What activity is there on the railway on Christmas Day?

[Alan2603]

Having spent Christmas in New York, I was surprised to see the Subway fully working a Sunday service (which itself is 24 hours on most routes), along with various the commuter lines and some long distance Amtrak routes operating. Having travelled through Penn Station on Christmas morning, there were certainly enough people getting on and off the Subway trains.

I was told it is a normal situation and even on such as Thanksgiving and Independence day, the trains and subway still run.

Mind you there was an awful lot of tourists in NYC itself and staff are needed to service their needs. Most shops were open Christmas Day as well.

Boxing Day doesn’t exist in the USA – it is straight back into a normal working day for most people after Christmas Day.

 

[Andyjs247]

Except the railway doesn't recognise midnight due to the confusion over which day it applies or whether it is the end or beginning of a particular day.
Railway schedules always say 23.59 or 00.01

Apart from the potential confusion AFAIK there are some systems which may not handle 00:00 correctly. If there are any timings in a schedule which would ordinarily fall at midnight then those times have to be adjusted one way or the other. This could be achieved by adding pathing time in the schedule.

 

[LAX54]

Having spent Christmas in New York, I was surprised to see the Subway fully working a Sunday service (which itself is 24 hours on most routes), along with various the commuter lines and some long distance Amtrak routes operating. Having travelled through Penn Station on Christmas morning, there were certainly enough people getting on and off the Subway trains.

I was told it is a normal situation and even on such as Thanksgiving and Independence day, the trains and subway still run.

Mind you there was an awful lot of tourists in NYC itself and staff are needed to service their needs. Most shops were open Christmas Day as well.

Boxing Day doesn’t exist in the USA – it is straight back into a normal working day for most people after Christmas Day.

Not so much passenger maybe, but no doubt still gets affected, they do have a good knack for freight derailments on their rails ! think I saw on FB there have been 3 in the past week or so ! (well 2 freight 1 passenger)

In L.A the metro shuts down for engineering, sometimes in the week a line will close about 2030, and passengers use the bus, or sometimes at weekends.

 

[furnessvale]

Not so much passenger maybe, but no doubt still gets affected, they do have a good knack for freight derailments on their rails ! think I saw on FB there have been 3 in the past week or so ! (well 2 freight 1 passenger)

In L.A the metro shuts down for engineering, sometimes in the week a line will close about 2030, and passengers use the bus, or sometimes at weekends.

This has been mentioned before. I seem to recall that the last time it was brought up I checked the statistics and calculated the derailment rate per billiontn/km in the USA is slightly better than that in the UK, and I believe the UK rate is one of the better ones in world terms.

Edited to add: The UK moves 17.4 billion tns/kms pa. The USA moves 2.53 trillion tns/kms pa.

 

[craigybagel]

This has been mentioned before. I seem to recall that the last time it was brought up I checked the statistics and calculated the derailment rate per billiontn/km in the USA is slightly better than that in the UK, and I believe the UK rate is one of the better ones in world terms.

Indeed. Their passenger fatality rate however is horrific, but that's wildly off topic here I suspect.

 

[tsr]

This has been mentioned before. I seem to recall that the last time it was brought up I checked the statistics and calculated the derailment rate per billiontn/km in the USA is slightly better than that in the UK, and I believe the UK rate is one of the better ones in world terms.

That sounds about right. There are far more derailments in the UK than people think (I’m talking about regular standard-gauge “heavy rail” operations, either on lines which are NR infrastructure or connected to it). However, the vast majority are depot ECS, freight or engineering train derailments at very slow speeds, and they simply don’t get noticed by the wider world. In many cases the RAIB aren’t particularly interested either! However, it’s very rare for a train in passenger service to be involved in a derailment, and much more rare for anything to affect trains at any significant speed, so we’ve got something right on this side of the pond.