Those of us working as advocates for passenger trains often argue—and with valid reason—that bad weather has less impact on train travel than on travel by highway or by plane. However, passenger trains do run into weather related problems—heavy rains in the northwest trigger mudslides that cover the tracks and “service interruptions” in the midwest…
The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) has a page on its web site that shows the on-time status of every Amtrak train anywhere in the country. It’s fascinating because it provides both a quick-and-dirty and also a detailed explanation of each train’s status. I take a look every few days just to see how…
Amtrak has added between 90 minutes and three hours to the schedule of the Empire Builder in an effort to regain some semblance of on-time performance. As we all know, that train has been running many hours late because of freight congestion occurring across North Dakota. On March 27, the St. Paul Star-Tribune ran a…
Are you sick of reading about the problems the Empire Builder is having? Not half as sick as I am writing about them, I can assure you. The thing is, it’s an intolerable situation and it just cannot go on. But it doesn’t seem to be improving. There are four Empire Builder consists somewhere on…