Excellent points about the Amtrak employees. We tend to focus on OUR issues with the delays and missed connections. These folks are living this mess every day now. The 4-6 hour (or more) daily delays, missed connections, total disruption of their "normal schedules" must be miserable and taking a toll on them all.
Looking at ALL of the EBs this AM-every one is very late, with the eastbound #8 somewhere in MT around 5 hours behind (normally in WFH around 7:24 AM, now expected some time after 1 PM today)--I can imagine this one will be very late when it finally arrives in CHI late tomorrow night, since it still must run thru the gauntlet in eastern MT and ND, which should add about 3 more hours to their misery. Once this mess snowballs into this type of situation I wonder how Amtrak will recover? Today's #7 currently still in Eastern WA will again arrive in SEA almost as late as yesterday's train, which will likely mean #8's departure tonight will again be many hours behind, which just perpetuates the disastrous timekeeping (or lack thereof).
I asked my BNSF guy today if the host RR is doing something to cause these additional delays and he was emphatic that BNSF was trying to do everything they could to help the Amtrak trains, but once they get so far out of their slots there isn't much that can be done. He also said Amtrak equipment problems have also plagued several EBs over the past few days as well.
But yes, there is truly nothing thing of merit. Sorry Montanans.
