Northwest mudslide season begins

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The problem with that area that has the mudslides is that the hills next to the track are mostly made of glaciated sand and the base of the hills are made up of a thick clay layer. When there is alot of rain the water goes down through the sand and hits the clay layer and when the water at the clay layer builds up to a point the sand layers just above the clay slide over the track and into the sound. A few years ago when there was a lot of snow in the northern Rockies and snow slide happen BNSF did use the 48-hour rule around Whitefish.
 
Based on posts over at Trainorders.com, it sounds like they moved the Seattle sectiion to Portland and it showed up about 8:30am this morning. If that is true, they'll send the whole train to Spokane as 28 and bus passengers from Seattle section points to Spokane. That way they don't have to wait for 7 and turn it there, like they did yesterday.

But it does mean you are likely going to get a bus ride from Spokane to Seattle, Pam.
 
The Seattle Times is reporting a new mudslide (I think) late this afternoon, which sounds like there may be no train service SEA-EVR through Thursday afternoon.

A tweet from @Amtrak_Cascades earlier in the day said that "Alternate transportation will be provided." For the Cascades, this generally means a bus all the way from SEA-VAC. Locals have been lobbying for buses only from SEA-EVR, then train north of there, but apparently that doesn't happen because the bus company Amtrak uses is the same one they use for the Thruway buses. It's a Canadian company and is licensed only for through trips from SEA-VAC.

Passengers on 7 and 8 are generally bused SEA-EVR, however. When I got bustituted a couple of years ago, there was a nonstop bus EVR-SEA, and another that stopped in Edmonds.
 
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I took Seattle to Vancouver, BC Amtrak Cascades #516 last March just before a 48 hour Mudslide curfew expired but the tracks had long reopened, when they couldn't let any passengers on the train through the mudslide but wanted it up in Vancouver, BC for a regular trip the next morning. So they took the train up and bused all of us passengers up to Everett. I don't actually know what happened to Edmonds passengers, no announcements were made. They might have been on the train for those coming from the south since the mudslide I believe was between Edmonds and Everett There we boarded the train that arrived on time but had two epic delays, first from a truck that bottomed out at a grade crossing near Mout Vernon and then a freight train that had a stowaway in it at the boarder! We finally arrived in Vancouver at 2am! I chatted with the conductor a bit during the delays who told me he kept getting phone calls from the supervisor for Canadian Border Services at Pacific Central Station that he wasn't happy that is agents were sitting around doing nothing, wanting to know when the train would arrive. The crew did well with touches like turning off the lights so we could get some sleep, and kept the entire train open so we could spread out. I got some sleep across four seats in a car that had been full of Bellingham passengers.

My Blog Post on the Trip
 
CHamilton said:
The Seattle Times is reporting a new mudslide (I think) late this afternoon, which sounds like there may be no train service SEA-EVR through Thursday afternoon.

A tweet from @Amtrak_Cascades earlier in the day said that "Alternate transportation will be provided." For the Cascades, this generally means a bus all the way from SEA-VAC. Locals have been lobbying for buses only from SEA-EVR, then train north of there, but apparently that doesn't happen because the bus company Amtrak uses is the same one they use for the Thruway buses. It's a Canadian company and is licensed only for through trips from SEA-VAC.

Passengers on 7 and 8 are generally bused SEA-EVR, however. When I got bustituted a couple of years ago, there was a nonstop bus EVR-SEA, and another that stopped in Edmonds.
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The article just states that the cancellation include tomorrow too which was already the case anyhow. Seems like a poorly written article to me.
 
What's going on with the Cascades between PDX and SEA? Over on FB a guy's claiming that service was stopped and he was in the process of being bustituted.I can't find anything on Amtrak.com or Twitter Cascades, everything seems to be NORTH of SEA, not south. I take it he's not a happy camper. :eek: I'm assuming it has something to do with the weather and/or slides.

Ron Bonnette on FB wrote [about 11 PM ET],

Amtrak is obviously unable to operate profitably and is a drain on the US budget. Perhaps they (the US government) should pull ALL funding from Amtrak until they fire all the executives and force them to become a break-even service. They lost all my future business starting now. On what is perhaps one of the biggest travel days of the year, Thanksgiving Day Eve, they knowingly shut down the track between Portland and Seattle so that we have to ride like cattle in a cattle car (bus) and then only offered up a paltry $11.00 refund for our upgraded business class seats for two passengers. I am ANGRY to say the least. BAH, HUMBUG to Amtrak!!!
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Looks like trains are running between PDX and SEA this morning.

Linda T said:
What's going on with the Cascades between PDX and SEA? Over on FB a guy's claiming that service was stopped and he was in the process of being bustituted.I can't find anything on Amtrak.com or Twitter Cascades, everything seems to be NORTH of SEA, not south. I take it he's not a happy camper. :eek: I'm assuming it has something to do with the weather and/or slides.

Ron Bonnette on FB wrote [about 11 PM ET],

Amtrak is obviously unable to operate profitably and is a drain on the US budget. Perhaps they (the US government) should pull ALL funding from Amtrak until they fire all the executives and force them to become a break-even service. They lost all my future business starting now. On what is perhaps one of the biggest travel days of the year, Thanksgiving Day Eve, they knowingly shut down the track between Portland and Seattle so that we have to ride like cattle in a cattle car (bus) and then only offered up a paltry $11.00 refund for our upgraded business class seats for two passengers. I am ANGRY to say the least. BAH, HUMBUG to Amtrak!!!
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CHamilton said:
Linda,

I haven't been able to find anything about problems south of Seattle. Unfortunately, Amtrak and WSDOT have done a poor job of updating their websites. The only information that seems to be being updated is the @Amtrak_Cascades Twitter account, which only lists the disruption north of Seattle.
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Thanks, that's what I was finding. Wonder what's up with his post then? Oh well... go figure. This is exactly why I chose not to travel the NW in November -- I got a heads up about mudslide season and chose to travel in September next year instead. :)
 
I would assume the eastbound EB that is in MN today (5+ hours late) was delayed due to the mudslides, but what happened to the westbound #7--it is over 4 hours behind schedule in ND today. For just a brief moment the EBs were close to running on schedule--C'es La Vie'.

Glad to see that the folks in WA will finally do something about the slides. One would think after these constant flows of mud, rocks, trees and other debris that there wouldn't be that much left to "slide".

:)
 
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montana mike said:
I would assume the eastbound EB that is in MN today (5+ hours late) was delayed due to the mudslides, but what happened to the westbound #7--it is over 4 hours behind schedule in ND today. For just a brief moment the EBs were close to running on schedule--C'es La Vie'.

Glad to see that the folks in WA will finally do something about the slides. One would think after these constant flows of mud, rocks, trees and other debris that there wouldn't be that much left to "slide".

:)
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The delay was due to mudslides, although somewhat indirectly. 7(17) was turned in Spokane to become 8(19) because of the mudslides. It took a few hours to turn it, so it was like 4 hours down coming out of Spokane.
 
Ron sounds like a malcontent. The CS left Sacramento 2:09AM 2+ hours late. It got to K-Falls at 10:02 about 1:40 late.

The Amtrak status says it shoud be 20+ minutes EARLY to Seattle.

Until Ron can tell us what TRAIN he was supposed to be on that was bustituted, I'm guessing he got a ticket for one of the routes that is normally run by bus and was unhappy that he couldn't ride on a Talgo.
 
No passenger trains north of Seattle until Friday

No passenger trains will run north of Seattle until Friday because of the danger of more mudslides hitting the tracks south of Everett.

Amtrak says buses will serve its passengers between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

...

The Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks were hit by 15 mudslides in heavy rain Monday and early Tuesday. The largest slide of mud, rocks and trees at Everett was 15 feet deep.
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15 feet!!
 
montana mike said:
Glad to see that the folks in WA will finally do something about the slides. One would think after these constant flows of mud, rocks, trees and other debris that there wouldn't be that much left to "slide".

:)
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Yup, it looks like they can at least clear space at the bottom for at least some of the crap to accumulate before spilling over onto the tracks. But a lot of the cliffs are 100 ft high with little space between the cliff and the tracks: 100 ft of glacial mud. If we ever get to the point where there's nothing left to slide it will mean that many hundreds of high-priced Puget-Sound view houses have also landed on the tracks.
 
Anything significant south of Seattle going on? Just checked on Status Maps out of curiosity, and as of 10PM #11 is 3 hours and 25 minutes down on the schedule after leaving Eugine. Ouch!! :wacko:
 
Washington State should give serious consideration to finding a new route from Seattle to Everett. (There was actually a mudslide-free route in the 1900s, but crucial parts of it have been converted into the "Burke-Gilman Trail".)
 
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