CHICAGO — Some details have emerged from an ill-fated Friday, Oct. 7, trip of Amtrak Wolverine No. 351, the morning departure from Pontiac, Mich., which arrived in Chicago more than 13 hours late.
The trip, scheduled for a trip of 5 hours, 49 minutes with a 10:32 a.m. arrival finally reached Chicago Union station at 12:02 a.m. Saturday, after stranding travelers on board for several lengthy periods without heat, ventilation, lighting, food, or operating toilets.
The train’s Siemens Charger SC44 locomotive became disabled 19 miles west of Ann Arbor, Mich. The operating crew was unable to restart it or put it on standby to provide head-end power. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari tells Trains News Wire, “Mechanical issues are under investigation.”
A decision was made to have the following westbound Wolverine, No. 353, couple to No. 351 and bring both trains to Chicago, but crews encountered difficulties in combining the two trains. Although 353 left Ann Arbor at 10:32 a.m., three hours behind 351, the combined trains didn’t arrive at Jackson, Mich., 38 miles away, until 3:30 p.m.
Employees were never able to get No. 353’s locomotive to operate the electrical system on No. 351’s passenger cars. The train stopped at Battle Creek, Mich., for a half-hour bathroom break, but travelers were then told to go back aboard to their original seats. There apparently wasn’t enough space to accommodate everyone on 353’s equipment
Ann Arbor-based MLive was among media outlets reporting messages from stranded travelers.
Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams told MLive that a medical emergency, sticking brakes, and battery problems contributed to cascading delays along the way, followed by a lengthy stop on Norfolk Southern’s busy, multi-track main line, waiting for an Amtrak relief crew to take the combined trains into Chicago.
It was at this point several passengers took it upon themselves to open the vestibule doors and leave the train to hail rideshare services into Chicago. “Due to the lateness of the combo train, some passengers elected to safely detrain in East Chicago and find alternate transportation,” Abrams said.
The company did offer vouchers, MLive reported, with the following message to the affected travelers: “Please accept our most sincerest apologies that your trip on train 351 on Oct. 7, 2022 was severely delayed. Despite our best efforts, there are times when circumstances arise that are out of our control.”
Proof Murphy was an optimist
Hello James Mathews of NARP/RPA. Hello Richard Harnish at Chicago-based HSRAssociation. Where are you??? Mr. Harnish, you just penned a blistering reply to the NYTimes report/commentary on the CAHSR program. Well ya’ know what? They were right. The thing is a disgraceful money pit. We are going to build HSR in CA and then nationwide, as you project, while Amtrak can’t even operate a reliable 3 HrSR trains in each direction between Michigan points and Chicago??? I swear, the passenger rail advocacy community, with the exception of the two people in Massachusetts who founded TrainsInTheValley, is peopled by a bunch of utterly delusional folks who refuse to see the mess Amtrak leadership has made of the place and the utter cluelessness of two government officials who could actually be working to set things right, Trans. Sec. Buttigieg and FRA administrator Amit Bose. Sadly, this episode of Trains 351&353 will have an all to brief moment of exposure and quickly be forgotten as we roll on to more messes at Amtrak, the nation, and in the world. And Amtrak’s top management, protected by the likes of Sen. Charlie Schumer, from any punishment, will keep rolling along on their campaign designed to kill off everything but their sacred NEC.
MARK — With all the trivial things liberals get into a useless tizzy about, like the name of the Kansas City NFL team, where’s the liberal outrage about this? Actually I read the Detroit newspapers online, freep.com daily and occasionally detnews.com. Where’s the comments from Michigan’s Democrat leadership? Dead silence. One article in The Freep about what happened, without any reporter asking Michigan’s gov what she thinks and if she still is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amtrak Joe.
I guess I will throw it out there again……
Let Amtrak become the FAA of passenger rail.
Certify trainsets, manage “rail traffic control” not unlike what the FAA does for airlines.
Put routes up for bid and sell off time slots on the routes. High demand routes bid higher, redeye routes bid lower. Lease track slots at train stations just like what the FAA approves for airlines at airports.
If a state wants a train route that no private entity will bid on, then the state DOT has to supply the trainsets and bid out the operation of that set to Amtrak specifications.
If a town or metro area wants service that doesn’t exist, then that region will be responsible to cover ROW costs to build it out and will be required to provide the trainsets and operator on a lease or bid.
A scheduling engine (not unlike Sabre was) will provide the timings and feeds to travel websites for booking and consist tracking. This will allow passengers to watch timings of arrivals or departures or track changes no different than they would watch for gate changes for an airline.
Performance bonuses for ontime behavior will be provided. Penalties will also be in place for slackers who fall behind or cause freight interference.
This turns Amtrak into essentially a governance and standards body, and lets the free market drive operations with Amtrak looking over their shoulder. Again, not unlike the FAA.
Why doesn’t Amtrak learn? Thanksgiving week 2006 took 351 out JXN, no problems, the CZ out of CHI on time, same to Ottumwa. Just out of station train stops. There had been a coal train derailment at Murray, IA at 2 a.m. that morning! But accord to the conductor this was news to them. The engineer had worked early in the day so her time expired, more time waiting for new engineer. For 12 hrs we played with empties going west and coal trains east.
At about 7:30 a.m. the only sign on derailment at Murray, IA was hoppers on their side and a slow order.
Got to Lincoln about 3 p.m., 24 hrs after leaving CHI.
Charles Landey: Well said! Major kudos and thanks …..
My wish is for the board to find and support a new chief executive that is the equal of Mr. Gun. Unfortunately, I doubt there is anyone as good. The existing Class I’s leaders are slaves to Wall Street and don’t show any real railroad smarts. I remember the late fifties when I worked for the PRR and said “Things can’t get much worse.” But then came Penn Central, followed by ConRail and the split into NS & CSX. Without new direction, I fear Amtrak is going to limp along and we may loose it.
David Gunn was a real railroad man with a lot of courage – not afraid to tell the truth and speak his mind. People like him are “persona non grata” around Amtrak, some other railroads and railroad regulatory bodies today.
Okay guys you don’t like political comments on this forum. Sorry folks, Amtrak is a creature of our federal government —- a vast and hideously expensive bureaucracy whose only talent is to get us into wars and losing them. An uber -corrupt government which has been dysfunctional for generations. A government now run by an incompetent senile political hack who can’t fix anything and whose only solution to any problem is to throw around money by the trillions.
My antipathy to the federal government is bipartisan, against both Republicans and Democrats. It started a long time ago, when I was a student at U-Michigan and the incomparable Dirty Dick Nixon (Republican) was president. The solution to any and every issue was a federal grant, our professors insisted. This was during the Vietnam War, which we lost to an army that barely could put shoes on the feet of its soldiers. Two generations later, some people still think that Washington can run a railroad.
Oh, speaking of having been a student at U-Michigan, back then Penn Central Railroad stank. Really, is today’s Amtrak any better?
For those of you who voted for Amtrak Joe (I didn’t), tell him to clean house at Amtrak.
“…some people still think that Washington can run a railroad.” What really scares me Charles is that some people think that Washington can run our health care. If the politicians ever get their hands on it, let me out.
What will it take to motivate Congress to say “enough” and investigate Amtrak, or, are we expected to remain patient until a major wreck occurs?
If not Congress, who, given how the FRA is asleep through this episode; the federal DOT suffers from a hyper politicized secretary with no depth of knowledge to even be curious.
Instead of waiting for the inevitable wreck, Congress should be motivated by this Michigan incident to finally investigate Amtrak–before the inevitable embarrassment from a detailed investigative report as we saw today in The NY Times re the failed HSR program in California.
Answers are required how these two “Wolverines” failed to operate. Why? Does any mechanical officer from Siemens ride these trains until they are broken in?
More importantly, how is the breakdown in management and communication explained? Apparently, Amtrak does not realize it operates in a 24/7 environment. How many key staff were off that Friday, or, worked just a half day? So, who had the authority to make the requisite decisions how to communicate with passengers and crew; secure food; order chartered buses and annul the trains?
It is incumbent upon Congress to appreciate the issue and finally understand the Michigan incident is a perfect example of “the Peter Principle”–how Amtrak’s corporate management was promoted to their level of incompetence; certainly lacking any appreciation for how different running a passenger railroad is from an airline, or, sharpening pencils in a Capitol Hill office.
Ideally, seeing the glaring issue of the “Peter Principle” and its impact on Amtrak will enable Congress to appreciate the numerous issues created by people incapable of being decision-makers that handicapped Amtrak from returning to an acceptable service level; the impact of the “blind leading the blind” with a lack of experienced Board members to know what accountability to demand. Yet, despite such issues, impossible to miss the lack of accountability in the distribution of significant bonuses.
From this report, perhaps Congress will understand the relevance of having input-and approval-on hiring C-Suite officers, as well as to approve the basis for paying bonuses. Otherwise, we are doomed to see this scenario play out in the repetition compulsion renown by Amtrak corporate management when they kick the can down the road.
A lot of people don’t like the chargers. For one there is to much in the way of electronics, which can be said of a lot of things these days. And the computers are programmed that if something goes wrong it just shuts everything down. No way around it. The chargers have a miserable record on the Michigan trains. I always said Amtrak should have bought a bunch of still good four axle freight motors and had them rebuilt for passenger service. Those chargers don’t do so well in heavy snow which one will run into during winters in Michigan.
This is a combination of things. Poor management decisions top the list. When the train continued to experience more and more problems alternative transportation should have been set up. Why wasn’t food delivered to the train? Another potty stop at Kalamazoo and/or Niles? The crew AND management knew they were running out of time for hours of service. Another big failure. The train could have possibly been placed in the siding at Porter where people could have safely detrained. Most Michigan trains are four or five cars. HEP can easily handle 20+ cars. Only one locomotive can supply HEP to a train. I once had a 27 car train that had no problems with HEP. To operate the train from the dead locomotive would require HEP to be supplied to it. But if the computer is giving one a nightmare with whatever the issue(s) were a lot of troubleshooting has to take place to allow the power to move. And since the brakes are also controlled via computer that can become an entirely whole other issue. Add to that the fact the chargers are new there’s not a lot of experience with them. The p-42’s the veteran engineers have a lot of experience dealing with issues with them and problems with them tend to be dealt with more quickly. Lots of bells and whistles are fine until they don’t work.
Very true. I gave up my “smart” phone and went back to a flip phone. It makes calls, receives calls and has voice mail. I don’t need anything else.
Guys, the Amtrak tech was in his late 20’s – and a computer “geek.” Guess he simply just didn’t like the chargers.
And if a “computer geek” in his late 20’s can’t deal with them, I wonder about how it is for the older mechanics and techs.
I will go out on a limb and guess that a set of relays in the HEP control area burned out or were rendered inoperable when the original engine failed. This meant that while another engine was lashed up, it couldn’t pass power through to the delayed consist.
This meant that for the consist to get HEP power throughout, the failed engine would have to be set back to the rear or left behind. I don’t know how many cars were in each consist for Wolverine, but the total count may have been too many for the HEP feeder for the one working engine to support. While there are plenty of sidings along the way, I am guessing that they couldn’t get a switcher or helper in to pull the broken engine to the back of the combined consist and so they just ran it “as is” the rest of the way.
As for the Charger being “junk” to the mechanic, I would rather see the data on Charger failures per hours of operation and compare it to the first few years for the P40 when it came out. Then I can see if buyers remorse is accurate.
Great point, John. Could be the Mechanic just wasn’t “comfortable” with all these highfalutin’ computerated thingamjeesers in the panel. Prolly much more comfortable with a -2 control panel. Yup, lookee here! Real resisters!
“Trip from hell …” (?) on Wolverine #351.
A couple of obvious questions:
1) Why couldn’t they have just taken the coaches from #351, add them to #353’s consist and leave the dead Charger SC44 behind at Ann Arbor? seems to be a pretty obvious fix ….
2) Why couldn’t the passengers on #351 just be put on a bus at the stop in Battle Creek? (instead of forced back on the train after their ‘bathroom break’ for 1/2 hour).
A truly nightmarish train trip. I’d never ride Amtrak again if I had been stuck on that train.
Amtrak is a huge mess and has no future as a viable transportation mode with this type of operational insanity occurring on a regular basis …..
Also, FYI – the issue with the Amtrak EMD SDP-40Fs is that they experienced frequent derailments on curves and though no definitive caused was ever found, some of the analysis of the numerous derailments suggested that the water tanks in the back of the locomotive might have caused the rear-end of the loco (and the back trucks) to sway laterally excessively and thus derail on curves at higher speeds (above 40 MPH or so).
There was also some question about the tracking characteristics of the HTC trucks on the Amtrak SDP-40Fs, however Amtrak never seemed to have problems with these locomotives on the Santa Fe (where they routinely operated up to 90 MPH with no derailments) and on the Seaboard Coast Line.
Maybe poor track might have been an issue on some railroads?
Does anybody wonder why the freight railroads are avoiding Tier 4 locomotives and instead choosing to continue and expand their rebuild programs? Who would have ever thought that we’d see a year where no 6-axle freight locomotives were built for the North American market?
I think the answer is obvious – the T4 engines are too complicated, expensive to maintain, and prone to failure, despite the best efforts of the manufacturers to make them successful. The class 1’s have seen the results and have decided to put off new purchases as long as possible.
Of course, Amtrak and the government-owned commuter railroads have had little choice in the matter and only 3 builders to choose from. So I think it would be fair to assume that situations similar to the one described above are going to become common occurrences as the GE P42s and other variants are retired and replaced.
At this point, I think the best solution would be to scrap the T4 regulations for failing to meet the cost/benefit criteria and let EMD, Wabtec, and the others put their people back to work building efficient, reliable products. Chance of that happening anytime soon: ZERO.
T4 issues are applicable to trucks as well. It was not uncommon to see 2 to 4 late model semis with the hood up during my trips on I-90 between Spokane and Missoula.
The locomotives you refer to are SDP-40F. Westbound trains should be odd numbered. So #351 would be westbound.
Prior to retirement, I had worked with a laid off Amtrak locomotive technician (temporarily, until he was called back) based out of Chicago. His assessment of the Charger: complete junk!
Does not bode well.
I don’t claim any knowledge of the Siemens alleged problems, just what I read on these pages. They run on the Hiawatha without any issues that I have heard of.
If what is said on these pages about the Sieens is valid, I have to wonder how long it will be until the freight railrods ban them. Happened before on some western lines with the SPD40PF (I think that was the designation) when some railroads got tired of Amtrak lcomotives that had trouble staying upright.
Is a forecast of the future when AMTRAK will be relying on Siemens manufactured trains?
What “difficulties combining the two trains?”
I was confused by that too. I guess the Charger offers no pass through HEP capability? I actually have a lot of questions. NS was obviously aware of a train blocking its mainline. Was there no option of a relief locomotive from a local yard? Or was that impossible due to freight rail crew shortages? After passing the four hour mark could a bus service have been contacted to help passengers get to their final destination? From my arm chair I just feel like there were better options that could have been made.
Does anyone still wonder why on my most recent trip Milwaukee to Detroit I flew Delta Airlines? That was a trip I usually rode Amtrak in years past.
Decades ago, I rode Amtrak all over America and into Canada. In recent years I’ve not ridden any Amtrak train except the Hiawatha, which runs like a Swiss watch. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Reading the photo caption, it would seem that Train 351 operates both EB and WB.