snickerdoodlesandsausages asked:

Hey, how does train scheduling work? Is there no equivalent of air-traffic control or whatever for trains? I’ve been sitting and waiting for a surprise freight train to move out of the way of the station for an hour, and nobody seemed to know a) that this was going to happen ahead of time or b) how long it’s going to take the other train to clear out. I love traveling on Amtrak, there’s no better travel experience especially for the price, but the unexpected delays are so much more frequent and severe than the car or bus that it’s hard to justify :(

The issue is that there is little communication between Freight Companies and Amtrak and PSR has lead to constant delays on Amtrak within nearly all routes because the freight trains are too long and understaffed and full of differed maintenance. If we owned the tracks we operate on then the on time performance and speed would greatly improve, hence the push for railway nationalization