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Does any one know what happened on the CS 14 train yesterday into Seattle? It first showed 8 hours late then showed a service disruption with no info.
smitty195 Member # 5102
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The train was involved in a fatal accident with a truck, somewhere around Soledad, California. In addition to this, the lead locomotive also had mechanical issues. These two things delayed the train severely.
Since the train was running so late, a decision was made to terminate the train in Portland, Oregon (instead of going all the way to Seattle, Washington). Whenever something out of the ordinary happens with a train, the "service disruption" message appears on Amtrak's website. For reasons I've never understood, their computer software is unable to handle anything beyond "Train go here....run on time....run late". If you throw the slightest little wrench into a schedule, all their system is capable of telling people is "service disruption" and you have to make a phone call to Amtrak.
For all of the passengers up north in Eugene, Albany, and Salem (Oregon), a bus was ordered to go and pick them up and take them northbound since the Starlight would have come through there so late. They couldn't put those passengers on the Cascades trains because they were already sold out. A bus was also ordered to take all Coast Starlight passengers north from Portland once it arrived late at night.
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