Just a reinforcement, not a nag:
Today's No. 7 departed Minot 4 hrs late, is scheduled to arrive Whitefish 3 1/2 hours late, at 12:23 a.m. Monday.
Ouch! If BNSF were setting out to rid its line of the Empire Builder, it couldn't do so more effectively.
Johnny, the WB schedule is so padded at the west end I once mused to the sleeping-car attendant: Hmm, we must have done 200 mph south of Everett to arrive OT in Seattle. (We hadn't seemed to be exactly streaking along the coast line.)
Since it's all dark between Whitefish and western Washington, the miles that really count, WB, are into Whitefish. This is what the Builder missed all last summer, and that I hate to see it doing again going into Summer 2015.
Fred, have you checked the Seattle arrival times for this week? the train is expected to arrive early tomorrow. It was more than two hours late yesterday, less than an hour late Friday, and early Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Johnny
Sad to say, with the advent of warm weather the Empire Builder has fallen into its last-summer pattern of late timekeeping on just about a daily basis. I usually track the (westbound) Minot-Whitefish segment, since this is the one that, with longer days, dangles the Rockies of Glacier National Park.
Not when, as today, it leaves Minot about 2 hours late, and is estimated into Whitefish down about 1:30. I'd blame congestion/construction on the Fargo-Grand Forks-Minot leg ... except that today No. 7 had already lost 1:14 leaving Fargo.
No way to win friends and influence people. Does anybody know what's going on?
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