we are to be on the eb spk-pdx on the early morning (2:45 am) of the 13th. amtrak will sell tickets for that train on their website but they will also sell tickets for the cascades from sea-pdx tomorrow evening (which i doubt will be running). they list the eb spk-pdx for tonight and tomorrow as "train sold out" when those trains aren't even running. why won't they give passengers their best information? why do i have to wait until monday for a call that my train at 2:45 am tuesday is cancelled and i can do what i want with hotel reservations at our destination? are they trying to save a few bucks as they tried to last year with their coast starlight tricks after the mudslide in oregon? i almost feel amtrak wants to abandon its ld routes and is giving purposefully poor service as the old freight/passenger railroads did when they wanted to drive away customers to "justify" abandoning a line.
Not to make light of the bad situation on the west coast, but the situation is fluid. Amtrak simply doesn't know what's going to happen, in large part because they are reliant on BNSF to let them know when they can expect to get a train across the road. Amtrak's not trying to pull a fast one, they are trying their best to service as many passengers as they can, hence renting two planes to get people out of Seattle.
I agree that how they handled the CS last year was very poor, especially in terms of not running some kind of service with a bus bridge. But that's not the case here. And in fact if you remember, Amtrak actually did run the CS for almost a week with a bus bridge, until they realized the gravity of the Frazier slide.
And of course as now reported, the train will indeed be running for you anyhow, assuming no other weather events.
