California Zephyr, Cape Horn, CA 7-10-01 / 3 Engines-179, 178, & 177
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- I caught the East bound and West bound California Zephyr near Cape Horn. This was a very critical engineering feat back in 1867 when the Trans Continental line was being built. The road bed had to be blasted out of a solid rock wall with gun powder.
The East bound train was unique in that all 3 engines were consecutive numbers. This was a big train as it had 1 headend baggage, 10 passenger and 6 material handling cars.
The West bound train was pulled by 3 engines 66, 141, and the third engine was the early paint scheme and I couldn’t read a number. It also had a headend baggage car, 9 passenger, 1 baggage and 6 material handling cars on the tail end,
Thanks for posting. I love & model Amtrak in this era with the freight behind.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. Yes, this era was a very unique time
@Train fan1995
Hi Train fan, yes, I have quite a bit more from the 90’s of the Donner Pass and Tehachapi area’s, I’ve uploaded most of my Shasta videos.
You can see them at “Tshasta4449” .
I’ve had a shortage of time lately to do the editing involved with posting videos on RUclips.
I know from a foamers/historical perspective those MHC’s were fun, but from a financial/operational perspective I don’t think much more could have been done to make those things not worth the space they took up. The financial gain from the service they provided was (on paper) there, but in execution it was just a mess from start to finish.
Flawed trucks limited their top speed to 60 MPH. The infrastructure (or rather lack thereof) between Amtrak and shippers often left shippers with the inability to physically handle the cars, and in some cases not being able to even load/unload them easily if at all. Not to mention train delays in having to switch in and out differing MHC’s depending on the train and it’s location. Not helping matters was that with them on the rear of the train, the entire train had to be moved during those switching moves which only added to the delays and passenger complaints. Even after they were off Amtrak, the freight carriers wanted nothing to do with them as a result of their smaller size not allowing for typical carload charge rates. That and lets be honest, no one WANTS ex-Amtrak rolling stock other than perhaps a museum.
All in all it was an interesting idea but it generated more problems than profit and I don’t think anyone who had to deal with them missed them when they were gone. Having spent over two decades now working for UP I think the Top Gear phrase, "ambitious but rubbish" is about the most accurate description for Amtrak I can come up with at least from my view on the freight side of this industry. They sure like to try, but they seem good at trying without really knowing what they are doing lol
Very interesting information. They were probably trying to recreate the railway express program of the past but being government they didn’t have to worry about profit.. 🤔
@@Tshasta4449 There's a lot to unpack detail wise but the gist of it being that with the chaos that was going on within the industry from the mid to late 90’s as a result of the UP/SP merger along with NS/CSX splitting up of Conrail, select time sensitive shippers (mostly UPS/mail related customers with a few exceptions) wanted expedited service of ‘less than carload’ volumes of products that could be shipped at ‘truck-like speeds’ from what I gathered.
The freight carriers already had their hands full sorting out post merger/Conrail related headaches, so they weren’t interested in the idea at all. So Amtrak became the only company who not only was ok with partial carloads of time sensitive products, but also offered ‘truck-like speeds’ with coast to coast operations. UPS; which had intentions of purchasing Amtrak at one point in time, (let that one sink in for a minute) contracted with Amtrak in the late 90’s/early 2000’s to try to capitalize on the freight carriers lack of interest in small time sensitive movements of mail/express cargo. Hence the era of MHC’s, ExpressTrak reefers, Express Boxcars, and roadrailers beginning to show up on Amtrak trains.
The problem with all this being mostly what I alluded to in my previous reply. The cars acquired for these services weren’t up to the job of dealing with Amtrak speeds. Plus the shippers often times had difficulties in dealing with the cars or being able to load/unload them due to mail no longer being trafficked heavily along rail lines. This lead to cars being often times left without any clear way of getting mail to/from them at all or difficulties in getting products on/off the cars to start with. This not taking into consideration train delays from having to deal with switching the cars in and out and customer related issues skyrocketing because of it. Yet ANOTHER problem being that Amtrak’s expected (wishful thinking) network growth of freight related distribution centers never came to be.
So you ended up with a service that wasn’t really efficient in any meaningful way, that often unconvinced the very customers who were relying on the service to start with, as well as rolling stock that was prone to derailments at speeds above 60 MPH, and then finally a sporadic hit or miss network of facilities even interested in the service to start with which didn’t help the operations to grow or refine themselves. In other words everything you would expect from a government orchestrated freight program. It’s no shocker why by the mid 2000’s all of the express freight related service contracts with Amtrak had been canceled/not renewed. From top to bottom it was an absolute mess with no hope of it really ever getting better.
The final nail in the coffin being that by the time we were into the mid 2000’s, trucking companies could do the same job better than Amtrak could plus the freight carriers were past the hurdles of the 90’s. So companies realized it was more financially viable to ship in bulk by rail and the freight carriers suddenly had full carload shipments as well as much better established intake/outtake distribution centers to handle the products being shipped by rail to start with.
Amtrak basically was throwing everything they could at the wall to see what would stick and in the end, nothing did. It never generated revenue. Plus it burnt through countless millions of taxpayer dollars in acquiring specialized cars for all of these services which some of those same cars would end up scrapped less that five years into their service careers. The whole idea basically inconvenienced everyone who was supposed to benefit from it (including Amtrak's own riders) at the expense of the taxpayers. Basically government “efficiency” at it’s finest.
It’s difficult to discuss this topic without sounding intentionally negative, but it’s almost comical how terrible every single aspect of the whole idea was from start to finish. As I said, ambitious but rubbish.
@@Henry5623 it’s a classic example of coming up with a program but not looking at the big picture. Sounds like Amtrak thought it would fall together like magic. LoL 😂
@@Tshasta4449 I feel Amtrak's financial decision makers are the same people who mowed lawns as kids and thought it was ‘so easy’ to make money by “conveniently” borrowing their parents lawnmower and gas without paying for it themselves. The same way Amtrak “conveniently” uses taxpayer dollars without actually investigating the costs and complexities of the services they are providing. Then spent the last FIVE DECADES wondering why profits don’t magically rain down on them.
Even better is how foamers go nuclear over my negative opinions of Amtrak and why I support it’s defunding. Yet they “conveniently” overlook - WHY - every freight carrier dropped long haul passenger service thus necessitating the need for Amtrak’s existence to start with. It’s almost as if ALL freight carriers were foreshadowing something; hmm I wonder what??? So I always tell outraged foamers to stop sleeping through economics class and start emptying their pockets into Amtrak’s hands for absolutely nothing in return if they’re so upset over Amtrak’s defunding. The peanut gallery usually goes quiet about then lol
@@Henry5623 LoL 😂, definitely words of wisdom, just like the government can’t tax us into wealth. It’s way too easy for them to fire up the printers when the coffers get low, instead of making every dollar count like us normal human beings.
Wow I live just down the street from colfax. You got any frieght vids of cape horn, alta, etc?
Yes, I have a bunch. I’m starting to transfer them from tape to digital. It takes a while but I’ll be working on it.
Check out my Amtrak videos, I took of it going into the tunnel at the summit on the old line in 1993