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Comment by db48x | Hacker News Reader

Same here. An Amtrak train would just stop at the next convenient road crossing, if there were really something preventing them from stopping at the scheduled station. Most Amtrak stations don't even have staff, or any way to prevent people from coming and going, so this would most likely involve construction on the station platform itself. That’s fairly rare but the last time I took the Zephyr headed east there was exactly that situation. The construction crews had the whole platform blocked off so we boarded at the road crossing a block away.

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They can't realistically do this in Germany because the tracks are so much more busy than the US. There would more than likely be a train coming the other direction within the next few minutes, and they cannot guarantee all the people have time to vacate the track area.

Right, but Germany has stations every few miles. Here in America the next station might be hours and hundreds of miles away. Better to stop ¼ mile away instead; people will hardly know the difference. The point is that if for any reason they cannot reach the station then they’ll always stop at the nearest safe place instead. The crew always have an alternate stop.

For really long construction work they’ll actually build an entirely separate train station, like they did in Denver Colorado a few years back. They knew that the construction of the new station downtown would take a few years, so they built a really cheap platform a few miles away on a siding and moved all the arrivals and departures there for the duration.

Yeah, I was on Amtrak in North Dakota somewhere and we got stopped for a couple hours waiting for a plow train. So like half the train got off in the middle of this field to play in the snow while we waited.

The Amtrak people I've met over the years pretty clearly want to do a good job in a system that is stacked against them.

I don't understand ome detail of this story: Amtrak platforms are about 110cm high. That's more than waist high for most people. So how do you let people get on and off at a grade intersection instead of at a platform?

And now you tell me how those doors function at 110cm height instead of ground level ;)

https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Autumn-1...

I've ridden on Amtrak trains. The door for the passenger compartments is in the middle of the observation cars, the oval on the lower level is the window on the door. You can see 3 of them on the 3 cars. The crew would put out a step at stops which was helpful considering the age of most of the passengers.

Up top are seats and maybe a lounge, below are bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage. There's a spiral staircase to change levels.

The locomotive has steps right outside the wheels with handrails.

I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say.

It's pretty obvious where the doors are (middle), which have windows. My point, replying to my parent, was that they said Amtrak platforms are at 110cm height. The lowest part of those doors are not at 110cm height, but much lower, almost as if the platform was much much lower than my parent claimed ;)

And yes, trains do exist, which either have doors at two different heights (these don't seem to) or that either automatically fold away so you can get out at ground level via the stairs that are revealed/created by the mechanism or that simply stay up for platform height entry/exit. Used both types. Now, whether or not Amtrak has those in specific parts of the US I can't say.

The trains carry a step that can be placed on the ground outside the door, so you can step down from the car.

Lol, most Amtrak platforms are at track level! I think the cars are 8” above track level, not waist high.

Every car has a metal step that will be placed in front of the door by the attendant.

Edit: Oh, except for a few lines on the East Coast where the trains are only single–level. Those are 48” above the top of track.

Looks like we both had incomplete information. I didn't know that some trains have their doors really close to the ground and it's actually very inconsistent. I'm getting a clearer picture now.

It is at least consistent within any one Amtrak route. The ones that go through the north east have to go through tunnels that can only accommodate single–level cars, while all the other routes have the double–level cars where the doors are really close to the ground.

See "An Excessive Explanation of North American Platform Heights": https://youtu.be/duASHyreTRg

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