who had zero qualifications to be a manager.

His manager had once been a café attendant on the Silver service. A friend of this so-called manager got him promoted to head up the commissary in Hialeah. After thoroughly screwing up the commissary, such that trains went out missing fully half, if not more, of the food supplies that they needed, he was moved to be the shop manager in the car shop.

So here’s my friend, a hard working well trained electrical tech, reporting to a man who barely knew how to change a light bulb, much less order them. Nine months after Gunn’s arrival, neither this manager nor his friend who promoted him works for Amtrak.

It’s not easy to rebuild an entrenched management and it takes time to get things to gel. Amtrak may have many younger managers out there now, but if you can’t get the old guys to walk the new walk, then you must start over with someone new who understands the new rules. It took years to build the old bloated management team; it’s going to take at least 2 or 3 to rebuild a new management team.

As for the new structure of whom reports to whom, Gunn is doing nothing more than what the freight RR’s do right now. The freight RR’s don’t have 8 different mechanical departments, each ordering their own parts. Why should Amtrak? In this age of computerization, there should be no issues with all shops reporting their inventories to one central department so that orders can be placed in bulk for maximum savings.

But that does mean that each maintenance supervisor at a base should be reporting to a central person, not a division manager who may not fully understand maintenance issues and therefore direct more of his/her budget into on-board amenities. Or worse order two engines to go out knowing that they need work, just so that it becomes another division’s budget item to fix. This type of thing used to happen a lot around here.

Sunnyside, while not a heavy car repair shop, used to allow many Silver Service cars to go out with things unfixed that they could have fixed. That way when they got to Hialeah it was their problem and it came out of their budget. This practice has stopped under David, unfortunately things still aren’t always fixed properly at Sunnyside, but that’s another issue.

While I will admit that part of me liked the old way where each train sort of had its own flavor, that is nonetheless an expensive way to operate. Plus you end up with wild swings in customer service and satisfaction. With the more traditional RR management structure that Gunn is putting into place, we will loose that flavor, but hopefully we will end up with consistent customer service.

I know that you wish that Gunn would be more political, but I do think that he has taken great strides to overhaul Amtrak and its management. He’s putting himself out in the field and riding the trains, visiting the shops, the stations, and other areas. Yes in some sense he also needs to run his desk, but he’s trying to lead by example. He’s trying to show his workers that he does care and he wants their input to help fix things. He’s trying to show his managers that they can’t sit on their butts that they must get out there and make sure that things get fixed.

My buddy the techie from Florida got to meet Gunn about 8 months after Gunn took over. My buddy was late to the meeting, because he was busy fixing a car needed for the Palmetto that night. When he slunk in trying to be inconspicuous, Gunn pointedly stopped talking and introduced himself to my friend and walked over to shake his hand. He then quickly summarized what he had already discussed, before returning to the topic at hand.

By and large this meeting was about two things, one discussing where David thought Amtrak should be going. Two discussing where the employees thought Amtrak should be going. My buddy was thoroughly impressed as David asked him several thoughtful pointed questions about his job and how he thought things could be done better. And David did take notes!

While my buddy never mentioned his useless manager, for fear that it would cost him his job, it was only a little over a month later that that manager and his crony went bye-bye. We’ve no proof that Gunn was ultimately responsible for their terminations, but we sure do have our suspicions.

[ICGsteve]

Alan, I don't really have questions as the whether the operations changes of the last year make sense. What I doubt is Amtrak's ability to withstand the additional instability. Gunn made a lot of changes just months after taking over, the workers have no Collective Barganing Agreement, and Gunn is without enough strength in the managment crew to see this restructuring through properly. This move had to wait. I doubt that anyone will look into the winter car shortage, but it is highly likely that the number one contributing factor was the loss of institutional memory in the car shops due the the turnover in managment since last summer. A railroad can not clean house of its maintanance managers in one year, rewrite the flow chart, and be ok. No matter how good Gunn's plan is in concept, the net result will be that it will take Amtrak a couple of years just to get back to the quality of oversight that it had last summer, and than only if Gunn and Klein have been able to recruit good people. The jury is still out on that. Time will tell this tale, there is no place to hide the truth. We will eventually see expense reporting, we will notice equitment shortages, and hopefully someone in Congress will force Amtrak to report equitment availablity statistics.

[frank]

While I too can see how a trip like this can leave a sour taste in one's mouth, I also have to state that it seems this event was blown a wee bit out of porportion. Yeah, things go wrong. Systems break down. These engines are AMAZINGLY complex, and they are run at high RPM's day in and day out. I would also argue that it's conceivable that two of these units could break down within 80 miles of a 'checkup'. Stuff happens. And everyone knows that long before Amtrak was born that freight ruled and still does and passenger trains have and will always take the siderail. It's a fact of life. Most assuredly once schedules are altered, backing everything up. But to lable this 13 or so hour delay as a "disaster" falls a little bit into the Drama Queen catagorie for me. 9/9/02,......Indian passenger train plunges into river killing 119. 6/24/03,......288 dead following derailment of passenger train in Tanzania. Now these are disasters. I don't mean any disrespect. And I know that situations like this can really throw off family reunions and connections and so on. But let's be real here. You were late. Does that mean that because of equipment malfunction or BNSF or CSX or whatever, that Amtrak should open it's already thin pocketbook and provide you and the several other hundred passengers with freebies? I don't look at it that way. And since you asked, I'll tell you how I do look at it. You ride Amtrak, for the majority of the time, for a pleasant experience that can't be had by any other mode of transportation. Usually it's nearly or somewhat on time. Rarely is your luggage lost. Paper plates instead of china in the diner? Oh Please! I was recently marooned for the same amount of time in the middle of nowhere in the scrub-brush of Montana. No one panicked. Actually, very few complained. Everyone was fed and seemed to understand that rail travel can be like that. It has ALWAYS been like that to a certain degree, and probably always will be. It's the nature of the game. As to whether or not you and your bride will ever try rail travel again after this experience......it's your loss if you don't. I've been riding the rails since long before Amtrak and in my mind, the experience is one that should not be curtailed because of one bad trip. And as far as Gunn and his management goes...trust me, things will get better before they get worse. Frank

[ICGsteve]

I was recently marooned for the same amount of time in the middle of nowhere in the scrub-brush of Montana. No one panicked. Actually, very few complained. Everyone was fed and seemed to understand that rail travel can be like that. It has ALWAYS been like that to a certain degree, and probably always will be. It's the nature of the game 

In third world countries passengers may expect and accept the level of service that you discribe, but that is not the standard that the first world has ever been willing to tolorate. Nor should we.

Edited by ICGsteve, 29 March 2004 - 08:39 AM.

[MotownRRon]

Frank, you are so far off base here, that I begin to question why you even replied. After riding the rails for 15 years, I am VERY familiar with delays and service levels, and if THIS is how Amtrak now does "First Class", then I no longer want to give them over $400.00 more than flying would have cost for a one way trip. If you had taken the time to truly read my post, you would have realized that NONE of the traditional first class treatment was present, and most of the problems were AMTRAK'S fault - NOT the freight railroads. We were NOT delayed by freight (other than the freight on the rear of our own train) at all. NO FREIGHT TRAIN DELAYS. And yes, I expec china in the diner, and good food that is fresh. NONE of that happened, except china at dinner. First Class should be FIRST CLASS - not a third world railroad. VIA proves it can be done. I would NEVER expect to be served sub-par food on paper plated on a cruise ship - regardless of whether i paid the most or least for a room. We got poor service in our car, poor service in the diner, delays that should NOT have happened, and no scenery to look at. What other benefit of rail travel is left?????

[gary99]

Don't worry Frank, I liked your note. We just got back from the Sunset Limited trip. It was 12 hours late. We had a great time! Even had china for all our meals. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Would do it again. Trip Report to follow soon. Regards, Gary