I travel the EB on a regular basis and sadly the delays--due almost entirely to freight trains now--have gotten to the point that the delays into Chicago almost always make any connections at Union Station impossible to meet--I just arrived on 8-11--7 hours late and everyone missed their connections. Today's EB #8 is also going to be around 7 hours late. The conductor on the EB said that the average delays have been 4-8 hours for most trains for months now. Fortunately the floods are mostly a non-event now, but the reality of playing second fiddle to BNSF Freight traffic needs to be acknowledged. Why doesn't Amtrak just bite the bullet and build this "new reality of waiting for freights" into their schedules?
Because the problems are temporary and changing the schedule breaks every connection. If Amtrak had the extra equipment, the best thing that they could do would be to add an extra consist to the rotation, such that the incoming trains to the westcoast would now overnight and be ready for an ontime departure.
A friend of mine who works for BNSF said that BNSF was playing "hardball" with Amtrak now when it came to traffic management, since time was money for every freight.
That would be a first for BNSF, as they've consistantly been one of the best host RR's to Amtrak. It would also put them in line for penalties from the FRA if indeed they were doing something like that.
However, this all comes back to the floods. Yes, the floods may be over, but they're still recovering from the damage done by the various floods. That is forcing BNSF to run things more slowly, which in turn is causing the problems. BNSF is currenly running less freight overall right now than they were say 3 to 5 years ago, yet they weren't having any problems getting Amtrak through on time back then.
And BNSF isn't causing any problems for Amtrak either on the Southwest Chief either, a route unaffected by flooding.
So I don't believe that BNSF has suddenly changed their policy for Amtrak to a policy that will get them in trouble with the FRA and trigger heavy fines.