CHICAGO — The Chicago-Seattle/Portland, Ore., Empire Builder is finally on the road to recovery after incurring significant challenges during the past week following a late October High Plains snowstorm and related issues.
A series of delays throughout the week culminated in eastbound train No. 8 departing Seattle more than 5 hours late on Saturday, Oct. 28, after its westbound counterpart, hobbled between Glasgow and Malta, Mont., arrived 3½ hours late earlier in the day. The eastbound that left late on Saturday departed St. Paul, Minn., 5 hours, 20 minutes late today (Monday, Oct. 30) en route to Chicago.
The problems each Builder encountered due to bad weather east of Spokane, Wash., were exacerbated by extensive delays to the Portland section near Pasco, Wash. Because the westbound train makes a same-day equipment turn at Portland, tardiness accumulated.
Trouble began to cascade with a 6-hour-late eastbound departure from Spokane on Wednesday morning; the train lost another 5 hours across North Dakota and arrived into Chicago more than 14 hours late at 7:11 a.m. Friday. Delays to eastbound Empire Builders leaving Spokane Thursday through Saturday ranged from 3½ to 4½ hours.
“Each train has experienced a unique delay, including track work near Pasco, mechanical issues, freight train interference, late bridge closing, and late departures from the terminal,” Amtrak spokesman W. Kyle Anderson told Trains News Wire in an email over the weekend.
BNSF Railway’s Lena Kent says last week’s winter storm across the Hi Line “caused several challenges impacting on-time performance.” Among those were Amtrak mechanical issues which caused BNSF to “lease Amtrak a locomotive for recovery. BNSF continues to work closely with Amtrak operating leaders to mitigate delays for passengers,” she reports.
The good news: the westbound Empire Builder arriving today was 5 minutes early into Seattle and only 11 minutes late into Portland, Ore. Amtrak had short-turned the previous day’s delayed westbound at Spokane, with bus substitutions to and from those West Coast cities Sunday, so the eastbound train operating across Montana Monday was also running on time.
Getting accurate delay data
Dramatically overdue trains that periodically plague long-distance routes with many nocturnal rural stops, like the Builder, California Zephyr, and Sunset Limited, seriously upend travel plans for anyone without other options who book these once-per-day (or less) trains.
Amtrak no longer routinely posts extensive delays to trains outside the Northeast Corridor on its “Amtrak Alerts” feed on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). It still maintains “AmtrakNECAlerts” and passengers can sign up for delay alert notifications here.
The “Amtrak Alerts” posts now occur only where two or more trains are affected on a particular service line. Thus, there was no mention of the northbound City of New Orleans’ 3 hour-plus overnight delay into Carbondale, Ill., on Oct. 30.
However, the company has used modern technology to significantly improve communication with ticketed passengers.
Here’s an example. Heavy rains in Florida last month played havoc with CSX’s aging signal system south of Jacksonville. By the morning of Sept. 27, the northbound Silver Star had gobbled up all of its scheduled recovery time and was more than 3 hours late leaving Columbia, S.C.
Anyone ticketed that day to ride No. 92 — including those onboard — received a series of text messages each time the train’s status changed significantly. The text provided a link to a constantly updated schedule displaying revised estimated arrival and departure times for that train’s upcoming stations. Once the Star departed each stop, the display showed what time it was originally scheduled and when it actually departed.
The information allowed the author to avoid conflict between a dining-car breakfast and a rare daylight photo opportunity of the rambling Seaboard station at Hamlet, N.C. (see below).
“Amtrak is now able to communicate directly to virtually all of our ticketed customers via text (SMS), email, and with notifications through both our iOS (Apple) and Android apps,” spokesman Marc Magliari tells News Wire. “With this improvement, we are now able to shield Amtrak and its state partners from unforeseen changes and potential volatility from external platforms such as Twitter/X.”
