.............Excuse me, but aside from your destination, this has what to do with railway preservation???

It has happened. Under the rule books used in traditional railroading, a train 12 hours late loses its timetable authority and must be recreated as an extra train, or fudged in as a section of another regular train.

At times, floods and similar calamities have caused a long-distance train to catch up with its counterpart from the day before. Sometimes, the trains would be combined; sometimes they would run separately as sections.

Since the train now 24 hours late had lost its timetable authority after 12 hours, there would be no confusion of having two trains #6 on a given subdivision at the same time, but if they did run separately, one would be first 6, the other second 6, both of the actual day they are running.

The running joke about Amtrak (AKA Amwreck and Anthrax) is "We only told you what the schedule was, We didn't tell you what day you were going to arrive on."

Where Amtrak does the dispatching over its own RR, it is very reliable. I travelled to Baltimore and Washington regularly at one time and the only missed connection occurred during a snowstorm when many events were cancelled and the Metroliner was 5 minutes late.

One of the difficulties is freight RR's have abandoned time as an operating tool and now seem incapable of running to a prearranged pattern. This was not always the case with freight RR's; if AJ-12 was late getting out, somebody in a fedora hat* showed up to find out why.

* - pre-1970 equivalent of a white hard hat.

In the mid 1990s, I worked here in Atlanta, GA. I had to commute once a month to Poughkeepsie, NY where the factory was.

I convinced the company to "save" money by letting me ride Amtrak sleeper instead of fly.
In the two years I rode, I missed the connection between the Cresent and the commuter to Poughkeepsie only once and 3-4 times made it into NY in time for the early afternoon caommuter (30 minutes between Cresent arriving and its departure).

I was significantly late only once. Returning to Atlanta, we were on-time and hit a joker at a grade crossing near Alto, GA. He died and the County coranor had to come out. We were 5 hours late.

We even got to DC on time from NYC when we had a coach become BO and it had to be set out somewhere about 45 minutes out of NYC.

Even northbound we got into NYC on time when somewhere north of Philly the lights went out and the train was costing. Best guess from my scanner was that the overhead power in the block was out and the engineer coasted through the block (we never stopped rolling). When the lights came back on, we accelerated again.

Even my 1984 trip from Atlanta to Philly to Chicago to Salt Latke City and Las Vegas and then back to Denver and return through Chicago and Philly to Atlanta was never more than an hour late anywhere until we hit Salt Lake westbound - Spring flooding caused the Desert Wind to be rerouted via UP and Sherman Hill instead of the D&RGW.

Just my experience and in no way scientific.

I hope your next experience is better.

Doug

I remember riding SOuthern and PC prior to 1971 but not well. Amtrak occured when I was 11. However, I was lucky enough to live nearby the Southern Cresent route in northeast Atlanta. Claytor ran the Cresent as it was supposed to be done. Many evenings, Mom or Dad would take me out to watch her heading out for DC. Once I could Drive, my favorite pastime was to go over to the DQ (across the street from SRR and have an ice cream cone while waiting for the Cresent. I could set my watech by her.

The way it should be done.

DvV