I can speak a little about the incident of the woman and the cell phone in the initial posting. I was one of the Trails & Rails volunteers who got on in PDX that afternoon. Number 14 arrived about 40 minutes late into PDX that afternoon and the incoming conductor was one of my favorites (he always does the announcements for us leaving PDX when he works that section, and really plugs the T&R folks) He got off the train and was heading into the station and I said Hi, and just made an off hand remark about "what was the delay today?"
He then relayed to me what had happened. The woman in question was seated in the lower level of the coach and had indeed talked almost non-stop from Oakland (per the account of the coach attendant and several passengers). One of the other passengers was a woman with her young developmentally disabled daughter. The woman on the phone was very loud and used quite a bit of profanity. The mother politely asked the woman to please watch her language and to not talk so loudly. The woman took offense to this and threatened the mother and her daughter. The mother notified the car attendant who called the conductor. When the conductor spoke with the woman, she did not deny it and dropped the "F-Bomb" on the conductor.
SO, very shortly #14 made an unscheduled stop at a grade crossing where Salem's Finest met the train and escorted the woman off. As it turns out this woman had outstanding warrants and remained a guest of the county for a while before getting a trip back to Oakland (but not on the CS)
This conductor is one of the nicest folks to ride the rails in these parts, and is slow to anger. I am sure this was done with a great deal of thought for the safety of his passengers.
On a humorous note, this same conductor now in his opening remarks when he joins a train says "Remember, Amtrak policy states that a disruptive or unruly passenger can be removed from the train at any inhabited location. It doesn't say inhabited by Humans"