On Wednesday Amtrak No. 49 was over 10 hours late due to severe storms in the New York area. I got it passing Berea tower around 2:30 in the afternoon. This train would later terminate at Toledo and passengers would be taken by bus to Chicago from there.
For Amtrak’s 45th birthday I submit these photos of Amtrak No. 48, the eastbound Lake Shore Limited at Willowick Ohio.
I wanted to do something for Amtrak’s anniversary but didn’t think of taking night photos. Amtrak cooperated by running No. 48 almost three hours late.
I had heard it was running with only one engine and thought perhaps it had trouble. It didn’t and came through Willowick at track speed and a healthy 11-car train.
It still has a heritage dining car of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy vintage – at least I think it was, but I didn’t get the number – and six Amfleet cars, five of them coaches, brought up the rear. Other than a new baggage car it looks pretty much like it always has the last couple decades.
The eastbound Lake Shore Limited is gaining speed as it charges toward
Bort Road on Track No. 1 of the CSX Erie West Subdivision at North East, Pennsylvania.
This is a story about one of those rare days when Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited was an hour late and I was quite happy about it.
Of course Nos. 48 and 49 are frequently late, hence their nickname of the “Late Shore Limited.”
Yet No. 48 tends to be on time or nearly on time leaving Cleveland.
During the long days of summer you can catch No. 48 east of town in good morning light. But once it gets to be late summer, you about have to go to Pennsylvania to get No. 48 in morning light unless it is running very late.
On this day, No. 48 was about an hour late out of Cleveland. Our plan was to catch it at Bort Road in North East, Pennsylvania.
The scheduled departure time for the eastbound Lake Shore Limited out of Erie is 7:20 p.m. That would put it at Bort Road about 15 minutes later.
We got to Bort Road in plenty of time to photograph No. 48 even if it had been on time.
The sun wasn’t quite up yet and some clouds were in the area. Hence, had No. 48 been on time, the lighting would have been OK, but not great.
CSX had track No. 2 shut down for tie replacement. That meant No. 48 had to stop, get permission from the foreman to pass through the work zone — which extended into New York State — and move at 25 mph for about three miles.
The end of the 25 mph speed restriction was about a mile north of Bort Road, so about the time lead P42DC No. 11 got to our position the train was accelerating.
The sun has also risen high enough to bathe the Amtrak train in brilliant early morning light.
Within a half-hour after No. 48’s passage, a bank of clouds rolled in off Lake Erie and it was cloudy and overcast the rest of the morning.
But during the window when the Lake Shore Limited passed through, the weather could not have been any better.
The wide angle perspective as No. 48 is about to pass beneath Bort Road.
The Viewliner baggage car behind the two P42DC locomotives is brand new. The three VIewliner sleepers are not so new. The dining car that is partially visible is a senior citizen by now.
Stretched out and gleaming in the morning sun.
Thursday morning was a good time to be in Berea. In about a half-hour’s time, the CSX executive train went east while just before that Amtrak’s late westbound Lake Shore Limited went past with Phase I heritage locomotive No. 156 on the point.
The Amtrak train went through about 8:35 a.m. with the CSX executive train showing up at 8:43 a.m.
Operating as train P902, the CSX train had left the St. Louis area on Wednesday and spent the night in Crestline. It left for, reportedly, Rochester, New York, on Thursday morning. Its eventual destination is Selkirk, New York.
Online reports had it passing Lagrange at 8:26 a.m., Willoughby at 9:30 a.m. and Fairview, Pennsylvania, at 10:25 a.m.
Leading the train was F40PH No. 9998 with the 9998 and 9999 trailing. The train had eight cars with a theater car trailing.
Amtrak No. 156 had left Chicago on Tuesday as the trailing unit on the eastbound Lake Shore Limited.
No. 49 on Thursday did not arrive in Chicago until 3:11 p.m., making it nearly 5.5 hours late. It had arrived in Cleveland at 8:03 a.m., 4 hours, 36 minutes late.
No. 156 returned to Northeast Ohio on Friday, this time leading the eastbound Lake Shore Limited. No. 48 was reported past Berea at 6 a.m. The Amtrak website reported that the train arrived in Cleveland at 6:16 a.m., 41 minutes late.
Here is Amtrak’s train 48 on Tuesday at Battery Park in Cleveland. It was nice catching clean units in the snow on a track that will be gone by the end of this year.
Wintry blasts have caused havoc with Amtrak operations in the past week. The Lake Shore Limited in particular has been running hours off schedule.
On Monday, No. 48 left Chicago nearly 4 hours behind schedule and halted in Cleveland at 10:20 a.m. When it departed 11 minutes later it was 4 hours and 41 minutes down.
But things are looking up for No. 48. It departed from Chicago on time on Tuesday night and got out of Cleveland a mere 19 minutes late.
Winter has a beauty of its own despite the cold and snow. Roger Durfee has been recording that along the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern. Here is a sampling of his work.
Another late No. 48 rolling through Cleveland last week.
NS 35N with the Lackawanna heritage unit leading.
A unit coil train in the snow.
The eastbound Lake Shore Limited that was supposed to have departed from Chicago Wednesday night was delayed nearly 14 hours due to winter conditions, leaving many of the the passengers irate and angry.
The train finally left Union Station at 11:08 a.m. this morning, 13 hours and 38 minutes late. It has since last additional time, departing Waterloo, Ind., at 4:07 p.m., nearly 15 hours behind schedule.
Passengers for the train, which was scheduled to depart at 9:30 p.m. CST on Wednesday, were forced to spend the night in Union Station.
Some of them told reporters that they had to sleep on the floor with “thin blankets” as well as crowd around a single heater.
“They froze us last night,” Kathleen Bluemke told the Chicago Tribune in a tired voice as the train was finally ready to leave. “We couldn’t sleep, it was so cold. The glass doors to the terminals kept getting jammed open. It was basically like being outside. I wasn’t even worried about myself. It was terrible for my children.”
Bluemke said her 7-year-old daughter’s hands became swollen and chapped because of the cold.
Cioly Ryan was traveling from Lincoln, Neb., where she had spent the holidays with family, back to Long Island with her daughter, Avasa, 1.
“I don’t know what to say, I was so disrespected,” Ryan said, her voice cracking as her baby screamed in the background.
“This morning, we were told we were not allowed to get off the train and that, if we did, we would not be allowed to get back on,” Ryan said. “It was outrageous. They weren’t keeping us updated on anything that was going on. I paid a ridiculous amount of money to get on this train, and then we were all disrespected.”
Approximately 172 passengers were expected to board No. 48 on Wednesday night.
Amtrak officials said the company offered refunds to those who wanted them and tried to make the rest as comfortable as it could in the station.
“We offered full refunds without penalty to those who left and chose other modes of transportation,” said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.
But Ryan disputed that, saying she was unaware of any passengers who got refunds.
“Absolutely not,” she said, shouting. “100 billion thousand million percent not. There is not one person on that train that got a refund. No one said anything to us about that. It’s a lie.”
Some passengers told reporters that they received conflicting reports on why the train had been delayed.
Faith Barlow, who was headed home to Albany, NY., from Flagstaff, Ariz., said passengers were initially told that there was a weather-related mechanical problem and then were later told that the train needed to add another passenger car.
“They told us that there was going to be a delay,” she said. “They said, ‘Oh, you know, it’ll be fine. It’s just going to be a little delay. …Then they came back on and they said ‘Okay, well, the train is going to be pulling in any minute. Everybody line up. Get your IDs ready. Get your tickets ready.’”
After the all-night wait in Union Station, passengers finally were able to board about 4 a.m.
No. 48 left about 7:55 a.m. but halted at the bridge over the South Branch of the Chicago River about 2 miles south of the station. Norfolk Southern officials ordered a new crew be put aboard that was more rested. The Lake Shore Limited uses NS tracks between Chicago and Cleveland.
Amtrak had wanted to change crews down the line in Indiana, but NS nixed that. So, the train backed up to Union Station and passengers waited some more.
An online report indicated that NS was having weather related problems with switches and decided to “straight rail” its Chicago Line. NS feared an Amtrak train crew going dead on the law would tie up the railroad.
“We fed passengers overnight when the concessions were closed,” said Amtrak spokeman Magliari. “We provided snacks, coffee and hot chocolate. We fed passengers again as we left Chicago this morning.
“We certainly understand their concern and we share it,” he added. “We apologized to our customers last night and this morning.”
Passenger Bluemke said the snacks included “Jimmy Dean frozen sandwiches.”
Magliari told Chicago TV station WLS that mechanical problems initially delayed the train.
“We had mechanical issues with locomotives all night long,” he said. “You might do everything you can to make sure your car starts in the morning and something happens and it doesn’t. It’s similar with rail equipment. Despite everyone’s best efforts, we weren’t able to get all the locomotives in the right line in the right way to go east. We had that done this morning.”
Passenger Ryan, though, wasn’t saying much good about Amtrak.
“I am hungry,” she said. “I am tired. I feel disrespected. This is not how a company should treat its clients. I’m absolutely speechless.”
Amtrak has announced that the dining cars and Sightseer lounge normally assigned to the Capitol Limited will be taken out of service beginning Jan. 12, 2015, for maintenance.
The cars will be replaced by a diner-lounge providing complete meals on one side of the car while the other side serves as the train’s lounge car.
The dining car and Sightseer lounge are expected to return to service on March 1.
Amtrak also continues to advise that passengers traveling aboard the Lake Shore Limited may experience significant delays due to heavy freight congestion along the routes.
Amtrak said in a service advisory that it continues to work with Norfolk Southern and CSX to restore dependable service along this route.
Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited overtakes a CSX ethanol train in Conneaut, Ohio, last Friday. At the time, No. 48 was running nearly 3 hours behind schedule. Late running has become the norm for Amtrak trains that serve Northeast Ohio. (Photograph by Craig Sanders)
This might be old news, but Wednesday was a bad day for Amtrak trains that serve Northeast Ohio. OK, Amtrak has a had a lot of bad days this year. So what was so bad about this one?
At 7 a.m. on Thursday morning, the eastbound Lake Shore Limited that had departed Chicago on Tuesday night had still not reached New York City, according to the Amtrak website.
Or maybe it had and no one bothered to report the train’s arrival. The website estimated that No. 48 would arrive at Penn Station at 4:31 a.m., making it 10 hours late.
That train had left Cleveland just before 2 p.m. on Wednesday when it was 8 hours late.
No. 48 would lose nearly another two hours between Cleveland and Buffalo and was almost 10.5 hours late by the time it left Syracuse, N.Y. The last report for the train was out of Croton-Harmon, N.Y., at 3:51 a.m.
The excessively tardy eastbound Lake Shore had begun in what these days is all too typical fashion by departing Chicago Union Station just over an hour late on Tuesday night. By the time it reached its first stop, South Bend, Ind., it was 3.5 hours late.
No. 48 then needed nearly three hours to travel 17 miles to its next stop at Elkhart, Ind. The scheduled travel time is 23 minutes.
By the time the train left Toledo it was more than eight hours behind schedule.
An online report, though, indicated that an hour of that tardiness was due to the crew making a lengthy inspection of the two locomotives while parked at Toledo Central Station.
The report did not indicate why that inspection needed to occur, but it did report that Norfolk Southern’s Toledo Yard dispatcher was annoyed to learn of it when she called the train on the radio to ask if it was ready to go east. That was 20 minutes after it arrived.
The dispatcher had the 22W waiting for those 20 minutes to follow No. 48 out of town. This is a hotshot intermodal for NS and it, too, was running hours late according to the online report.
Earlier on Wednesday, the eastbound Capitol Limited also fell victim to the NS “black hole” between Chicago and South Bend.
No. 30 left Chicago one minute late but by the time it rolled out of South Bend, it was 5 hours, 12 minutes late.
It needed nearly 1.5 hours to reach Elkhart and was 8 hours, 15 minutes down when it departed Waterloo, Ind. The distance between South Bend and Waterloo is 72 miles and in “normal” circumstances No. 30 travels that distance in an hour and 14 minutes.
But conditions on the NS Chicago Line this summer have been far from normal with trains stacking up all over the place and the railroad pressed to find enough available crews to move its freight trains.
The eastbound Capitol Limited on Wednesday continued to lose time as it headed eastward, although in smaller increments. It arrived in Cleveland at 10:44 a.m. and pulled out 13 minutes later. By now it had topped the 9 hour tardiness mark.
It gained a few minutes en route to Pittsburgh, departing Alliance 8 hours and 54 minutes late and leaving the Steel City 8 hours, 51 minutes late.
But it would gain no more time. By the time it left Rockville, Md., at 10:21 p.m., No. 30 was just over 10 hours late.
Schedule padding enabled the train to halt at Washington Union Station 9.5 hours late at 10:45 p.m.
By then every same-day connection that No. 30 can make was gone. Well, not quite. No. 66, the Northeast Regional train to Boston that is scheduled to leave Washington at 10:10 p.m. was held and departed at 11:24 p.m.
Most passengers ticketed for connections in Chicago from the westbound Lake Shore Limited and Capitol Limited also were able to make their connections to Amtrak’s westbound trains.
The westbound Capitol was doing all that bad, relatively speaking, in its timekeeping. It left Alliance and Cleveland nearly 1.5 hour late on Wednesday morning. It got out of Toledo 1 hour, 41 minutes late.
It would lose 26 minutes by the time it left Waterloo, but then fell into the NS “black hole,” leaving Elkhart and South Bend 4.5 hours late and halting at the Chicago Union Station bumper post at 2:36 p.m., nearly 6 hours late.
The westbound Lake Shore Limited faced the same story. It left New York City on time and was just over an hour late leaving Cleveland. That had increased to 1.5 hours late out of Toledo.
The tardiness reached 2.5 hours out of Bryan, Ohio, 4.5 hours out of Elkhart, and 5 hours, 18 minutes from South Bend. No. 49 reached Chicago at 3:25 p.m., 5 hours, 40 minutes late.
Amtrak held the westbound Southwest Chief for 50 minutes, which enabled connecting passengers from Nos. 29 and 49 to continue their trip uninterrupted if a bit frazzled.
The westbound California Zephyr was held for more than an hour before leaving at 4:03 p.m. The outbound Texas Eagle was held nearly 2 hours to accommodate connections from both trains.
But if you were connecting to the westbound Empire Builder, you were out of luck. No. 7 left at 2:17 p.m., two minutes late and didn’t connect with either No. 29 or 49.
Today (Thursday, Sept. 25), things are looking slightly better for the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited.
No. 30 departed the Cleveland Lake Front Station at 7:55 a.m. That is 6 hours late. No. 48 was not far behind and arrived at 8:09 a.m., That is 2 hours, 34 minutes late.
As for the westbound trains, No. 49 was running nearly 3 hours late and No. 29 was plugging along 48 minutes late. But it was on the brink of the NS “black hole,” so it’s anyone’s guess how it will fare into Chicago.
As for the New York-bound Lake Shore Limited that left Chicago on Tuesday night, the Amtrak website was finally updated. No. 48 arrived at Penn Station at 4:33 a.m., 10 hours and 10 minutes late.
I got a call from fellow Akron Railroad Club member Craig Sanders that a late Amtrak No. 48 had the “Big Game Train” P42 locomotive on the lead. He, in turn, had received a heads up from ARRC member Roger Durfee who had seen No. 48 pass his work site on the west side of Cleveland.
No. 189 was originally painted with that slogan when it was used on the Heartland Flyer between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City to ferry passengers attending the Red River Rivalry football between the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas. Since then No. 189 has traveled the country.
Until Roger spotted it, it had apparently gone unreported on No. 48. The last report on Heritage Units.com had had it in Chicago a week earlier.
I had a 10 minute window to shoot the eastbound Lake Shore Limited and the “Big Game Train” unit before I would had to get to work.
I called Craig on my cell phone and he checked the Track-a-Train feature on Amtrak’s website. His updates made this photo opportunity happen.
In the top two photograph, No. 48 is shown passing under State Route 615 in Mentor. The former New York Central passenger station, which is now a restaurant, is behind me. It is really unshootable for an eastbound.
The bottom photo shows the heritage dining car on No. 48. Lately I have been shooting the dining cars knowing the heritage ones probably will disappear in the near future.
The eastbound Lake Shore Limited rushes through Perry, Ohio, 4 hours and 13 minutes late.
Private car Caritas carried a livery similar to the Illinois Central passenger scheme.
Last Sunday the eastbound Lake Shore Limited was an hour and a half late but had No. 822 in the lead.
The “interesting” motive power consist of the train that blocked my view of the Amtrak 822 back on Jan. 4.
Last winter on a Saturday morning in January there was a very late Amtrak No. 49 (Lake Shore Limited) that came through after a heavy eastern snowfall. I was set up at Fobes Street. in Painesville with perfect lighting. No. 49 had Phase III heritage unit No. 822 on the lead.
My result was getting blocked by an eastbound CSX train with interesting motive power but with No. 49 being viewed in between the freight cars of the eastbound.
Last Sunday No. 48 was running late and had the 822 on the lead. I went out to get it. My luck changed this time with No. 48 showing up 10 minutes before mass started in Painesville.
Then I got lucky again. On Wednesday it was a very late No. 48 with the 822 leading and with private car Caritas right behind the power painted in Iowa Pacific’s replication of the Illinois Central passenger livery.
Photographs by Edward Ribinskas
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