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FC Report: Amtrak woes
9 years ago
So, about an Amtrak trip I just went on to San Jose for Further Confusion.
First off, it got delayed an entire day after heavy snow in Portland. Then the following day, we got further delayed for five hours after the engine broke down outside Martinez, CA.
Here's the thing, a union law sets a limit on the number of hours an engineer can work. So after that 5 hour debacle, he'd run up the clock for the day, and we had to wait over another hour for Amtrak to wrangle up a new one at Emeryville. I was supposed to get to San Jose thursday morning, but I didn't arrive until around 11pm on friday. So that sucked.
The return trip, however was a bit more exciting. Some drug crazed 20-something pulled a box cutter on Amtrak staff in the observation car about a half hour north of Klamath Falls. We were ushered out while he had a standoff with the conductor for at least a half hour, throwing around whatever wasn't nailed down. We came to a stop at a road crossing, waiting for kevlar clad Klamath police to come taze him multiple times. In the end, the incident lasted over two hours, and I lost my phone in the chaos.
I initially thought it was taken by Amtrak, as they found one and I lost mine, but I couldn't get them to show it to me and apparently I couldn't describe it well enough. But apparently a passenger found it, and gave one of my friends a call. By this point however, I'd already ordered a replacement and it wasn't worth going back to King Street Station to pick up where it got left. So that's just as well.
Suffice to say, I'm flying next time.
First off, it got delayed an entire day after heavy snow in Portland. Then the following day, we got further delayed for five hours after the engine broke down outside Martinez, CA.
Here's the thing, a union law sets a limit on the number of hours an engineer can work. So after that 5 hour debacle, he'd run up the clock for the day, and we had to wait over another hour for Amtrak to wrangle up a new one at Emeryville. I was supposed to get to San Jose thursday morning, but I didn't arrive until around 11pm on friday. So that sucked.
The return trip, however was a bit more exciting. Some drug crazed 20-something pulled a box cutter on Amtrak staff in the observation car about a half hour north of Klamath Falls. We were ushered out while he had a standoff with the conductor for at least a half hour, throwing around whatever wasn't nailed down. We came to a stop at a road crossing, waiting for kevlar clad Klamath police to come taze him multiple times. In the end, the incident lasted over two hours, and I lost my phone in the chaos.
I initially thought it was taken by Amtrak, as they found one and I lost mine, but I couldn't get them to show it to me and apparently I couldn't describe it well enough. But apparently a passenger found it, and gave one of my friends a call. By this point however, I'd already ordered a replacement and it wasn't worth going back to King Street Station to pick up where it got left. So that's just as well.
Suffice to say, I'm flying next time.
My Amtrak trip to FC in 2009 or so was delayed because there was something wrong with the line; at this point, I forget exactly what. We had to get bussed around the problem, which took several hours because at first they were hoping to fix it, and then they had to wrangle up enough busses to take the entire passenger load. So I arrived at FC late, but at least it was still on the day I had planned to be there. Sorry to hear yours was so poor.