TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

A piece on the website of the Central Valley CBS station KGPE reports that an Amtrak San Joaquin train was delayed by about 12 hours last Thursday - and there was a group of fifth graders on the train, returning from a field trip to Sacramento. If it were not for these students, the incident would probably never have made the news:

A field trip turned into an overnight ordeal for some valley fifth graders.

31 students and eight chaperones from Corcoran Elementary were stuck near Denair overnight. They were stranded inside an Amtrak train.

[KGPE - CBS TV47 - Fifth graders experience Amtrak delay]

But what did really happen? Gene Poon posted the following on the All_Aboard Yahoo Group:

Okay, now for the real story.

The initial cause of the delay was vandalism. Somebody stacked tie plates on both rails at approx. MP79 on UP, approx. five miles (railroad) west of Stockton, CA. San Joaquin Train 704(23) with CDTX 2009 struck the tie plates; the engine sustained broken air hoses and a punctured fuel tank. The fuel leak was confined and emergency repairs made to the air hoses; after a delay of 3 hr 05 min, train proceeded to Stockton (ACE Station) where it tied up pending further arrangements for the passengers. Meanwhile San Joaquin Train 715(23) was coming west, bound for Oakland with two units and an extra set of San Joaquin cars in its consist. At Stockton (on BNSF tracks) the extra set was cut off along with AMTK 160; that equipment proceeded to Stockton (ACE Station) which is on UP. After 1 hr 51 min., with the passengers transferred, that equipment departed Stockton (ACE Station) as a stub Train 704 to Bakersfield.

At Turlock (Denair), the operating crew’s Hours of Service expired. Train sat for 6 hr 05 min waiting for a relief crew.

[All Aboard Message #125117]

So they were on train #704, which was scheduled to leave Sacramento at 4:25pm and arrive at Corcoran at 8:32pm. According to the Amtrak train status page, the train left Sacramento ontime at 4:25pm. Scheduled arrival in Stockton (ACE station) was 5:20pm, but according to the information quoted above, the vandalism incident caused a delay of 3hr 5min, which would have put the train in Stockton at 8:25pm. So at that time, train #718 from Oakland to Bakersfield was already gone (scheduled departure 7:37pm, actual 7:49pm). Leaves the question whether a bus might have picked up the passengers at the site of the incident and taken them to meet train #718 at the Santa Fe station in Stockton. But for some reason, they decided not to do that.

So they took that extra set of equipment off train #715 (really? that train arrived Stockton at 6:23pm - with a delay of 57 minutes - so that was a lucky conincidence and for once, somebody reacted quickly. But why did it take over 4 hours to move that equipment over to the ACE station in Stockton? Because the “new” train #704 then departed Stockton (ACE station) at 10:35pm, 5 hr and 15 min late. Oh, and by that time, somebody in the dispatching center should have realized that there was no way that the crew would be able to take the train all the way to Bakersfield within their service hour limit. They made it only to Denair - which is 47 min from Stockton according to schedule and still 3 hr 36 min from the final destination of Bakersfield…. And then it took them another 6 hr to find a new crew and take them to the train….

Well, while the vandalism really wasn’t Amtrak’s fault, they didn’t show a very good performance for the rest of the evening either. The train finally arrived in Bakersfield at 9:01am on the following morning, 11 hr and 18 min late. Total running time for Sacramento to Bakersfield according to schedule is 5 hr and 18 mins - so in the end, the train took more than three times the scheduled time to make it to its destination!

The biggest issue to me seems to be that nobody considered the service hours of the crew and made sure that a fresh crew was available to take the train from Stockton to Bakersfield. The delay would have been no more than 4 hr max and the children would have been at home shortly after midnight. Still not very good, but for this delay, the blame would have gone to vandalism and not to Amtrak - and hopefully even KGPE would have reported it that way (if at all).