Amtrak’s Long Battle with Host Railroads

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]It's hard to bring up Amtrak without acknowledging its imperfect timekeeping.

[00:00:05]And it's hard to talk about the timekeeping without those three words: freight train interference.

[00:00:16]If you spent any time looking at Amtrak's performance, you are probably familiar with this term. Especially now, it's thrown around a lot, and for good reason. Amtrak keeps setting writership and revenue records every year and is looking to the future with even more routes and equipment, but has been partly hampered by its host railroads, mostly the class one freight haulers who make up the majority of Amtrak's delays.

[00:00:41]But as many will point out, freight interference is not just common, but against the law. Since the Amtrak improvement act of 1973, host railroads have been required to give Amtrak priority, something that they've clashed with the passenger carrier on multiple times, but that was passed over 50 years ago, and it seems this is mostly being given the spotlight now in the 2020s.

[00:01:06]It's not hard to see why, especially in the thick of precision scheduled railroading with trains practically getting longer with every passing year.

[00:01:14]But it has left me to wonder what has been going on in that long period between now and then. How did freight interference look before the PSR onslaught in the 2010s, 2000s, or the 20th century? How did fallen flag railroads go about treating Amtrak?

[00:01:31]Before the wave of mega mergers brought our rail network to where it is now.

[00:01:35]Let's take a trip back in time and look at the history of Amtrak's longtime struggle with its host railroads.

[00:01:43]From its first days in May 1971, Amtrak was facing an uphill battle. With passenger rail travel at its lowest point, and the government doubtful of Amtrak's success, host railroad performance was the last thing it had to worry about. However, as the New York Times reported, many trains were already late before the end of the year. Amtrak admitted that nationwide less than half the trains were on time with long-d distanceance services bearing the heaviest delays. But which freight railroads were most responsible for this? That same article reported that some of the better host railroads were the Milwaukee Road, Missouri Pacific, and Chassis System. Union Pacific was considered the best host of all with an ontime record of 95%, although it was only responsible for a handful of services at the time. Even the struggling Penn Central turned out to be the fifth best railroad, keeping 86% of trains on time. On the other hand, you had Golf Mobile in Ohio, Burlington Northern, Louisville and Nashville, and Illinois Central. All of which had a reported 1 in3 chance of making an Amtrak train run late, or about a 67% on time rate. While the national on-time percentage made it over 50% by the end of 1971 and rose to 70% in 1972, by the following year, it plummeted again to 35. Despite its relatively high percentages in 1971, Penn Central was the focus of claims of poor service as its freight trains used the Northeast Corridor that many passenger trains relied on. These complaints helped bring about the Amtrak Improvement Act and the obligation of Amtrak Priority into law.

[00:03:27]From here on, freight railroads were required to keep Amtrak on the move.

[00:03:32]Friction came up again in 1979. This time with Southern Pacific and its handling of the Sunset Limited, mostly east of Houston, Texas. According to the New York Times, the Sunset wasn't on time once from July to October. It got to the point that Amtrak brought the situation under the Department of Justice, which eventually got the SP to agree on Amtrak handling. Relations seemed to cool off again for a few years until the later end of the 1980s and entering the '90s when those on-time percentages soured again. From 1988 to 1991, long-d distanceance routes dipped below 60%. On the radar this time was Illinois Central. In 1990, the Chicago Tribune reported that Amtrak accused the IC of heavy delays, stating that trains had a 15% on time rate during that period. Systemwide, timeliness remained above 70% while this was all happening, but it would not be the end of delays for the long-d distanceance trains, which only got worse. In 1993 and 94, their ontime rate was under 50%. Over 30,000 hours of delay or more than 1,000 days were reported in those same years.

[00:04:51]To be fair, not all of that was attributed to host railroads, though they still made up a large fraction. In 1999, for example, freight contributed to 16,000 hours of delay. With this in mind, let's take another look at the best and worst performing host railroads. According to data in 1994 and '95, among the highest performing hosts were Central Vermont, Suline, and Norfolk Southern, all with consistent rates over 80%. Even Illinois Central appeared to straighten up. Meanwhile, at the bottom were Union Pacific, Delaware and Hudson, Conrail, and CSX. Of course, many of those names are history now, and likewise, several Amtrak trains that operated then have become lost themselves. With the railroads still in the thick of mergers, the tides of change continued to brew. But while the millennium may have been new, the freight train problems would persist into the 21st century.

[00:05:53]Southern Pacific had long been merged into UP, but the woes continued for the Sunset Limited. On CSX rails from Louisiana to Florida, it peaked at a whopping 32% on time rate in 2001 before dropping to below 10% in 2004 and 5 until it was cut back to its current terminus at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Other trains on CSX Trackage were far more lucky though with the Capital Limited Auto Train and Silver Services being the only others to drop below 20% which all occurred in 2006.

[00:06:31]Not to single out CSX, the other class ones didn't fare much better with their respective trains. Under Union Pacific, the Sunset Limited and Coast Starlight fell to as low as 4%. Railway Age reported that in 2006, not a single California Zephr arrived on time in BNSF or UP territory. Granted, these were long-d distanceance trains, and some inner city services fared better off, but not even all of them did, as the Cascades and several Midwestern trains fell below 50% as well. Keep in mind that Amtrak altered its measurements of on-time performance beginning in 2000, but that still leaves no doubt that these percentages are not pleasant to look at. Since the 2000s, Amtrak's general on time performance has mostly stayed between 70 and 80% with about 60 to 70,000 hours of delay. The host railroads caused as low as 34,000 hours in 2021, peaked at 70,000 in 2006 and '07, and has stagnated at about 55,000 since 2022. However, not all of these figures specify long distance, so they might have been propped up by the Northeast Corridor. One major pattern is, of course, the early to mid 2000s.

[00:07:54]During this time, alongside a couple Amtrak derailments and detours, freight rail was booming in carload traffic, which reached its peak in 2006 and hasn't replicated that since. Despite the rise in business, mileage was decreasing as redundant branch and secondary lines were sold or abandoned.

[00:08:14]All of this is of course important to consider, but let's not forget how the situation has been in the 2020s. For the past few years, Amtrak has shed extra light on host railroad performance, giving out report cards that show the timeliness of each train. You could probably guess there's a lot in the red.

[00:08:34]Even now, the Sunset Limited can't catch a break. It was usually at the bottom, dipping below 20% in 2022 and usually accompanied by the California Zephr and Southwest Chief. Despite the best efforts of the city of New Orleans, which reached 80% in 2021, no trains were above that mark from 2022 to 24.

[00:08:57]The freight trains may be newer, longer, and quite different from those in past decades, but the pest of interference is just as stubborn as ever. With all these low percentages over all these decades, you'd think Amtrak and the class ones would try to come up with a solution for this once and for all. And while the freight and passenger sides have communicated, they seem to be at a sort of stalemate. Something we're seeing a lot now is Amtrak and host railroads each pointing fingers at the other.

[00:09:27]Amtrak accuses class ones of treating its trains unfairly, while class 1's argue that Amtrak is setting the bar too high with unrealistic ontime standards.

[00:09:37]I think neither side is entirely false.

[00:09:40]Amtrak's 80% can be considered a valid goal. After all, most airlines in the US fall within a similar ontime rate of 70 to 80%. On the other hand, especially on more crowded routes, it's not easy for a dispatcher to just clear the line for every Amtrak that passes like a fire truck coming down the road. While they don't always act like it, Class ones are no stranger to treating some of their freight trains like this. As trains magazine pointed out, several railroads experimented with the hottest of hot shot inner modals in the early 2000s.

[00:10:16]These got the highest priority for their entire route and could travel coast to coast within a few days, but at the cost of sidelining many other trains in their path. But what happens when just about every train gets sidelined? That's when you have a meltdown. It's essentially a train jam where the main line gets gridlocked and freight trains can be stuck in one place for days. This is exactly what Southern Pacific experienced in 1979, but it was also a side effect of several class one mergers in the 1990s, most notably Union Pacific's acquisition of the SP. Other impacts, especially those from Mother Nature, can throw a wrench into rail operations as well. Trains in the Midwest like the California's Ever and Southwest Chief are familiar with this as flooding can easily take out a mainline and cause plenty of detours.

[00:11:10]1993 saw a really bad flood with Santa Fe and other railroads rerouting freight trains in every direction. Host railroads have seen trains so fast they can hardly keep up and main lines so congested that little can get through.

[00:11:26]Additionally, apart from the occasional lawsuit, most enforcement of the ontime standard seems to be not much more than a slap on the wrist. The only other time major legal action was taken was on Norfolk Southern's handling of the Crescent in 2024, a good 45 years following Southern Pacific's fiasco.

[00:11:47]Likewise, Union Pacific was in hot water as its treatment of the Sunset Limited was recently investigated by the Surface Transportation Board. These actions are great and all, but they would have been quite helpful 20 years ago when the percentages were in the single digits.

[00:12:04]Freight train interference seems less like a trend and more like a cycle. A cycle that has continued for about as long as Amtrak has existed and one that has to be broken. So, what should be done to bring a long-term end to freight interference? I know that history lesson went a little fast, so let's take another peek at some of those past years. While the 1970s were tumultuous for Amtrak and the entire rail industry, improvements arrived in the 80s. Under the Staggers Act, freight railroads were heavily deregulated, allowing for added competition and financial health that has kept the railroads prosperous to this day. Around that time came changes to the way railroads functioned. Mergers were still common with the number of class ones continuing to thin out. With this came abandonment of surplus lines.

[00:12:55]In the 1980s alone, class one system mileage dropped by almost 50,000 as traffic became consolidated and ton miles climbed. With that traffic came innovations. Double stack intermoal service was on the rise and unit coal trains from the Powder River basin dominated the Midwest. It's a lot of activity that could be considered familiar today. And yet Amtrak didn't quite get the shaft. Most ontime performances remained between 70 and 80% in the early to mid 1980s on par with today's standards. And I couldn't find many instances of Amtrak butdding heads with particular railroads at this time.

[00:13:39]Even in the 2000s when Amtrak was neck deep in delays, there were still some trains that host railroads played nice with. Of all the long-d distanceance trains listed between 2001 and 2007, two broke through the 80% mark and did so for several years in a row. Those being the city of New Orleans via Canadian National, which acquired Illinois Central, and the Empire Builder on BNSF.

[00:14:07]The latter especially stands out with the Empire Builder mostly traversing BNSF's Northern Transcon, a line that has large sections of rural single track, yet considerable traffic bound for the Pacific Northwest. If passenger trains can keep to time on a route like this, perhaps the same could occur on many other lines across the country as well. And improvements have been made to many class one main lines since these figures. In just the past few years alone, host railroads have spent billions in making their main lines more efficient with higher capacity. Union Pacific has expanded numerous sightings on the route of the Sunset Limited, finally giving many of its giant freight trains a place to fit. BNSF has made improvements to its Northern Transcon with a bottleneck near Sandpoint, Idaho, upgraded with double tracking. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which sees no shortage of Amtrak service, a bypass to streamline traffic flow around the nearby CPKC Mosquo Yard is planned for construction. And on the Gulf Coast, over 100 million in funds has gone toward upgrading the CSX route between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama. This was done mostly to benefit the new Marty GR service between the two cities, which runs multiple trains a day. And in a far cry from the Sunset Limited in the 2000s, in the first few months of the Marty GR, it reported an on-time performance of 86%.

[00:15:40]Perhaps thanks to these and future developments, freight trains won't be the only ones to reap the reward of better service. Overall though, while it may be a tough balancing act, I don't want to see one side get extensively rewarded or punished. My hope is to see both the class ones and Amtrak succeed.

[00:16:01]Not just as a rail fan, but as a consumer who relies on the many goods shipped by rail and as a traveler who enjoys the passenger train experience and wishes that it gets even better for millions of present and future riders.

[00:16:15]The United States prides itself on having the largest, most extensive rail network in the world. What better way to prove that than by allowing freight and passenger to thrive?

[00:16:28]Heat.

[00:16:42]Heat.