Miniature Railroad at Amusement Park Operated With More Precision Than Actual National Rail Network

A quarter-mile miniature railroad at FunLand Amusement Park in central Ohio has achieved a 99.8 percent on-time performance rate, making it statistically more reliable than every Class I railroad and Amtrak combined, a distinction that has drawn attention from transportation analysts and mockery from the internet. 'We run a tight operation,' said FunLand's miniature railroad superintendent Tyler Switch, 17, who operates the park's two-locomotive fleet with a precision that Amtrak's head of operations has called 'aspirational.' The miniature railroad, which consists of a 1,200-foot loop of 15-inch-gauge track, two diesel-powered locomotives, and six passenger cars that carry up to 24 guests per trip, has recorded only one late departure in the current season — caused by a child dropping an ice cream cone on the track. 'We cleaned it up in four minutes,' Tyler said. 'That's our version of a signal failure. In the national rail network, a signal failure can delay things by hours. We had ice cream on the track and we were back to schedule in four minutes. It's all about response time.' The comparison, while not entirely fair — the miniature railroad operates a single train on a single track with a total journey time of 3 minutes — has nevertheless embarrassed larger operators. 'A teenager running a quarter-mile of track at an amusement park has better metrics than we do,' said a transportation analyst who requested anonymity. 'And he does it with two locomotives, no dispatching center, and a staff of one. We have 20,000 employees and we can't get a train from New York to Boston on time.' Tyler has attributed his success to 'simple infrastructure and no freight interference.' He has also noted that his passengers 'never complain about delays because the ride is three minutes long. If we're thirty seconds late, nobody notices. At Amtrak, thirty minutes late is called early.' Amtrak has not commented on the comparison. Tyler has been offered a summer internship with the railroad's operations department, which he declined because 'the hours conflict with my shifts at FunLand.'