We were on the eastbound Amtrak Empire Builder (runs from Seattle to Chicago in two days), and found out the evening of the derailment when we reached Minot, ND. All eastbound passengers that were to get off between Minot and Grand Forks were removed from the train, and bused to their destinations. They were the lucky ones.

Since we were ticketed through to Minneapolis, we were told to stay on the train, while it was re-routed SE directly towards Fargo. The idea was that BNSF was routing all eastbound traffic east of Minot directly through Fargo, and all westbound traffic from Fargo via Grand Forks and the northern tier (which is the normal Amtrak Empire Builder route) to lessen two-way congestion on those segments of the rail lines.

This worked OK until we found ourselves about 30 miles northwest of Fargo (not on the same rails as the derailment, which was due west of Fargo) behind two freight trains that ran out of time for their crews, due to their detour from their regular route along the northern tier. There is a hard and fast and apparently completely unbreakable rule that requires crews to park their train when they reach 12 hours, even if the train is on the main line, and will block all trains behind it. There they will sit, until a relief crew can reach them by car. Sometimes the only available relief crew must come from their original relief station, which may be hundreds of miles away. In the meantime, everyone else on the line behind them can simply just pound sand, including a passenger train filled with 300 passengers. If the freights could have run just a half-hour longer, they would have reached the Fargo yards, and we could have proceeded. It occurs to me that there should be some means of allowing 'bending the rules' in extraordinary circumstances, but I realize that permission to do so would have to come 'from the top', say the Secretary of Transportation, otherwise there could be all sorts of abuses.

So we sat all night, waiting for the two freights to get their relief crews. The outside temperature was well below zero, and there had been recent snow, not conducive for anyone attempting to travel the roads in the area. I bet you can guess the next issue -- yep, our crew was about to 'expire'. So we backed up about 10 miles at about 10 miles an hour to a convenient US highway crossing, and waited for our relief crew to come from, you guessed it, St. Cloud, MN, which was almost all the way to Minneapolis on the far side of Fargo.

So, after a long wait, we were finally under way, but we were told that for some reason (supposedly something to do with the track conditions) we were not allowed to proceed any faster than 10 miles an hour all the way to Fargo, a distance of some 30 miles. Another 3 hours go by, and we arrive in Fargo now about 12 hours late. The train proceeds to serve lunch, since it had provisions for all the way to Chicago, which it normally arrives by mid- to late-afternoon. In spite of Fargo being a 'service' stop, they DO NOT TAKE ON ANY PROVISIONS. In fact, the only time the Empire Builder takes on provisions is in Seattle and Chicago, carrying everything they need for the two day trip. The only other thing they do on 'service stops' is to drain the black tanks on the cars, and take on water, and fuel the engines. So you can guess the next thing that happens on a train that is running more than 12 hours late -- they start to run out of food. More about that later.

So, after leaving Fargo, we get all the way to Moorhead, MN, which is only a couple miles east of Fargo, when we stop again, and the announcement this time is that our whistle is broken. That means that we can only go at 10 miles an hour (maybe this is the reason for the slow trip into Fargo, but that was never explained as being related to a broken whistle). So, the plan was to wait for a freight engine to arrive, hook to the front of our train, and then use the freight engine's whistle. After waiting another hour or so, some bright guy with a blow torch managed to thaw out our whistle, and we proceeded. The freight engine we were waiting for never arrived. We also never got a replacement whistle.

By the next stop, we were then told that there was something wrong with our air brakes, and that they were going to cut power to the train to reboot the brake controller (my first thought was it must be running Windows). After the reboot, we ended up doing it a couple of more times before they were satisfied and then we proceeded. We managed to keep the whistle from freezing up again, by blowing it almost continuously between stops.

So, dinnertime came and we still weren't in Minneapolis, which we should have been there by 705 am. The sleeping car passengers did OK, with some broiled chicken, potatoes and veggies (described as the "chef's medley", a concoction of leftovers from the previous couple of meals). The coach passengers got a free meal of 'railroad stew', which is some sort of canned stew poured over rice.

Finally about 1130pm, we pulled into Minneapolis, about 15 hours late. We had originally planned to drive home to Ann Arbor, MI, which is about a 9 and 1/2 drive after getting off the train at 705 am, but instead ended up staying overnight in a nearby hotel, and then ended up taking 15 hours to drive home on New Years' Day in all the mess that struck the upper Midwest that day.

All I can say is that riding the Amtrak, particularly in the winter time, is always an adventure. You must bring your patience with you, and plenty of it.

Our car attendant kept telling folks to write their Congressman and ask for them to give Amtrak 'priority'. I spent some time researching the concept, and found that Congress had already done this several decades ago, but that the concept of how to measure 'on-time' seems to be a point of contention twixt Amtrak and the freight lines they lease track time from. It seems that if any of the Amtrak trains are more than 15 minutes late leaving a station, they lose all priority, and then the situation quickly degrades, with repeated forced delays on sidings waiting for 100+ car freight trains to pass. It doesn't help that Amtrak runs at 79 mph and the freights run at 59 mph, either. Imagine trying to coordinate literally thousands of daily freight trains on the nation's rails, with several 11-car passenger trains weaving around everyone else at 20 mph faster. Why 59 and 79 mph instead of say, 60 and 80 mph? You can blame that one on the Naperville, IL disaster, where one passenger train going over 100 mph struck another that was stopped, killing over 40 people. Congress reacted by passing laws that required passenger trains running 80 mph or faster (and freights running 60 mph or faster) to install expensive auto-stop, etc. gear. So you can guess what happened -- everyone runs their trains these days 1 mph slower, to avoid having to equip all their engines with the required safety gear.

Ever since the oil boom started and the recession receded, Amtrak Empire Builder has not had an on-time time in over two years.