Amtrak Equipment Shortages to Continue Into 2023

About 11 percent of the equipment Amtrak once assigned to its long-distance trains remains sidelined awaiting mechanical restoration.

Amtrak Vice President of Long-Distance Service Larry Chestler told members of the Rail Passengers Association this week that it will be more than a year before that equipment is back in service meaning reduced consists are likely to be norm through much of 2023.

Speaking during an RPA online event, Chestler also said full-service dining is expected to return to the New York-Miami route early next year but did not indicate that Amtrak has plans to move away from the flexible dining model of serving meals in a bowl on other eastern long-distance trains.

Although Amtrak has experimented with allowing business class passengers to buy dining car meals on the Los Angeles-Seattle Coast Starlight with the experiment expected to be soon extended to coach passengers.

However, there apparently are no plans to extend that practice to all long-distance trains anytime soon.

Chestler did indicate that coach passengers on two other trains will eventually be able to buy dining car meals. The overall thrust of his comments was that dining cars meals will continue to be largely limited to sleeping car passengers for the time being.

The equipment shortages that cut the number of coaches, sleeping cars and lounge cars assigned to long-distance trains stems from Amtrak’s decision during the COVID-19 pandemic to sideline a sizeable number of cars at a time when ridership had collapsed.

At the same time, the passenger carrier reduced the size of its mechanical force and is now struggling to hire enough mechanics to get sidelined equipment back in service.

Also exacerbating the availability of Superliner equipment were derailments involving the Empire Builder in 2021 and the Southwest Chief in 2022 that took more cars out of service.

Chestler said Amtrak has yet to complete a schedule for returning idled passenger cars to service although he said such scheduling could be achieved “in the coming weeks.”

As for when that equipment might return to service, he said Amtrak’s objective is to reduce the 11 percent gap during 2023 with an eye toward restoring “as much of the equipment as is feasible” by 2024.

Amtrak also has begun the planning process toward acquiring new equipment to replace the existing passenger car fleet assigned to long-distance trains.

That process is in the design phase and requests for information will be issued to passenger car manufacturers later this year.

Chestler said Amtrak expects to issue a request for proposals by late 2024.

During his presentation Chestler said Amtrak is developing new procedures that call for senior management to get involved in situations in which a train on the road has lost head end power and the crew has been unable to resolve the situation.

Related to that, he said Amtrak is increasing the number of personnel assigned to contact passengers affected by service disruptions as well as seeking ways to make rebooking easier for passengers whose travel plans have been adversely affected.

A report on Chester’s comments can be found at https://www.trains.com/trn/amtrak-long-distance-capacity-to-remain-tight-through-2023/

Tags: Amtrak, Amtrak long-distance trains, Amtrak rolling stock, dining aboard Amtrak