(The following article by David Patch was posted on the Toledo Blade website on April 2.)
TOLEDO, Ohio — Train travelers headed from Toledo to New York will be scheduled to depart even deeper into the wee hours than they’re accustomed to, beginning tomorrow morning.
Whether the schedule change that Amtrak has made to the eastbound Lake Shore Limited, from Chicago to New York, will improve its recently troubled on-time performance remains to be seen.
Formerly scheduled to arrive in Toledo at 1 a.m. and depart at 1:30 a.m., the New York-bound train will stop here from 3:20 a.m. until 4:05 a.m. as part of a revision Amtrak says will allow it to carry more passengers arriving in Chicago on connecting trains and offer an improved departure time from Cleveland. Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman, said the change in Toledo’s schedule times may not make a big difference for a lot of passengers, because either time is “the same shift for many people.”
The new 10 p.m. scheduled departure from Chicago, instead of 7:55 p.m., creates a schedule option that is more distinct from the 7 p.m. departure of the Toledo-bound Capitol Limited – so as long as travelers don’t mind getting in at 3:20 a.m., Toledoans taking the train for a day-trip, or weekend, in Chicago can stay in the Windy City a little longer.
Schedules for the westbound Lake Shore Limited, which stops in Toledo from 5:45 a.m. until 6:15 a.m., and both directions of the Capitol Limited between Chicago and Washington will not change.
If the Amtrak trains’ schedule-keeping does not improve over the performance in February and March, eastbound Lake Shore riders may find themselves often arriving in Toledo at sun-up – or later.
Plagued by bad weather, equipment problems, and freight-train congestion and derailments, Amtrak’s trains through Toledo have been hours late routinely during the last two months and sometimes were canceled outright.
The trains that ran Friday night and Saturday offered an extreme example – none arrived at its final stop less than 5 hours, 59 minutes late. Worst was the westbound Capitol Limited, which was delayed 12 hours by a freight derailment east of Pittsburgh and stopped in Toledo at suppertime instead of daybreak.
More typical were the delays Amtrak’s Chicago-bound trains encountered on Friday. The westbound Capitol left Toledo 55 minutes late, then incurred two hours of delays before getting to South Bend, Ind. The westbound Lake Shore, which was 23 minutes late out of Toledo, ended up behind the Capitol and was delayed a further 90 minutes.
Mr. Magliari blamed the delays west of Toledo on freight trains operated by Norfolk Southern, which owns the tracks between Cleveland and Chicago, but a Norfolk Southern spokesman denied responsibility.
“The railroad is fluid between Chicago and Toledo,” spokesman Rudy Husband said Friday. “There is nothing going on on our end that would cause any delays to Amtrak.”
In any case, Mr. Magliari said, last week was better than the week before, “but we’re still greatly concerned about on-time performance across northern Indiana.” Amtrak has had “a series of conversations with NS” about the situation and is optimistic about further improvement, he said.
“Historically, this route has had better performance than this,” Mr. Magliari said.
And some of the recent delays have fallen at Amtrak’s own feet. The westbound Lake Shore Limited that stopped in Toledo Saturday morning was more than three hours late leaving New York because of equipment problems.
Earlier last month, passengers aboard the eastbound Capitol Limited endured hours of delay in Indiana because a traction motor in a locomotive failed, causing some of the locomotive’s wheels to freeze up. The train reached Washington 18 hours late.
During January and February, Amtrak locomotives failed in a similar manner 70 times, Mr. Magliari said. All of the traction-motor failures involved equipment that had recently been installed in the locomotives, he said, and Amtrak has now accelerated preventive maintenance to try to avoid breakdowns.
Shaunda Parks, a spokesman for the locomotive manufacturer GE Transportation, said her company is jointly investigating the problem with Amtrak.