Amtrak struggles to staff Lamy depot; Sky Railway steps up
Mar. 29—More than three years after the U.S. Senate approved $50 million to keep Amtrak's Southwest Chief chugging through New Mexico, a staffing shortfall is affecting the passenger train's schedule.
The Los Angeles-to-Chicago route now runs only five days a week.
The worker shortages — Amtrak has about 1,000 vacancies nationally, a spokesman said Monday — also are impeding service at the small, historical depot in Lamy, built in 1909. The last two depot attendants left late last year, and Amtrak has not been able to replace them, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said.
The positions pay more than $30 per hour.
"We have posted these jobs to backfill those positions at the Lamy station," he said Monday. "It is our intention to hire replacement employees. It's been posted for a while. We're not getting a lot of good applicants."
Many Amtrak depots are not staffed right now, Magliari said. And a lack of full staffing in other areas — including an "acute shortage in the mechanical department" — has played a role in cutting back the Chief's hours.
The train no longer departs from Chicago or Los Angeles on Mondays and Tuesdays, he said — meaning there are no trains coming through Lamy on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Still, the train arrives at the station twice a day, five days a week to pick up or deboard passengers.
While there are no Amtrak employees on hand at those times to open the depot or help passengers with baggage, two workers at Sky Railway — an entertainment-focused excursion train formerly known as Santa Fe Southern Railway — have been filling the gap.
Bill Banowsky, one of the owners of Sky Railway, which runs trains along the 18-mile spur line from Santa Fe to Lamy, said the workers show up every time the Southwest Chief rolls through. They open the depot at least two hours before a train is scheduled to stop at Lamy to ensure passengers can wait inside during inclement weather and use the bathrooms.
Sky Railway owns the depot, and Amtrak rents it on a month-by-month basis, Banowsky and Magliori confirmed.
Banowsky began getting complaints about passengers left out in the cold around the holiday season, he said, and decided to find a solution. "We've gone ahead and hired someone to man the station and basically do Amtrak's job. It reflects poorly on Santa Fe Southern as owner of that depot to leave it unattended."
It's not the first time service has been cut back at the Mission Revival-style station in the small community southeast of Santa Fe. In 2018, Amtrak closed the ticket window and cut back daily depot service from eight hours a day to shorter time periods before and after each of the two daily trains came through.
Shannon Dornbrach, one of the Sky Railway workers who serve Amtrak passengers, said she offers "a friendly smile" to people arriving on the train.
She also helps incoming passengers arrange rides into Santa Fe; some don't realize that's not an easy task. There is no pay phone in the station, and cellphone service can be spotty in Lamy, so Dornbrach allows customers to use the business phone on site to find transportation.
"I want to make sure everyone stays warm and has access to the bathroom," she said, noting it can be quite windy in Lamy.
Banowsky said his company has been trying to get Amtrak to contract with the two Sky Railway employees.
His company plans to submit an invoice to Amtrak for their wages, he added.
Magliari said anyone interested in the Lamy depot jobs or other work with Amtrak should visit careers.amtrak.com. The company is also seeking depot workers in its La Junta station in Colorado, which is also along the Southwest Chief line.
