On December 9 I took my little boy on his first Amtrak train trip. I love the spacious cars, the comfort of the observation car and the fun of on train dining. I have been a train customer many times through my life. The outgoing trip to Chicago reminded me of why I prefer this method of mass transit. Then, on December 13 I and my very ill 10 year old boy had the misfortune of traveling from Chicago to St Paul MN on the Empire Builder train 7. I was IMPRESSED by the communication at the station, although it was crowded and the two hour delay was annoying, we were constantly kept abreast of the situation in the waiting rooms, and I could tell employees worked hard to keep things moving once the train arrived from the yard. What was alarming and disappointing happened several hours later, when, after our last station before St. Paul, the train stopped somewhere near Hastings MN. What was alarming about it was that train employees were nowhere to be found, no announcements were made and when calling ahead with cell phones to the station in St. Paul we were told that the train staff was no longer communicating with the station. Imagine being stuck on a train only an hour from your destination in the middle of an icy cold night and having no idea why you are stopped or when you would be going again. Train staff had gone through the train after RedWing and taken all our seat markers and then disappeared, and I was left with a hysterical, exhausted child who was difficult to comfort as I had no information to share with him. Imagine also my husband, who called ahead to determine if the train would be arriving the expected two hours late and was told it would arrive about half an hour later than that, at 12:30am, only to spend the whole night on a bench awaiting our arrival 5 hours later. Weather delays and mechanical failures will happen, I, unlike some passengers do not expect you to be able to function perfectly in the aftermath of a terrible storm, but in order to keep passengers coming back you MUST improve communication between train and stations, and between staff and passengers.
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