Nine hours late, then ten hours late. We make up a little here and there and we're nine hours late again. Then we get stuck waiting for another train and we loose all the time we had made up.
The adventure continues.....
Still running between nine and ten hours late. Every time we make up some time we end up loosing it again. We had been running about ten hours late and by the time we got to Rugby North Dakota we were right at nine hours late. The station stop lasted only four minutes. Our train was ready to go. The dispatcher had us back out of the station and switch to another track so that the westbound train 7 could come in on that track. Then we waited another twenty-three minutes for clearance to proceed. The total time in Rugby was fifty-two minutes; four minutes Amtrak time at the station and forty-eight minutes delay to the host railroad.
Here’s something else to think about in this situation. Train 7 was a few minutes ahead of schedule. It had time to make the reverse move after we cleared the station and it still would have been on time.
Right now I’m wondering what we’re going to do when we arrive in Chicago. The train could make up another hour or so between now and then but even if it does, we still arrive there after midnight. Our connecting train to Cincinnati is scheduled to depart at 7:45PM. Often that train is held up to wait for connecting trains from the west. I know that it has been held over two hours on occasions but I don’t know how long they will hold it. Amtrak schedules all of its western trains to arrive in Chicago in the afternoon and the eastern trains depart between 5:00 and 8:00PM. If we miss the connections, our train does not run again for two days. There is a bus service that Amtrak provides on days when that train does not run. On those days Amtrak does run the train to Indianapolis. We will have another crew change before we get to Chicago and that crew should be able to give us some idea of what our options are.