United Rail Passenger Alliance

A tale of three Sunset Limited flag stop “stations” and a very late train!

By Russell Jackson

Benson, Arizona; Lordsburg and Deming, New Mexico

Note: Color photos of the stations described below accompany this report on http://www.railpac.org

Sunset Limited on time performance has been 19.1% since Oct. 1, 2006. Another major problem for that train happened on May 3, 2007 when Amtrak train No. 2, the eastbound Sunset Limited, was 12 PLUS hours late east of Tucson, Arizona. This writer was on a road trip this time, and a call to Amtrak’s automated reservation voice, “Julie,” found No. 2 would arrive at Benson, Arizona, at 1:57 P.M. instead of 2:20 A.M. We were on target to arrive in that town, the location of the very successful Kartchner Caverns State Park, at about that time, so we parked and waited. And waited.

Sometimes the view from the ground gives a better account than from the train. Unknown to us at the time was the reason for the long delay, which was a derailment of the train on Union Pacific’s Guasti siding, 5 miles east of Ontario, California, the day before, and we were waiting for a “makeup” train which departed Los Angeles at 1:42 A.M.

This is the scene we found in Benson: A shack with the word “Benson” and an Amtrak logo sign bent so it was almost unreadable, a car containing folks who intend to board the train enroute to Michigan, and a lady in another car expecting arriving passengers from Los Angeles who tells us that the UP container train we see parked on the track the passenger train would have to be on had been there since she arrived at 12:30 P.M. It was still dangerously blocking two signaled crossings in town, including one just to the left of station where the gates were down and the bells a-ringing.

Even if the Sunset arrived at 2:00 on the adjoining track how can these passengers get to the train? While we waited a boy climbed across the couplers, a very dangerous thing to do. At 2:27 “Julie” informed us the train won’t arrive until 3:15, so we decided not to wait for it, and headed for Tucson. At least the Amtrak logo is on the shack, but NO information about how to contact Amtrak or what the shack is. In 2004-05 there were 1,492 passengers to/from here. We learned the train finally arrived in Benson at 3:55 P.M.

What could be at Benson … The new Benson Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center is located just east of the “station.” The building is in the style of the old Southern Pacific train stations, has full facilities, and is staffed. The lady on duty said, “No, this isn’t the station. They stop at that ‘lean-to’ over there.”

When No. 2 departs Benson its next stop is Lordsburg, New Mexico, about an hour later. Again, there is only a small railroad shack with the word Lordsburg on it, but no Amtrak information. The tracks are quite a hike across an unpaved yard vehicle area, there is no platform to mark where the train stops, and yet, 304 passengers used this station in 2004-05.

Another hour later, No. 2 arrives at Deming. To get to this “station” from town requires a circuitous trip through an underpass, a right turn, travel a few blocks, turn right again, and re-cross all the tracks without any signs saying how to get there. When you do get “there” you find two cheap benches next to a green rail logo sign and no Amtrak information in sight. Behind the benches is a westbound one-way I-10 off-ramp. Deming is the center of UP’s massive double-track project that will soon make the line between Tucson and El Paso a “speedway.” We assume the Sunsets load passengers at the road crossing, as there is no platform of any kind. In 2004-05 Deming saw 704 rail passengers.

What could have been at Deming? The historic Southern Pacific era train station building stood at track-side in various configurations since its original construction in 1881. Now it has been fully restored and moved across Interstate 10 to a new location where it is a learning center annex. Attempts to keep it at track-side were unsuccessful.

Okay, Amtrak, you wonder why smaller cities and towns don’t provide more riders. You’re lucky that many do take the trains. Yes, it’s up to the towns to provide stations, so above is what you get for that hands-off policy. Where are your signs? Are these stations ADA compliant? It doesn’t look like it. Just think: Each 100 additional tickets sold among just these three towns each year could yield $150,000 in additional revenue at no incremental cost.

Ms. Reid also interviewed Amtrak Central Division spokesman Mark Magliari about Beaumont, and Mr. Magliari allowed that Amtrak is now working on the new Fall 2007 timetable, which comes out in October, and there is a chance Beaumont may be discontinued as an Amtrak stop.

Ms. Reid’s story goes into further detail about how Amtrak says it isn’t responsible to have a station so it can stop its trains for passengers, and city officials wonder why they should spend tight public funds to supply a station for so few visitors and citizens. It’s a classic Catch-22 situation.

Here are some things we know about the Sunset Limited:

• It is incorrectly considered to be one of Amtrak’s worst financial performers in terms of revenue versus expenses. Perhaps, that’s because it operates so infrequently, only three days a week in each direction, yet has all of the infrastructure costs of daily trains. If the Sunset was a daily train, it would be a good financial performer in all respects.
• Amtrak has already suspended the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans de facto, apparently hoping some state or state consortium will pick up the tab for restarting the route. Perhaps some of the loss at Beaumont can be accounted for by the loss of half of the Sunset’s route, east of New Orleans. For every station that is not served by the Sunset, there are that many fewer city pair opportunities for travelers to go to or from Beaumont.
• If Amtrak continues to gnaw away at the Sunset by dropping station stops like Beaumont, there will be little, if any, reason to operate the train, at all, and Amtrak will suffer a huge loss to its national matrix system where each trains supports all other trains it intersects with for cross platforming passengers and other functions.
• It costs less than $100 to stop a train at a station; the only real cost is the cost of the extra locomotive fuel it takes to get the train moving again. Dropping Beaumont, or any other station to save a lousy hundred bucks is not only penny wise and pound foolish, but totally counterproductive towards building Amtrak revenue passenger miles and helping the company become a healthy, robust passenger carrying system.The Amtrak joke for years, when the silliness started a couple of decades ago about “loss per passenger,” a totally false measurement which means nothing, is that if only Amtrak could stop running those money losing trains and didn’t have to worry about passengers, it would have no losses! Yes, theoretically that may be true, but how ignorant is the concept? Shouldn’t Amtrak be doing everything it can to reduce losses and build ridership, and not run away from problems such as the Beaumont station and stations east of New Orleans?

Last night [Tuesday, June 12, 2007] my train was an hour and forty minutes late due to mechanic problems. Not mechanical — the problem was that the one mechanic on duty was working on another train and couldn’t get to mine for a half hour after the engineer discovered the engine wouldn’t start. You’d think there would be more than one mechanic on duty during rush hour at New York City’s Penn Station, but failing that they could just ask “is there a mechanic in the house?” over the P.A. system. It would a welcome respite from those idiotic “if you see something, say something” announcements.

I called Amtrak, asked for Customer Relations, described the incident, and they graciously agreed to send to send me a $22.00 voucher which can be applied to my monthly pass. It’s not much, but those vouchers can add up when Amtrak has one of their periodic bouts of breakdowns and delays. Besides, Amtrak is a political bureaucracy rather than a business, so it hurts most when someone complains, and forces them to do extra paperwork.

Call early and often!

URPA does not endorse pestering Amtrak over minor issues, but the above quote does reflect the frustrations of people who use Amtrak on a daily basis. Since Empire Corridor trains handle a lot of rush hour patronage, and the train is serviced in Amtrak’s huge Sunnyside yard in New York, why in the world were there not adequate mechanics to handle what must be routine work? Is Amtrak incapable of appropriate employee scheduling?

I am a relatively new TWA subscriber, but long have I been forwarded the publication from my father. In all the stories and dialogues I have read over the years I can see one bottom line issue with Amtrak - Customer Service. In response to the gentleman whom noted in No. 6 in the May 18th issue, I wholeheartedly concur with your conclusions. I grew up riding Amtrak due solely to my father, of whom I am very appreciative.

Amtrak is supposed to offer a different kind of travel. Through the historical progression of passenger trains, there has been a marked decrease in quality, and an increase in what I can broadly describe as “system-wide issues”. The trains ridden by my father, and his father, and his father before him were designed to provide luxurious, interstate cross country travel. Vista domes, providing beautiful views of the landscape, have become obsolete. Fresh air is a scarce commodity, and a clean window rarely exists. You used to be able to get top-tier food and drink, service with a smile. Now, you are lucky to get a fully cooked piece of chicken.

Yes, I have had excellent experiences with Amtrak. I have encountered the few friendly conductors and handful of fun ops people, but, for the most part, the service has been lacking the basic necessities to keep the customer happy. A smile, which was noted in a previous letter, is missing. You can tell me to “have a great trip,” but when the face of the person saying it is exhausted from a long shift and full of scorn, how will the comment be received?

This “experience” I speak of is that of the vacation. Even if it were a trip for business, the purpose of taking the train rather than flying would be the pleasure of sightseeing in a friendly and fun environment. This has disintegrated since I began riding Amtrak. I have experienced far more negatives than positives when it comes to the basic service provided by the people running these trains. The long distance trains display this discourteous nature much more frequently than they should.

This customer service is not solely encapsulated in the people running the trains. It is up to the service people, the shops, the ops managers, and everyone to make sure this machine runs well. The oil is not being applied to the proverbial gears. Trains are late due to basic errors. The staff are not friendly. The basic service has left the business. They are losing their fan base.

To which demographic should Amtrak be focusing on? It is people MY age. At 24 years old, I have undoubtedly put more hours into Amtrak than any of my peers. I have continued to put faith into the idea that “maybe this trip will be different”. The simple question has become: When do you cut loose your bad experiences and abandon the industry? If my cell phone provider dropped 90% of my calls, I would drop them. The argument is there are no other alternatives to rail travel beyond Amtrak. If someone asked me what the best way to get from New York to Seattle without flying, I would tell them to make their way to Toronto and take VIA. Otherwise? Road trip; gas prices may be high, but the experience of driving long distances holds a much higher appeal than sitting in a poorly ventilated passenger coach.

When I mention Amtrak as an option to travel for my friends, the unanimous response is “absolutely not”. Where Amtrak stands currently, the costs heavily outweigh the benefits. Until I see them make moves on the corporate, marketing and service fronts, they have lost my patronage. Where will Amtrak be 20 years from now? Still milking the feds because they cannot figure out what revenues and costs are? Completely privatized? Or bankrupt, out of business, and a distant remnant of what rail travel used to be. If they do not clean their act up by the time people my age are interested in taking family vacations, they will no longer exist.

The bottom line: Amtrak needs to stop trying to refurbish, and instead begin to focus on reinventing themselves.

I have a background in hospitality and we were trained to say “good morning,” and that a smile cost us nothing, but accomplishes a great deal …

We were trained that making a guest feel like family, brought that guest back to our hotels. We were trained to keep the facility clean and in working order, because there was another hotel down the street that would welcome our guests. We were trained that theft is theft and that affected our raises. Lastly, we were trained to understand that our jobs and our paychecks relied on happy guests.

There are a few wonderful employees on Amtrak, but I would bet my last dollar they are long-term employees. I saw too many employees hired who were a cousin, a brother, a sister (etc.), of another employee. Convenient employees were hired … not necessarily excellent, or even good employees.

I watched dining car employees unnecessarily open food before the train reached it’s final destination … and then I watched the employees (that includes conductors) haul the food away. So, now you have a problem with the Mechanical Department, Human Resources, the bottom line, and that my friends, leaves you little to work with.

I would highly recommend Amtrak hire employees that are good to excellent, not just because they are someone’s relative. I would recommend Amtrak employees spend more time learning customer service. It does not matter if the mattress is lumpy, or the train breaks down … guests are unhappy, and soon the pennies you save will cost us a fantastic way to travel, and far too many jobs. Use the Radisson or Marriott philosophy, and watch how fast things will change … for the better.