Two years ago I rode the Empire Builder from Minot to St. Paul on a night where a three-day blizzard had closed the interstates across the entire state, closed the Minot airport to any travel, led the state highway patrol to recommend no travel anywhere in the state and forced me to walk to the depot, since there was no getting a car through the 4-5 foot snowdrifts across the streets. The day before the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force had to ride a snowplow down to the train station to catch the westbound Empire Builder, since the airbase was closed.
The train, lead by a BNSF freight locomotive with snowplow and three Amtrak P42s, had no problem getting through the snow, but you could feel the cars bunch up and then stretch out again as the train punched through the snowdrifts. We were an hour late out of Minot, and two hours late to St. Paul, but I've been later in good weather. Since it was the Christmas weekend, I'm sure that there were many fewer freight trains in the system, easing our passage.