Cascades 517 (1/26) 6 hour 6 min late?

[AC4400]

This morning I checked that yesterday's Cascades 517 was 6 hours 6 mins late (arrived Seattle at 4:16am this morning). It's unbelievable.

What's happened to this train? How did the passengers spend the night on the train?

 

[fairviewroad]

Sounds like it got stuck behind a freight:

https://twitter.com/Amtrak/status/427753815358865408

It looks as though the incident happened between VAC and BEL, so the "only" passengers on

the train were those who boarded in VAC. [That could still be 100+ people]. I wonder if the

passengers from BEL on south were bustituted or whether they simply had to wait. They may

as well just have come back in the morning for 513, which ran more or less on time.

 

[CHamilton]

Coal train derails return for Amtrak passengers

Amtrak passengers stuck for 6 hours at Ferndale

 

[AC4400]

It says 300 passengers were on board last night. Wow...

Coal train derails return for Amtrak passengers

Amtrak passengers stuck for 6 hours at Ferndale

 

[fairviewroad]

It says 300 passengers were on board last night. Wow...

Bear in mind that was an estimate from one of the passengers on board. It sounds as though there was a least one school group,

which may have increased the headcount. But 300 sounds way too high.

The WSDOT website says "A typical Amtrak Cascades train seats approximately 250 passengers" and since it generally isn't possible

to extend a Talgo trainset then there really isn't a way to get to 300. Even 250 is unlikely as that would have been a complete sell-out

and there likely would have been tickets purchased by folks boarding in BEL and those folks weren't on the train yet.