What the Hell is Wrong wih the 784? Making the case for the 582

A guest post by DLD

Now I don’t consider myself an investigative reporter (so this should be considered one of the investigative report series), but I would like to give anecdotal support to GNS’s premise that the 784 is going downhill and the 582 is now the preferred train. I am the ex-daily hour-each-way commuter that is now a some-weeks Monday north, Friday south commuter that is also in the hall of fame. Can you follow that? If not, go find my previous guest post to figure what it all means.

A year or more ago (back when I was a daily regular) I would argue with GNS that the 582 was a better choice than the 784 on Friday nights. We did some experiments, and Greg was unconvinced. I will admit that we had some bad experiences on the 582 and some good ones on the 784. But now it looks like I was right after all.

Recently my schedule has pretty much required that I take the 784 from LA to my normal stop in San Diego County. But today I got to LA in time to catch the 582, and what a joyous experience it has been. My good friend ALH was on, which was a pleasant surprise. Plus the rest of the people hanging in the Café were a hoot.

Let’s compare:

It looks to me like GNS’s premise is correct. The 582 is a better choice. I hope I can start making it more often.

Daylight Losing Time - Yet Another Late Train

The 763 train was late this morning. I have a theory about Amtrak. It operates like a very fragile system. In engineering terms it lacks robustness or redundancy. Or put simply it takes very little to put it out of whack. And with the onset of daylight savings time last night I knew that was all it would take to create a delay, for some reason.

The photo to the left shows  the Solana Beach regulars, at 6:43am, about two minutes before scheduled arrival on a normal day. This morning the picture would appear a bit darker both literally and figuratively as we waited anxiously to see if the train would even show up. These late trains seem to occur in spells in which a week or two with several late trains will occur. The good news is the 763 did show at about 7:02 am. Seventeen minutes late is not too bad. It even made up some of the delay by time it hit Irvine. Let's hope we're out of this spell of late trains for now.

Where's Amtrak

We have had an unfortunate string of late trains on the Surfliner recently. It seems like the train is late more often than not and the list of reasons given is long. Late departure in the morning because the crew slept in, late arrival in morning because of an accident up the line. And to make it even more fun, the train is occasionally, albeit rarely, early! Regardless of the reason on any particular day, these incidents provide opportunities to tell jokes, catch up with friends, and above all complain.

Waiting for the 784 in Los Angeles

The network of regular riders often does a better job of updating each other than the folks at Amtrak do. Texts, emails, and calls go out to riders up and down the line to warn of delays, and to determine how long a delay is likely to be (Amtrak's default reply is that the train will be there in 5 minutes). Alternatives are discussed (carpooling, taking Metrolink, going to Trax) and plans are made. We all eventually make it home safe to try again the next day.

In order to share these updates with the larger group, I have set up a Twitter account under the Rail_Tweet username and will post the status of my trains whenever we are running off schedule. The most recent tweets will also be displayed on the top of the blog homepage. Hope this helps people plan and feel free to send Rail_Tweet your updates as well. Working together is how we will win.