AMTRAK-P42 said:
The Empire Builder that was traveling on the day of the derailment must have been detoured, it did finally arrived into Seattle about 9 1/2 hours late.
Did they detour it, or did they turn equipment on both sides of the closure and bustitute through another route, such as I-90? Amtrak has done that in the past, and I'm actually quite surprised they're not trying something like train from Seattle and Portland to Spokane, bus to Havre, MT and train the rest of the way. Of course, depending on how the equipment was located during the derailment, that may not be possible.
A reroute around Marias Pass would involve turning around at Shelby, MT, heading southeast to Laurel, MT and taking Montana Rail Link's trackage (the old Northern Pacific mainline) up to Sandpoint, ID. I'm not sure how long it would take. I'm reasonably sure that it would take more than 9 1/2 hours over the Marias Pass route, but I could be wrong.